What is women's empowerment? And
more importantly, how is a woman valued in India? A brutal gang-rape of a medical student, who
gave in to her injuries a fortnight later, shook the nation last December. The
incident and the events that eventually unfolded saw the whole of India vociferously
protest against this hideous act. People took to streets, coffee shops, bars,
offices, and social media outlets to voice their opinions. Even the most famous
surfing portals were filled with phrases like strong law enforcement, death
penalty and so on.
However, the front-line media as
well as the discussions on public forums (or at least the ones I read) seemed
to have missed one very important point. Yes, this incident was bizarre and
yes, the protests were justified. But why only this incident? Is it because it happened
in posh South Delhi? Is it because urban India (that most media outlets cater
to) could relate so well to the incident and feared that it could have been one
of them in that bus? Is it because other incidents reported in the rural parts
of the country do not generate enough TRPs? I don’t know. But this incident
serves as a pretext and interested readers could read some of the reflections
on this topic here and here (This one particularly
had a profound influence on the way I thought about this issue. It is by a rape
victim, herself, who was on the December 24, 2012 episode of NDTV's We The People
hosted by Barkha Dutt).
Going back to my initial question of women's empowerment, most researchers around the world would
agree that finding a perfect way to measure it has not been
devised yet. Available methods use a mix of qualitative and quantitative tools to conclude
about a certain aspect of women's empowerment. For the past five months, I, along
with CMF’s Livelihoods Initiative team at IFMR-Research, have been conducting a
baseline study of seven of the poorest districts in central India in
conjunction with a partner organization – PRADAN. While our research
questionnaire looks at all the aspects that affect the livelihood of a poor
household, we have also included a series of questions on women as an
individual; her health and hygiene, attitude and perceptions towards herself, and her view of the institutions. Since a
woman is not only a separate entity in herself but also an inseparable part of
the community she resides in, we also explored her roles and responsibilities
in the society which covered topics such as how free is she to access her
liberties, what is her role in the community and in her household, is she
aware, willing or capable to use her rights and entitlements granted by the
community?
We
are still analyzing data collected from this study, and hopefully, along with
our partner organization PRADAN, we will be able to share results from this
study soon. However, I would like to share a personal experience from the field
that made me wonder about the lower bound for a woman’s place in certain
segments of our society. Our questionnaire had a series of statements that
disparaged women over men in some way or the other to understand how women are
viewed by both men and women. We asked these questions to both men and women
members of the households. I was with a surveyor when he was asking these
questions to a male respondent in one of our study villages. The male
respondent was surrounded by a group of men from neighboring households. To my horror,
as the surveyor threw one disparaging statement after the other on how women
should be seen as lower than men, all men started shouting at the top of their
voice with “Agree!” chants raising their hands up in the air as if they had
just been summoned to give a speech after coronation. What made me feel worse was when
I saw a female sitting in one corner and listening to the questions, cover
her face and walk away.
Reflecting upon this incident, I
had no choice but to reluctantly accept the fact that two thousand (or may be
more) years of patriarchal notions could not be solved any time soon. However, a
small step would be to realize that in the macrocosm of caste, class, and
gender, women from rural areas stand at the bottom of the pyramid; incredibly
vulnerable to social, political, and economic abuse. Many instances of women's rights violation from rural areas probably go unreported or ignored even when
it makes it to the news media outlets. The backdrop of the Delhi incident and several
other that have happened since should only serve as a lesson
that cancer cannot be cured by curing parts of it; it has to be wholly removed.
I have read and heard many different angles along which people have summoned
acts against violation of women's rights after the Delhi incident. Few have been
wholesome in their approach; others have only addressed part of the problem. I
think it should start from understanding what being a woman in this part of the
world really means. And since more than 70% of the women dwell in rural areas,
it is imperative to make their voices heard so that any vehicle attempting to
get rid of the atrocities against women does not leave without 2/3 of its passengers.
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