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| Sunday, 21 March 2004 |
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| News Business Features Editorial
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Violence against women : Axe this tyranny by KAMINIE JAYANTHI LIYANAGE "We don't go, nor return, nor know, With our eyes closed, we exist" - (Pablo Neruda). Nalindri, who was persuaded into marriage after her husband, Upendra, had hounded her for eight years with his declarations of love, is, at present, in a quandary. To this day her husband's obsessive desire to own her borders almost on savagery. She finds that even her mildest attempts to make conversation with males she comes across in socialising, are met with frenzied fits of jealousy from Upendra.
To ask Upendra to seek counselling is an utter impossibility and therefore, she is forced to stifle her talents and inborn ardour to experience what a life of creative fulfilment could offer her. Another torch of human life, dulled through domestic violence. Marina has been desperately looking for employment ever since she obtained professional qualifications after almost ten years of arduous saving for studies. Now she finds that her efforts to get herself employed could be more long-drawn than the entire period spent on studying. Since she is extremely skilled and committed in her approach to work, the reasons for rejection could not be lying in a lack of professionality, but in some other gender-based prejudice. These are but two aspects of violence against women, operating in society in a myriad ways. A third would be the case of Ramya, who contested as a candidate at provincial elections some years ago. Ever since she gave her nominations, she found herself at the butt end of a ruthless campaign of defamation and ridicule by the opposing factions, entirely centred on the fact that she was a female trying her hand at politics. (None of these names are real) "Violence Against Women - Voices of victims and activists", published by Centre for Women's Research (CENWOR) in 1997, carrying research on rape, sexual harassment, university ragging, sexual abuse and domestic violence by Kamalini Wijayatilake, Sepali Kottegoda, Kamala Liyanage, Gameela Samarasinghe and Maithree Wickremasinghe reveals more interpretations of violence. Among them are molestation while in a state of stupor by liquor or drugs administered by the perpetrator and the act of sexual harassment not being taken seriously by the society when a woman is at the receiving end. The research speaks of cultural norms and socialisation processes that imbue notions of hierarchy privilege, thus legitimising power-wielding male behavioural patterns, influencing a woman's response to violence. That we have to re-invent a society which for years embraced an ideology of violence, aggression and domination is the bitter reality, as stated by Rathika Innasimuthu in "Ordeals of women in the conflict zone" in Social Justice 155, published in March 2000. Questioning women's submission through sexual violence, she questions, "Are these women agents of their own sexuality? Are we asking them to accept what happens to them as if they are in full control of the situation?" Women in Need which launched a website on the International Women's Day to combat domestic and other forms of violence against women and children and opened their third one-stop-crisis centre at De Soysa Maternity Hospital, speaks of providing services to 12,000 people in the last year. Such numbers are indicative of the proportions of how violence has become part and parcel of our social process. While the National Bill of Women's Rights is in the stage of receiving input from the public, it becomes necessary to question "how broad is our scope of interpreting violence against women?" The Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), which establishes an international Bill of Rights for women, defines violence as, "Anything or any action that stops women from enjoying the human rights and freedoms (political, economic, social, cultural, civil and other fields of life) than men have." (from Understanding CEDAW, published by Women's Education and Research Centre). Violence is not only wife-battering, or physical violence; or preventing a woman's right to education, employment, promotions, health care or political participation. Being kept in ignorance of one's rightful economic privileges or power to control one's life is also violence. Being kept an underprivileged, underpaid and subservient "woman" is also violence. Perpetual hounding for sexual favours, in the guise of romance, is also violence. And legal disabilities which permit such violations needs to be removed for the benefit of women at large. CEDAW also states, "States may also be responsible for private acts if they fail to act with due diligence to prevent violations of rights, or to investigate and punish acts of violence, and to provide compensation." It is argued that although legal norms may be ineffective in changing private behaviour between couples and between elders and children, they may be indispensable in protecting potential victims of violence, as such norms signal the political will and the commitment of law enforcement authorities to combat the malaise. In the end, violence against women becomes the burden of society, and its responsibility. An entire community can be held liable for a continued physical and psychological assault of a woman. Friends and neighbours who ignore or excuse or fail to understand violence, doctors who fear to lend a helping hand beyond prescribing medicine for wounds, social workers who see marital violence as a failure of communication between husband and wife - they are all responsible. The law enforcement authorities and judiciary which refuse to intervene, misperceiving a non-existence of a legitimate case for redress are also responsible for the violence perpetrated by one individual, for the simple reason that violence against women is not a "private" issue, but a "public" issue. As Simone de Beauvoir, the feminist who spelt out "a,b,c" of feminism to the world and wrote the bible of feminism, "The Second Sex", said in "Myth and Reality", a chapter from this book, it is the myth of "woman" which justifies all privileges of the ruling caste and authorises the abuse. "What is certain is that today, it is very difficult for women to accept at the same time their status as autonomous individuals and their womanly destiny. This is the source of the blundering and restlessness which sometimes causes them to be considered a 'lost' sex. And no doubt it is more comfortable to submit to a blind enslavement than to work for liberation. The dead, for that matter, are better adapted to the earth than the living."De Beauvoir speaks of the woman regaining her place in humanity, when violence will be at zero-level and violations reduced. "When we abolish the slavery of half of humanity, together with the whole system of hypocrisy that it implies, then this 'division' of humanity will reveal its genuine significance and the human couple will find its true form." Which is ample food for thought when dealing with violence against women. |
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To pacify him, she is forced to curtail all her career attempts to go
the extra mile and come home early to keep the home fires burning,
awaiting his return home after a boisterous bout of liquor with friends.
Her slightest attempt at protest against this tyranny is met with brutal
rebuttal from Upendra and to save face in front of her family, relatives
and friends, she conceals her bruises, scars, tears and fury within her
four walls.
