Patricia Mukhim
March 8 has been observed as International Women’s Day worldwide. This day is set aside globally to ostensibly celebrate the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women. This year the theme is Balance for Better. Indeed women are only claiming their due after having been discriminated against for centuries by the dictum of patriarchy. But the very idea of International Women’s Day appears clichéd and jaded. It echoes like a broken record that’s played over and over again to make us women believe we have been released from the societal chains that tie us to patriarchal value systems. As a tokenism for one day (March 8) we feel or are made to feel elated. The next day we are back to the grind; to the drudgery of home making; back to the kitchen; to the job that keeps our kitchens going; to the normal domestic pressures where many women are subjected to unbearable physical and emotional bruises – all of which fall under the rubric of “domestic violence.”
For a long time women were led to believe that March 8, holds the promise of better laws to tackle violence against women with a sensitive, responsive justice system. Alas! This week while attending a conference organised by the International Association of Women in Radio and Television (IWART) at the India International Centre, New Delhi, I heard articulate young women in the media speaking their minds and pointing out that the processes for addressing sexual harassment in the workplace based on the Sexual Harassment of Women At Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013, such as the formation of an Internal Complaints Committee and its enquiry processes are not working for them. Many don’t file FIRs because the process is simply too dense and inefficacious.
Women also feel violated when they enter a police station to file a rape case and they are already being judged by the police personnel and subjected to unnecessary queries. Recently a human rights lawyer citing a study conducted by Ministry of Law and Justice, Govt of India and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) dated May 2017, said that contrary to the stipulation in S.309 (2), CrPC of completing rape trials in a period of two months, the study found that the deposition of the survivor could not be completed within this time period. Delays occur for multiple reasons, including receipt of the FSL reports and other systemic factors like increasing case-load, which make delays unavoidable. The minimum time taken to complete just the deposition of the prosecutrix (the female prosecutor) according to data was 77 days (2 months 16 days), with the average time period being 37 weeks (8.5 months). In some cases, the deposition of the prosecutrix continued even after the 15 month period of the study. Although in court there were separate physical spaces for the accused and the victim it was found that the accused and his relatives continue to have access to the victim, even within the court precincts in the waiting areas. The access of the accused and his associates to the victim tends to build pressure on the victim and often makes her turn hostile. Since in most cases rape is committed by some family member or acquaintance who has access to the victim outside the court premises there is need to protect the victim and witnesses beyond the deposition and during the trial. The rape survivor often does not have access to counseling to get over her trauma.
The #MeToo Movement is essentially a movement to call out sexual predators in the form of employers or colleagues. These women find the justice system too cumbersome. They find the #MeToo movement liberating for allowing them to call out the perpetrators. They are then ready to pay for the consequences of their actions and even risk being hauled up for defamation. At least they feel they have done their bit to warn other women of repeated sexual offenders, some of whom are big names in the incestuous world of media and cinema.
International Women’s Day only reminds us that women are still living in a non-inclusive, unequal, violence-ridden, gender-discriminating world even now and heaven knows for how many more decades. Women are discriminated against at the workplace and even their homes – the domestic space. Both these spaces are also the locations of violence, not necessarily physical but are psychological, mental and emotional in nature and which may not lend themselves to vivid descriptions. They are often subtle and subversive forms of emotional blackmailing. Sexual violence is a result of poor upbringing. In most Indian homes, even if we don’t openly say so, the messaging is loud enough in the way the male and females roles are constructed. Even today gender roles in homes are clearly specified. Women who allow themselves to be abused by their husbands and in-laws in the presence or within hearing distance of their children are actually communicating to their sons that it’s okay to humiliate women and their daughters that this is how they deserve to be treated.
Coming to other aspects of women’s welfare which is essentially their health, the absence of gender sensitive and gender nuanced health indicators is a problematic factor. In Meghalaya as of 2016 the maternal mortality rate (MMR) for 2015-16 is 211 per 1,00,000 live births. The MMR is higher is West Garo Hills at 66/100000 and East Khasi Hills at 43/100,000. After Assam at 237/100000, Meghalaya is the second highest in MMR. And the Meghalaya statistics does not appear in the national MMR statistics of 2014- 2016. As far as infant mortality is concerned, Meghalaya has 39 deaths per 1,000 live births, Meghalaya’s IMR is higher than the national average of 4. Further, IMR is higher in the rural areas at 40/1000 which is almost 15 points higher than the urban areas
According to data from NFHS- 4 (2016) the percentage of institutional births — a crucial parameter for access to healthcare services in Meghalaya is only 51.4% in 2016 which is behind the national average by 27.5%. The percentage of institutional deliveries in rural Meghalaya is almost half of those in urban areas. Meghalaya is the second worst performing state in terms of institutional deliveries in the entire north eastern region, according to the ‘Healthy States, Progressive India,’ report by the NITI Aayog. Similarly, the percentage of assisted births (by a doctor/nurse/LVH/ANM/other health professional) was as high as 90.8% in the urban areas and slips to only 48.1% in the rural areas of the state.
Among nutrition outcomes in Meghalaya, anemia (among women of reproductive age) is the only indicator that has worsened over the last 10 years. This continues to be a very worrying factor because it is the primary cause for maternal mortality.
Interestingly, contrary to popular perception women in Meghalaya experience violence from their spouses. NFHS 2015-16 says that while spousal violence is lower among more educated women, almost 1 in 4 women who have at least 12 years of schooling have experienced physical or sexual spousal violence.
Also it would be wrong to surmise that Meghalaya does not experience misogyny and sexism because it is a matrilineal society. These facets are alive and kicking. Despite the constraints, however we are seeing a generation of women who have grown to expect equality – to be allowed to succeed academically, to progress professionally, to nurture families and to live public lives unimpeded by discrimination although they do not experience this as a given. They still have to fight for that equal space.
In a paper captioned, “International Women’s Day: Yes, we still need to protest this shit,” authored by Rose Capdevila and Liza Lazard of The Open University, the authors observe, “Invariably, around International Women’s Day, people ask whether feminism is redundant. Don’t the women of the Western world already have equal rights? Do we still have to protest this shit?” Their answer is, “When the most powerful man in the world (Donald Trump) thinks ‘you can do anything,’ to women, the answer can only be yes.”
We in Meghalaya many not have a Trump who constantly disparages women but the recent proposals for amendments to the Sixth Schedule which target women as being social deviants that weaken the bedrock of matriliny are ideas that are embedded in right wing fundamentalism that Trump and his ilk propagate. And except for a few women, who also faced scorn and derision, no one protested loudly against this misogynistic idea. So much for International Women’s Day!
Balance for Better is in our case, ‘Imbalance for Worse’ for we are regressing with each passing day!