A recent Thomson Reuters survey concluded that India was the most unsafe country for women in the world, ranking number 1 above Afghanistan, Syria, Somalia and Saudi Arabia at 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th respectively. A surprise entry on the list was the USA arriving 10th on the poll, rated as the 3rd most dangerous country in the world for women facing sexual violence.
The same survey was carried out 7 years ago with different results pitting Afghanistan 1st with Democratic Republic of Congo, Pakistan, India, and Somalia following closely behind.
The survey measured six key categories including: healthcare, discrimination, cultural traditions, sexual violence, non-sexual violence, and human trafficking.
However, the results of the poll have been met with heavy criticism and disappointment by the Indian media, and several citizens took to social media to air their grievances about the result. Indian academics concluded that the methods used in the research were flawed, but that the results were distressing.
Despite criticism, the results seem concurrent with some appalling crime statistics, which saw a woman raped every 13 minutes in 2016, 6 women gang raped every day, a bride murdered for dowry every 69 minutes; and 19 women attacked with acid every month.
Disturbing gang rape cases
In 2012 a 23-year-old medical student was callously gang raped and tortured by 6 men on a bus in Delhi. Now known internationally as the ‘2012 Delhi gang rape’, the case highlighted the violations that women faced in India.
The case and the subsequent trial changed the social and legal landscape of the country, by taking a turning point towards new anti-rape laws. In 2013 a bill was passed containing harsher punishments for rapists.
The most shocking case this year has been the ‘Kathua’ case. In January 2018, 8-year-old Asifa Bano was abducted, raped, and murdered in a village near Kathua in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. Asifa’s abused body was found in a forest and police investigations found her to have been drugged, held captive in a temple, sexually assaulted, strangled and brutally battered to death with a stone.
This case is still ongoing, and eight men pleaded not guilty at trial in April causing deep divisions in Indian religious communities. The eight accused men are Hindu, and the victim a Muslim from a nomadic community. The accused were said to create the violent plot in an attempt to drive the Muslim community out of their village. Hindu nationalists have also used the tragedy as a call for justice for the accused, almost disregarding the injustice of the young life that was taken.
Why India?
Experts have looked at a variety of possible reasons for why the number of victims of sexual violence has sky rocketed in India in recent years. The first suggests that it is now more acceptable to report cases. Another view holds that women are simply outnumbered by men due to illegal sex selection abortions lead by a preference for male children. This preference has driven the male/female ratio to 112:100 which is well above natural sex selection norms.
‘A preference for boys has meant that more than 63 million women are statistically “missing”.’
Critics of the current government and Prime Minister say the fault lies with them as their staunch nationalist views have emboldened Hindu nationalists and extremists. Others say that India needs to really recognise the sexual violence problem to move towards a future where women feel safer.
