Data Point

Housewives make up over 50% of India’s female suicides

Context:

World Suicide Prevention Day (WSPD), celebrated annually on 10 September, is organized by the International Association for Suicide Prevention (IASP) and endorsed by the World Health Organization (WHO).

More on News:

• Aim: Raising awareness about the pressing problem, reducing the social stigma associated with it, and increasing overall awareness.
• The National Family Health Survey (2019­-21) highlights the challenges faced by married women, including limited mobility, restricted financial autonomy, and marital control, as well as physical, sexual, and emotional abuse in the hands of their spouses.
• The number of women who died by suicide in India reached a peak of 45,026 in 2021. More than half of them were housewives (Table 1).
• Over 30% of all suicides (men and women) were due to issues relating to family or marriage.
• In 2021, among the major States, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, and Karnataka featured at the top of this list.
• Table 2 shows that 35% of married women in the poorest 20% of households had faced physical or emotional or sexual violence, and less than half of them had sought help.

Places in News

Morocco

Context: 

A powerful earthquake of magnitude 6.8 struck Morocco’s High Atlas mountains leading to the death of over 2,000 people.

More on News:

• According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the oblique-reverse faulting at shallow depth within the High Atlas Mountain range caused the earthquake.
• The northward convergence of the African plate with respect to the Eurasian plate is a complex plate boundary.

About Morocco:

• Morocco is situated in the Maghreb region of North Africa.
• It has a northern coastline along the Mediterranean Sea and the western coastline, along with the Atlantic Ocean.
• The Strait of Gibraltar that lies between Morocco and Spain separates Africa from Europe and connects the Mediterranean Sea with the Atlantic Ocean.
• It shares land borders with Algeria to the east and Western Sahara to the south.