22nd December 2018, 13:50 | #121 |
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| Re: #MeToo - Women's Safety in India While reading this thread, I came across a lot of references to various reports comparing the situation of our women, with women in Afghanistan, Syria and even Saudi! My interest in this subject peaked during the dreaded Nirbhaya incident. During my international travels, i was constantly bombarded with various questions regarding the society in India and how could we be so barbaric. I started reading up a bit to see if the situation was really as bad as it is made out to be. To start with, I would urge all of you to read the book "Soft Power" by Joseph Nye. It will open your eyes about how branding of a nation is consciously carried out as a matter of policy. Joseph Nye advised the US government to stop positioning itself as a hard power and instead start projecting itself as a soft power. We have been seriously lacking in this aspect, in-spite of having tonnes of it. Just go to nationmaster.com and you will see that India ranks roughly 150th in the descending order in terms of number of rape incidents per thousand population. These are UNHRC figures and not govt of India figures.The Lancet magazine, one of the most prestigious medical publications came out with a study which said that the rape rates in India and Bangladesh are one of the lowest in the world. Adjusted for population, the rape incidents are 5 times higher in England & Wales as compared to Delhi. Still Delhi is branded as the rape capital by our own media. One US government study shows that roughly 25% of all women in the US are subject to sexual abuse. Many people complain that the conviction rates in India for sexual crimes are just 25%, however only 25% of all cases in the US even result in an arrest! Couple the above information with the fact that India has roughly 648000 towns and villages and we have only 12800 police stations. To put things in perspective, California alone has 13000 police stations. This not a matter of pride, but the point is, in spite of being such an under policed country how are the crime rates so low?? Have we ever thought about this? Branding of a nation is not just done with GDP & FDI numbers. The branding of a nation seriously effects its economy and its standing it the global society. There are demands to put economic sanctions against India because of this DE-branding. Countries put out travel advisories against going to india because of this. Branding of a nation is today a part of geopolitics. My intention here is not to demonize other societies and unjustly lionize our own. Even if there is one instance of rape or sexual abuse, my head hangs in shame. At the same time why are we so hell bent on taking everything at face value that the Washington post, Guardian, NYT & NDTV says? Crimes against women is a very serious issue, but our understanding of the problem is flawed. A country like Switzerland gave voting rights to its women only in 1972. Sucheta Kriplani was the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh in the late 50s. We are looking for solutions in the wrong places and trying to apply models which are not suitable to our society. Women today have largely been misled into believe that working in a office is somehow more valuable and empowering than working in your own house. I am definitely not saying that women should not work outside, but they should not be misled into believing a false narrative. We have been constantly chasing gender equality. What we should be truly striving for is gender harmony. Last edited by Eddy : 22nd December 2018 at 16:08. Reason: Spacing for better readability |
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22nd December 2018, 14:16 | #122 | |||||
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| Re: #MeToo - Women's Safety in India Quote:
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You're right that we need to look for solutions internally, solutions that work with and account for our unique social, gender and economic realities. That said, we can always learn a good thing from somewhere else, even if it isn't directly applicable to us. This isn't and shouldn't be a statistical competition, and it shouldn't matter what our 'ranking' is. It's no solace to a victim that they're part of a small statistical outlier. Last edited by aah78 : 15th January 2019 at 22:59. Reason: Post spacing fixed. | |||||
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22nd December 2018, 15:16 | #123 | |
Distinguished - BHPian | Quote:
Is that why they put the idiot Trump in power? To project a "soft power"? Last edited by aah78 : 15th January 2019 at 23:00. Reason: B2B post. EDIT: Post spacing fixed. | |
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22nd December 2018, 16:15 | #124 |
Team-BHP Support | Re: #MeToo - Women's Safety in India
I think he is referring to Jordan Peterson phenomena, Peterson claims men and women probably can't work together. |
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22nd December 2018, 16:57 | #125 | ||
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| Re: #MeToo - Women's Safety in India I think you've made wonderful points. Some thoughts on few of the points : Quote:
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23rd December 2018, 11:34 | #126 | |||||||||||
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| Re: #MeToo - Women's Safety in India Quote:
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This article should give you some idea about data sources and due diligence. Quote:
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Last edited by msk016 : 23rd December 2018 at 11:41. Reason: Not able to multiquote in the earlier post. | |||||||||||
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23rd December 2018, 13:22 | #127 | |
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| Re: #MeToo - Women's Safety in India Quote:
If you read western media on China you'd wonder how they went from nothing to the world's 2nd largest economy {even in nominal GDP terms} in just 70 years. At a sublimal level I believe there is a mix of fear & wariness of "the barbarians are coming". There is a hell of a lot to be done in India but we tend to overlook how far we have come despite being the most complex nation on Earth and we overlook how slowly the foundation for future progress is being laid all the time. Not touching on women's safety as my views are already here on this thread in the earlier pages. | |
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23rd December 2018, 15:41 | #128 | |
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| Re: #MeToo - Women's Safety in India Quote:
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23rd December 2018, 18:44 | #129 | |||||||||
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| Re: #MeToo - Women's Safety in India Quote:
