Nearly 50% women in India face domestic violence and two out of three Dalit women face sexual violence in their lifetimes. Yet, political parties and voters ignored it.

• In the world’s largest democratic exercise, 642 million voters participated and more than half of whom were female, but facing severe challenges, including institutional violence.

Gender-Based Violence in India

Gender-based violence (GBV) is violence committed against a person because of sex or gender. It is forcing another person to do something against his or her will through violence, coercion, threats, deception, cultural expectations, or economic means. 

• Refers: The United Nations’ definition of GBV is, “any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, whether occurring in public or private life.”  
• Occurrence: The issue of violence against women occurs throughout the life cycle from pre-birth, infancy, childhood, adolescence, adulthood to old age.
• A Matter of Concern: The issue of violence against women is a social, economic, developmental, legal, educational, human right and health (physical and mental) issue.
  • It is a human rights violation, and the immediate and long-term physical, sexual, and mental consequences for women and girls can be devastating, including death.
• Different Types of Violence against Women: Violence against women includes:
  • Intimate Partner Violence (battering, mental abuse, marital rape, femicide)
  • Sexual Violence and Harassment (rape, forced sexual activities, unhealthy sexual advances, child sexual abuse, forced marriage, stalking, cyber- harassment)
  • Human Trafficking (slavery, sexual exploitation)
  • Domestic Violence (child abuse and elderly abuse)
  • Female Child Foeticide
  • Acid Attacks
  • Female Genital Mutilation
  • Child Marriage

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About Institutional Violence

It is an established form of interpersonal violence resulting from the existence of such institutions as the police and prisons and from the practices of repressive justice. 

• Refers: It refers to the structural violence that occurs when specific organisations employ attitudes, beliefs, practices, and policies to marginalise or exploit vulnerable groups, such as racist attitudes and practices within certain police agencies or violence and abuse experienced by the incarcerated within certain prison facilities.
• Existence: Such violence emanating from institutions which exercise power may manifest itself in the political, the economic, and the cultural spheres.
• Concerning Scenario: In India, 90 rapes are reported everyday, however, very few among the 2,823 candidates who stood for elections, had women’s safety on their electoral agenda. For those that did, all were sporadic and none tackled the underlying institutional violence that millions of survivors live through everyday.
  • As per experts, the institutional violence on survivors is often prolonged and worse than the specific act of gender-based violence itself. This is where voters and politicians can make a vital difference.
  • Institutional violence against survivors starts even before the reporting process, influencing their decision to come forward. 
    • According to a report published in 2019 by J-PAL, a global policy think tank, showed that 39% of officers in India think that complaints of gender-based violence are usually baseless. 

Causes of Violence faced by Women

Following are the various causes of violence faced by Women:

• Gender Disparity: It is one of the major causes of violence against women. 
  • Discriminatory gender norms and gender stereotypes result in structural inequality.
  • Stereotypes of gender roles have continued over the ages.
• Socio-Demographic Factors: Patriarchy is the main cause of violence against women. 
  • If women have a higher economic status than their husbands and are seen as having sufficient power to change traditional gender roles, risk for violence is high.
• Family Factors: Exposure to harsh physical discipline during childhood and witnessing the discriminatory behaviour between gender roles in childhood is a predictor of victimisation and perpetration of violence.
• Female Genocide: It causes long-term psychological trauma with increased physical suffering.
• Honour Killing: In several countries of the world including Bangladesh, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Pakistan, Turkey, and India, women are killed to uphold the honour of the family due to varied reasons such as-alleged adultery, premarital relationship, rape, etc.
• Early Marriages: Early marriage is a form of violence as it undermines the health and autonomy of millions of girls.
  • The primary roles thought for women have been marriage and motherhood.
  • Women must marry because an unmarried, separated or divorced status is a stigma.
• Low Education & Sensitivity: Men are more likely to perpetrate violence (and female victims) if they have low education, a history of child maltreatment, exposure to domestic violence against their mothers, harmful use of alcohol, unequal gender norms including attitudes accepting of violence, etc.
  • As per 2011 census, male literacy rate is 82.14% while for females it lags behind at 65.46%.
  • India closed 64.1% of its gender gap in 2024, ranking the third lowest in the region, only ahead of Maldives and Pakistan. 

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Consequences of Violence against Women

Violence has a long lasting effect on survivors and their families. Impacts can range from physical harm to long-term emotional distress to fatalities. 

