Stop denying violence against women, says actor Nandita Das

Putting the onus on every individual and all stakeholders to create a safe environment for women, UN Women, Unicef and the Indian Women Press Corps (IWP) reiterated that violence against women must end.
Panel members at a discussion in New Delhi on Saturday said that the rise in the number of cases of violence against women reflects the increased confidence of women in reporting the crimes and should not be necessarily interpreted as an increase in the sheer number of cases of violence.
Actor and UN advocate Nandita Das described the bias on the part of men in acknowledging issues of sexual abuse and violence against women. “The denial that we are living in must stop,” she said.
Researcher Kalpana Vishwanath, who has been the force behind Jagori’s Safe Delhi for Women campaign, spoke about the “everydayness” of violence that women are faced with and how this “fear of facing violence” shapes women’s experience of a city. “More and more people are beginning to live in cities, and the very nature of an urbanised environment lends to increased incidence of violence,” said Vishwanath, who has co-founded the mobile app Safetipin. The app, released earlier this week for Delhi, works on the crowdsourcing principle to audit localities to determine if the areas are safe for women.
Policing is not the only thing that will make a city safe, said Vishwanath. “Other institutions and public service providers, such as transport and PWD officials, too are needed to improve safety.”
Talking about how violence against women is a global and regional problem, Anju Pandey, programme officer for UN Women’s Ending Violence Against Women campaign, said that the media must also report on victims of violence in rural areas as the marginalised often don’t have a redress mechanism. “Social apathy needs to change to empathy,” said Pandey. “Laws can only do so much. Social attitudes and legal recourse must evolve hand-in-hand.”
Explaining the excessive nature of violence faced by marginalised groups, Asha Kowtal of All India Dalit Mahila Adhikar Manch, said that the caste structure invariably leads to women’s exploitation. Belief in the concept of superiority by birth allows upper caste men, and sometimes women too, to perpetrate violence against lower caste women. The excessive public humiliation, such as naked public parading, tonsuring, etc, that invariably follows the act of violence adds to the stigma, said Kowtal. “We have to stop fooling ourselves that violence will end in our caste-based society. We need to dismantle institutions that reek of patriarchy and caste to build a better word for all women,” she said.
Unicef’s Dora Giusti and IWPC’s Mannika Chopra and Aruna Singh were the other panel members.