SOCIETAL POWER DYNAMICS AT FAULT, SAY WOMEN
Many women in India say sexual violence is more than a law-and-order issue. They blame it on society’s power dynamics that skew heavily in men’s favour and a culture that tolerates sexism.
“There are instances of men bullying women, taunting them – a lot of things, like small acts of aggression – that’s how it starts. And we have seen now how it can end,” said Mala, a Delhi resident.
Another Delhi resident, Vaishnavi Sharma, believes family background plays a crucial role in building a man’s character.
“It decides whether they make women feel safe around themselves, whether they respect women or not,” she added.
Activists said the most ignored are poor women from the country’s lower caste called Dalits – people once described as “untouchable.” But things change when the victim is an urban, well-educated, so-called “upper caste” professional.
“There is that selective rage, and the problem is that unless we change that larger patriarchal, caste-ist mindset, this is not going to go away,” said Neetika Vishwanath, director of sentencing at Project 39A – a litigation and research centre that represents death row inmates in India.
In the Kolkata case, officials were also under significant pressure to act because India’s medical community is unionised and promptly responded to calls for a strike.
