http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Delhi/women-dtc-conductors-journey-to-empowerment-takes-a-scary-turn/article5821850.ece

Really? Is it this bad? In the capital city?

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Dimple2001

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Originally posted by dimple2001

http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Delhi/women-dtc-conductors-journey-to-empowerment-takes-a-scary-turn/article5821850.ece

Really? Is it this bad? In the capital city?

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WOMEN GET NO RESPECT..: An article worth reading. Do people get sufficient education in social sciences?

The popular Hindu saying goes “The birth of a girl is akin to the arrival of Lakshmi - the four-armed goddess of wealth, often depicted holding lotus flowers and an overflowing pot of gold.” While that should be reassuring for Indian women, especially now as the country continues to be one of the fastest growing economies in the world, and has many women in leadership positions such Meira Kuma, the Speaker of the Lok Sabha and Sonia Gandhi the leader of the Congress Party heading the ruling coalition; the reality is starkly different.

Women and girl-children are treated deplorably in the second-most populous country in the world. Rita Banerji, the founder of the The 50 Million Missing Campaign observes that, “In another two decades, India will have annihilated 20 percent of its female population.” To imagine how vast those numbers are; just put together the entire populations of Sweden, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium and Portugal.

“It’s a miracle a woman survives in India. Even before she is born, she is at risk of being aborted due to our obsession for sons,” states Shemeer Padinzijharedil, who runs Maps4aid.com, a website which maps and documents crimes against women. The country’s 2011 census confirmed an increasingly distorted sex-ratio among newborn babies in many states, as parents use ultrasound scanners to identify the sex of foetuses and then abort female ones. Sandi Sonnenfeld notes that “The life of a cow is more sacred than the life of a girl or woman in India.” She adds that if a cow was slaughtered in a Hindu neighbourhood, there would be religious riots and reprisals across the country, yet women are abused and murdered on a daily basis and people keep silent.

“As infants and little girls, they are killed. As new brides they are killed over dowry battles, and if they get pregnant, they are killed as they are forced through repeated ‘back-to-back’ unsafe abortions to get rid of girl-foetuses. Thousands more are killed for the so-called “honour” of the families, and many more branded as “witches” and mob-lynched. When their husbands die, widows may be burnt alive on the funeral pyres.” There seems to be no safe place for the women of India. TrustLaw, a news service run by Thomson Reuters, has ranked India as the worst G20 country in which to be a woman.

On December 16 while coming from a movie in New Delhi, a 23-year old medical student and her male companion were lured into a bus, where they were beaten with iron rods and the woman brutally raped by six men including the bus driver. As if that was not enough, they were thrown off the fast moving bus stark naked. The man survived but the student sustained grave injuries and ended up in a hospital, where she fought to stay alive, just as she had attempted to fight off her attackers; kicking, clawing and biting them. Airlifted to a hospital in Singapore, she lost her battle for life just two days before the New Year.

The story of the medical student - Jyoti Singh Pandey is a story so horrific that it sparked vigils, protests, marches on parliament and Indian police tear-gassing the angry crowds. The biggest question on the thoughts of so many around the world as they watched events unfold before their television screens was, “Why does India treat its women so badly?” Ranjana Kumari, Director of the Centre for Social Research states that, “To change a society as conservative, traditional and patriarchal as ours, we will have a long haul.” “It will take some time, but certainly, there is a beginning.”

In an article entitled “India advances, but many women still trapped in dark ages,” Nita Bhalla observes that “Many of the crimes against women are in India’s heavily populated northern plains, where in parts, there is a deep-rooted mindset that women are inferior and must be restricted to being homemakers and child-bearers.” In addition, age-old customs such as payment of hefty dowries at the time of marriage and beliefs linking a female’s sexual behaviour to family honour have made girls seem like a burden. Nita continues to state that, “In many cases, violence against women has a level of social acceptability, a government survey found 51 percent of Indian men and 54 percent of women justified wife beating.”

