Children's Day & Violence Against Women

Just a day before children’s day, I read one of the most morbid news article ever.

The rate of rape in India has risen by 800% in the last decade. Not only rape, overall the incidence of violence against women is high – female infanticide and domestic violence to name some. As per the article, Indian men think they should not help their wives in the house, because its only the ‘women’s work’. They think their wives, daughters, sisters should dress the way they like, because otherwise they are just inviting trouble. They think they can beat up their wives because they don’t listen to them. They think they should kill their daughters because they are daughters.

Mostly they just want to teach women a lesson. Lesson for not listening to them.

The acts that comprise violence against women in India - female infanticide, domestic violence and rape, all seem to be an outcome of frustration that the men are facing in their own lives. Somehow there is a prevailing mentality that a woman deserves to be shown a place, a place below man.  

A majority of the male population do not think much of the women in their lives. Its perfectly fine if they check out other girls, commit adultery, wear whatever they want, and meet whoever they want and hang out wherever they want. If they don’t listen to their wife, its absolutely fine, that wife anyhow has no right over them because who is she, she is just a wife!

The crime rates indicate that:-

If a girl breaks up with a guy, the guy has every right to throw acid on her face and make her ugly for life or publicize the MMS he shot with her.
If a girl rejects a guy’s proposal he has every right to rape her.
If a girl wears short skirts or not, and returns home from work late at night, even her pick up and drop driver has every right to rape her and kill her after that.
If a girl appears in a MMS, is divorced or raped, every man has a right to laugh at her and call her a slut.

Is this what men should be? I think that somewhere, these men have learnt some really wrong lessons about the way they view women. Perhaps their parents were not able to instill the correct values in them, or perhaps their peers taught them that to be a man, you need to keep the women in your life under your heel. The most disturbing trend is that any no from a woman, is seen to be the spark that leads to the fire (crime against the woman in this case). Maybe its an issue of the so-called male ego as stated in the article, or maybe its that as a society, we are encouraging the growth of individuals who take sadistic pleasure in feeding on the helpless - women being the easier target, fulfill this need quite well.

I think its high time, families take responsibility for the way they are imparting values to their younger generations. One can imagine that for a son, a father will always be his first and maybe only role model. So if the father cannot respect his wife and resorts to domestic violence, we cannot expect the son to imbibe respect and love for womenkind.

This children's day, I hope that both parents - fathers and mothers alike, take a stand to teach better values to their children. To become good role models. To have a marriage devoid of distrust and violence and instead have an environment for mutual respect for each other. So that their kids see and understand that a man and woman compliment each other and each deserve love and respect.