Thinking Big Just one human brain recording its thoughts.

I am sure many of you have heard about the brutal  gang rape of a young  girl on a local bus in Delhi. She was simply on her return home from a movie when 6 men violently tortured and raped her. This occurrence has opened people’s eyes to the brutality against women that continues to exist in various parts of society. In over 50 countries laws have been made against rape, however as recent events in India have brought to light, just because the laws are there does not mean they are being put into practice. Although this recent rape has gotten a lot of media attention, the brutality is not what is rare;the fact that it got so much attention and  that the criminals are being convicted is what is unusual. Out of more than 600 rape cases reported in Delhi in 2012, only one led to conviction (NYT).

Pictured above is a rape map of India of those cases reported to officials (Wall Street Journal). The orange bars on the side show the conviction rate of those accused in each region. In the area with most war and conflict Jammu and Kashmir, the  conviction rate is a shockingly low 8.3% suggesting that those who are committing the crime are not getting punished for it. It is expected that these ratios are actually even smaller because the statistics do not take into account the cases that have not been reported.

So why aren’t people getting convicted?

The  lack of reactivity by officials to convict more criminals according to Sonia Faleiro who live in New Delhi for 24 years is because “sexual harassment is as regular as meal time”(New York Times). In other words, it is has been an accepted part of the culture. And on top of that, the very people that should be upholding justce, the police are a part of the problem. The police force is corrupt and disconnected. One women’s story accounted a police officer laugher with her rapist and then telling her that she “will be ridiculed if she doesn’t settle things without an investigation”(New York Times). Another Indian women accounts, “I have no faith in the police. If you have money or connections, you can get justice. If you don’t, forget it.”

Also the overall cultural acceptance of female harassment and subjection exacerbates the lack of female rights. These cultural attitudes can be tied back to various traditional practices. For example practices such as female infanticide and Sati were heavily practiced up until  1860s when the invasive Britain outlawed them during their imperialistic period. Sati is a hindu practice  in which widows were expected to sacrifice themselves, become cremated with their husbands and be burned to death.

This practice is rooted in the idea that a widow is a bad woman for not being able to keep her husband alive and she must now go with him in order to be able to serve him in the after life. Infanticide although it is outlawed, there have still been reports of this happening today.  Female infanticide also outlawed is particularly more apparent today in the alarmingly imbalanced sex ratio and although there can be many reasons for abandoning one’s child, the most apparent reason in Indian society is simply that they do not want a girl . A daughter is often viewed a temporary who will one day marry and join a new family are therefore not preferred. According to a 2011 study in the Lancet,  thousands of female babies are abandoned each year. So not only are baby girls are getting stripped of the chance to live, but if they survive adulthood they are expected to endure a society where they are subject to sexual harassment, violence and fear.

Here are some current views (strongly believe by some people) on how to help women who have been raped:

1)A proposal from a rapist is currently viewed as the perfect solution for the victim.

2) Laws have been passed in the northern state of Uttarakhandd  which keep women from working  pass 6 p.m.

3) Women are told to dress more modestly a.k.a. it is their fault for attracting the rapist and are expected to be as invisible as possible ( The Atlantic)

In all of these cases, the victims end up being the ones to blame or are further punished. It follows the skewed concept that “Let there be no mothers/ Let there be no wives/ Let there be no daughters/ And there will be no crimes” (Time Magazine). It scares me to think that that is the attitude that permeates Indian culture. The victims are getting scapegoated with little voice and the police provide little protection. Hopefully this young girl in Delhi will not die in vain and  people will finally realize the critical necessity for improvements.  However, the manner in how to make improvements is a lot harder than simply pointing out the problems.  Changing a cultural perspective is not an easy task, but the equality of women should never be questioned on whether or not it is worth fighting for.