• Health Issues: Violence in any form affects physical, mental, sexual and reproductive health of women with an adverse affect on their self esteem, ability to work and make fertility decisions.
• Economic Issues: Violence against women poses serious impacts on the economy of the household as well as of the nation.
  • Examples: Loss of income, productivity, cost of social services, impact on child well being, intergenerational social, psychological cost, etc.
• Development Issue: Such violence resists women participation in the workforce, prevents their ability to act or move freely and hence in development and planning programs.
  • Violence against women is an obstruction to poverty alleviation programs as it impedes equitable distribution of resources.
• Violation of Constitutional Rights & Values: Any form of Violence against women is against the fundamental rights under articles 14 (equality before the law and equal protection of the laws), 19 (freedom of speech), 21 (Protection of Life and Personal Liberty) and 32 (Right to Constitutional Remedies) of the Indian Constitution.
  • Violence against women is an obstacle for achieving equality, development, peace as well as to the fulfilment of women and girls’ human rights. All these lead to non-fulfillment of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). 
• Impact on Future Generation: Many victims of such violence attempts suicides or escape with their children and in such an environment they face threats or even received disabilities (if a suicidal attempt got failed during train jump or self-fire).
  • Throughout their homelessness, they faced the arduous task of survival, finding food and safe spaces to rest every day. 

Challenges that Need to be Tackled

30% women between the age of 18 and 49 have experienced physical violence since the age of 15 years, while 6% have experienced sexual violence in their lifetime and only 14% of women who have experienced physical or sexual violence by anyone have brought the issue up.

• Silent Women: Women only seek justice when their circumstances become unbearable. Despite one in two women facing intimate partner violence, India has one of the lowest divorce rates in the world at 1%. 
  • A report estimated that 77% of women in India remain silent, even to their closest relatives, about the violence they faced.
• Police Attitude: Police often discourage women from filing complaints, as seen in the case where police tried to dissuade a woman and sent her to different stations.
• Barriers in Rural India: In rural India, male and upper-caste dominated panchayats add an additional set of barriers for women to seek justice. 
• Delay in Access to Justice: Divorce is almost never an option. India has a backlog of 40 million court cases and this particularly impacts survivors of gender-based violence, even more so survivors from marginalised communities with pre-existing systemic inequities due to their caste, literacy and geography.
• Weak Implementation of Laws: India has strong domestic violence laws, yet, implementation is weak due to inept officials and archaic processes. This is unsurprising because the officials come from the very society that has condoned violence. 

Way Forward

Voters and politicians have the power to provide safety and dignity to Indian Women and make a massive difference. For such a shift to happen in the small and large institutions of India where survivors of violence no longer fear the repercussions of accessing justice, citizens, as voters, must demand the safety rights.

• Generate Awareness: There is an immediate need for generating awareness on the issue of violence against women. Families, especially male gender, have to be sensitised about the problems. 
• Availability of More Data : For decades, institutional violence has been amplified by a lack of data. To overcome the challenge, more data and more stories need to be shared publicly.  
• Create Survivor-Centric Institutions: Bureaucrats and elected leaders need to create survivor-centric institutions especially for survivors from marginalised communities with pre-existing systemic inequities.
  • There is a need for a national reimagination and improvisation of justice institutions by leveraging the learnings of organisations such as Vanangna, to make them trauma-informed and focused on healing.
• Need for Policies and Interventions: There is a need to implement such policies and interventions that reduce violence beginning in the formative years itself.
  • Legal systems across the countries need to be modified to prevent violence and also punish perpetrators of crime in a time-bound manner.
• Gender-based Legislation: There is a need to enact and enforce legislation and develop and implement policies that promote gender equality by ending discrimination against women.
  • National plans and policies should be formed to address violence against women.
  • Example: Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action is considered the most “progressive blueprint” for advancing the rights of women. 
    • It is focused on the goals of equality, development and peace for all women everywhere. 
• Enhancement of Survey and Surveillance Quality: To combat this women violence issue, there is a need to improve the system of collecting crime surveillance data on violence against women.
  • Gender based surveys and health surveys should be conducted.
  • There is a need for a comprehensive and systematic research and analysis on crime against women at Central, State, district and block level.
  • The recent updates to criminal law procedures heavily focus on timeliness and ease of access through digital means. However, this needs to be accompanied by gender-sensitive training and monitoring and evaluation measures to ensure staff have a trauma-informed approach when working with survivors of violence.
• Capacity Building and Training: It should be prioritised for service providers and law enforcement officers to handle cases of violence against women.
  • Investments in Prevention: Investment in women’s organisations, law enforcers, vigilance infrastructure etc should be carried out.
  • Training Law Enforcement Officials: There is a need to train law enforcement officials regarding handling of violence against women. This also includes raising women officials to handle such issues. 
• Adopt National Policies: There is a need to adopt national policies that focus on the wisdom of survivors of violence, especially those from historically marginalised communities, to help in design and validate a just system.
  • Example: Vanangna, a women-led organisation in Bundelkhand trains government officials, including the police and law enforcement, on women-centric and survivor-centric processes. 

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Conclusion

A woman’s right to live free from violence is upheld by international agreements such as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and the 1993 UN Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women. There is an urgent need for investments to increase proximal access to mental health care with collective action that can substantively address deep-rooted violence.

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