Let’s talk about a problem today -- something we generally shy away from. Most of us say it is an abhorrent act, and tend to look the other way. Some of us go back home and commit it, like the hypocrites we are. The problem? One in three women worldwide has experienced physical or sexual violence -- mostly at the hands of an intimate partner.
If you just pause for a while and think about the numbers rather than the customary shriek it generates amongst people, you will discover something shocking.
Think about all the women you crossed today on your way to the office, the market, or home, and try to apply the math. But they are all unknown to you; why would you bother? There are enough problems in the country anyway.
Let’s try to put faces on those unknown women then. Three is a very small number. Try to look around in a social gathering when you are most safe, among your friends and families.
Who do you see? It’s a gathering of your mother, your sister, her baby daughter, your friend’s wife, and a dear cousin who just got married. I count four women and a baby girl there. How about applying the math now?
The concept of violence against women has evolved over the years, and the current definition is not that old. If we consider the length of human civilisation, one might wonder what took us so long to understand the many faces of violence that can be projected towards half our society. The answer is hidden amidst a sea of ignorance and intolerance that has incubated within us under the guise of social norms, culture, and beliefs.
Feminism, being a loaded word for many, reached new heights in terms of gaining the support of international bodies in the early 1900s.
A triumphant moment of success for women’s rights’ activists was the Beijing Declaration where an unprecedented 17,000 participants and 30,000 activists streamed into Beijing for the opening of the Fourth World Conference on Women in September 1995.
It was a remarkably diverse group of people from across the globe with a single purpose: Gender equality and the empowerment of all women, everywhere.
After fierce debates over issues which no one thought would ever be addressed in a UN convention, the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action was produced, dubbed by many as the most progressive blueprint to advance women’s rights in the world.
This year marks the 20 year anniversary of the declaration which imagined a world where each woman and girl could exercise her freedom and choices and realise all her rights, such as to live free from violence, to go to school, to participate in decisions, and to earn equal pay for equal work.
All of which should come naturally to any person living in a civilised society, regardless of sex and gender identity.
Most of us forget, while doling out angry rhetoric in endless seminars and roundtables, that the underlying cause of this phenomenon is the unequal power structure embedded within our society. It is a society where a girl is considered unsuitable for marriage when they near the age of 30, as they are less likely to safely carry out the reproductive role they are so eagerly prepared for by the family.
Ours is a society where teenage girls commit suicide in the face of verbal harassment.
As a man, putting yourself in their shoes is not that difficult: Just think about the most helpless situation you can ever be in -- without the the help of anyone -- and try thinking about the solution of the problem until you hit the proverbial wall, and you would know exactly how they feel.
Not only has society failed them, sadly we all have.
It will be wrong to say we, as people, do not care about what happens to the women in our society. For every man who commits rape, there are hundreds who do not.
How we are raising our voices to address the problem at hand may be questionable but there are people who are looking for a solution.
The government does it through passing laws and trying to implement them; civil society organisations try to keep national discourse on violence against women at the forefront and never lets it take a backseat; development organisations form networks and alliances and try to complement the work of the government where there are perceived gaps in service.
BRAC does it through its network of more than 12,000 women-led, ward-level institutions called polli shomaj, where they actively seek out cases of violence against women, report to authority, and serve as shelter groups after incidents of violence.
But even after so many initiatives taken by everyone involved, the shocking situation in Bangladesh? The overwhelming majority of Bangladeshi women are still forced to deal with some form of sexual violence during their lifetime.
The advent of technology has given the perpetrators a new set of tools.
Social media and smartphones are the go-to avenues for these people to go to a whole new level of voyeurism and blackmailing.
The primary challenge in front of women’s rights advocates and people fighting violence against women is not influencing the policy framework anymore, but to get men and women to see beyond the alleged negative connotation of the word “feminism.”
Feminism is all about the belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities. Everything else is embellishment. Anyone can be a feminist in that way and make a contribution for a safer world for women.
I just want to end with an all-encompassing definition of violence against women: “Any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual, or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion, or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life.”
It’s the standard definition by UN and is surprisingly clear as far as official definitions go. Why don’t you go to your bed tonight thinking about this definition and try to remember if you have ever done anything of that sort, regardless of your sexual identity? No one would hear your answer except you.
I hope you like what you hear.