It not only tackles the statistics, but also highlights the various systemic details that lead to either crimes going unreported, misreported, mis-classified or mishandled. Chapter 7 is of particular interest, and table 7.1 indicates nearly 73% of complaints don't make it to registered status due to police insensitivity alone and 77% due to the police feeling the case is false, according to the police personnel interviewed as part of the study. Trying to report a crime to the police is just the beginning of the crime reporting process, not its entirety, and the police department themselves struggle with the system they function in, and I empathize with them. What's undeniable though, is in a large percentage of cases, the wheels of justice don't even begin to turn. We need police reform as urgently as we need criminal justice reform. Below is the opening quote of the report, from a 2013 judgment of the Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court if India. Quote:
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24th December 2018, 22:15 | #130 |
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| Re: #MeToo - Women's Safety in India https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...-repercussions Very interesting and thoughtful article in the UK newspaper 'Guardian'. Don't jump to conclusions till you have read it through. Laura Kipnis, the writer, is known for her pragmatism. |
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25th December 2018, 07:25 | #131 |
Senior - BHPian | Re: #MeToo - Women's Safety in India A very important point she has raised is what an employee does in his or her personal time can still be used against the employee by the employer. All time is company time. Perhaps we need laws to clearly segregate these two and absolve the company of any responsibility of an act of an employee while he or she wasn't on company working time. Or else sue the company for any act the employee committed in the off time! |
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27th December 2018, 08:38 | #132 | |
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| Re: #MeToo - Women's Safety in India https://scroll.in/article/907124/gen...ent-of-suicide Genpact sexual harassment case: Have police overreached by charging company with abetting suicide? Source: Scroll.in Some parts of this article are copied below. My aim is to highlight that in cases such as this there are no clear answers or right or wrong. It is always a nuanced situation. Putting this here for our members to appreciate the many shades of grey in this case and other similar cases. Quote:
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27th December 2018, 09:03 | #133 | |
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| Re: #MeToo - Women's Safety in India Quote:
In the west we wont have people worshiping a Bush, Obama, Trump, Clinton etc, as many if not more people have been brutally frank about the lies, exploits and manipulations of these presidents as there have been sympathizers. In India we are barely hobbling about, trying to survive and the battle of the palm and the lotus seems to be the foremost thing with the respective supporters bashing each other up for it. Michael Jordan and Barry Bonds have as many critics as they have fans, here one negative comment against Virat Kohli or Tendulkar > YOU'RE NOT INDIAN!!! Women's safety will improve when the women know where to draw, or cut the line. Until then there is always risk of casualties in this gender blender called the workplace. When does a joke get too far, when does friendship cross into something else, when do spoken words need attention.. we don't know. All it takes is one complaint by a woman, and the offender is hanged promptly. There should be 24/7 camera monitoring, and 24/7 people walking around workstations like matrons just so that there is no friendship, chemistry, or a budding romance blooming within an office.. that should stop most of these harassment scandals. In America, in most harassment scandals.. the woman is looked at with equal doubt as the man.. heck in the great White House scandal, the intern was shunted while the Commander-in-Chief stayed on, even though most people knew it should've been the opposite. For the other countries to see us as different, I think we should stop taking offense at everything. Let social media highlight our drains, slums and unsafe nature, let them scream hoarse about our roads, lack of toilets and power. Somewhere in there, is truth as well. I'm an Indian who learnt pretty early not to take offense at anything, social media is there for the single purpose of mowing things down and if I'm in it, I'll get mowed down as well. There are more than a fair share of westerners who've adopted the beautiful religion of Sanatana Dharma, who believe in Indian concepts of family and virtues and also find the simplistic nature and ways of the country appealing. To me we were a far greater country 2 decades ago when I was a kid, than we are now. Time to go back to our peaceful, unassuming ways. Last edited by dark.knight : 27th December 2018 at 09:06. | |
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29th December 2018, 13:42 | #134 | |||
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| Re: #MeToo - Women's Safety in India An interesting perspective on gender sensitization. Quote:
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4th December 2019, 16:55 | #135 |
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| Re: Highway safety at night for female drivers & passengers This is heights! I do drive in the nights with wife and two daughters - as often as half of my highway drives. While being on safety of women, can I also add to the list: - Don't send your daughters to school (rapes happen in school too) - Don't send your sisters and spouse to work, because harassment happens at work too - Don't expose an inch of skin, because they invite ogling and bad elements - Don't take public transport, they are also filled with perverts - Don't step out of the house, because there are animals on the street - If you are a girl, don't allow your brother or father to enter your room when your mother is not around, because so many incest rapes in this country. Sick! We are very happy dealing with symptoms of a problem while leaving the root problem untouched. Take for example (related to women): - Ban gender selection, but do nothing to make girls preferred/equal gender - Ban dowry, but do nothing to empower women to stand on their own feet - Death sentence for rapists, but do nothing help a rape survivor fight back A little digress. But let me be for a moment. Severe punishment for rape is bad for many reasons:
What we can do, as a change in society:
I'm not saying that removing sexual deprivation from men can be easily done or a sexually liberated society will complete prevent sexual crimes. But it will definitely reduce the rate of crime as well as degree of the crime. Alas! We are too uncomfortable talking about sex. So, lets rather talk about lynching and hanging of rapists (sic!). Last edited by Sheel : 4th December 2019 at 18:14. Reason: Spacing out for better readability. |
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