Bhalla argues that, “While India has robust gender laws; they are hardly enforced, partly because a feudal mindset is as prevalent among bureaucrats, magistrates and the police as it is elsewhere. Politicians are also unwilling to crack down on customary biases against women for fear of losing conservative votes.” Soutik Biswas, the Delhi correspondent for BBC India maintains that “Angry citizens believe that politicians, including Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, are being disingenuous when they promise to toughen laws and speed up the prosecution of rapists and perpetrators of crime against women. How else, they ask, can political parties in the last five years have fielded candidates for state elections that included 27 candidates who declared they had been charged with rape?”

Bloggers as well as the general public have lamented that “India’s police force and legal system is historically lethargic, prone to bribes, bias in favour of men and fundamentally unjust.” The International attention given India at this time after the barbaric gang-rape of Jyoti has put pressure on the national government to speedily process court cases and embrace larger reform. As an example, New Delhi is hiring additional 2,508 women police officers to be stationed in all of Delhi’s police station. It is felt that if there are women police; women complainants will feel more secure and comfortable in visiting a police station.

India’s ongoing and too real war on women is rooted in cultural bias and the government’s failure to protect women as equal members of society. Reform will take much more than legislation, it will take consistent enforcement of laws, protection of victims of all crimes regardless of sex or caste, and priority being placed on justice.

Article from : http://www.mediablackberry.com/index.php?oid=13885

FH.

Here is what EX PRESIDENT Jimmy Carter is saying about womens rights and their abuse. :

Former President Jimmy Carter is issuing a call to action to end the abuse and subjugation of women, which he refers to as the “worst and most pervasive and unaddressed human rights violation on Earth.”

Carter issued his strong statements about gender equality in a recent interview with NBC News’ Andrea Mitchell. The former president is currently doing media appearances to promote a new book, A Call To Action: Women, Religion, Violence, and Power, which discusses the issue of women’s victimization around the world.

There’s significant data to back up his claims. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that one in three women around the world is subject to sexual violence at some point in her life. In many parts of the world, women still aren’t receiving adequate health care and education. Every year, about 14 million girls under the age of 18 are given away as child brides, and an additional 4 million women and girls are bought and sold into slavery. And according to the United Nations, at least 125 million girls in Africa and the Middle East have undergone female genital mutilation.

In his book, set to be released on Tuesday, Carter argues that conservative faith leaders have indirectly contributed to the ongoing violence against women by furthering a society that allows inequality to flourish.

“Religious leaders say women are inferior in the eyes of God, which is a false interpretation of the Holy Scriptures. When [people] see the Pope, the Southern Baptist Convention, and others say that women can’t serve as priests equally with men, they say well, I’ll treat my wife the way I want to because she’s inferior to me,” Carter told NBC News.

Carter and his wife Rosalynn decided to leave their conservative Southern Baptist church because the denomination refuses to ordain women as pastors and believes that wives should remain submissive to their husbands. “I understand that the carefully selected verses found in the Holy Scriptures to justify the superiority of men owe more to time and place — and the determination of male leaders to hold onto their influence — than eternal truths. Similar Biblical excerpts could be found to support the approval of slavery and the timid acquiescence to oppressive rulers,” Carter wrote at the time, arguing that the Bible can also be interpreted to support gender equality. The couple now attends a more moderate Baptist church that has a female pastor.

In an interview with NPR, Carter explained that he’s written to Pope Francis to challenge him on the Catholic Church’s official policy on women in leadership roles. He’s not optimistic that anything will change anytime soon. “But at least the pope, the new pope, is aware of it and is much more amenable, I think, to some changes than maybe some of — or most of — his predecessors,” he said.

Carter’s book makes the case that the United States is at least partly responsible for perpetrating the ongoing violence against women around the globe, since the U.S. wields such great international influence. The former president also sees issues of violence and abuse occurring within America’s borders, particularly as the issue of properly handling sexual assault causes on college campuses and military bases has recently come to a head.

“Exactly the same thing happens in universities in America that happens in the military. Presidents of universities and colleges and commanding officers don’t want to admit that, under their leadership, sexual abuse is taking place,” Carter noted. “Rapists prevail because they know they’re not going to be reported.”


FH.