2. Ensuring women’s
safety?
• Baby girls were (still are) killed; older girl children were under
nourished, widows were burnt alive, honour killed, women’s health
and nutrition was neglected.
••self-preservation came first even in
the deepest crisis
••They had to prevent themselves from going out in
the wild to fight animals
3. •Women did labour in the fields (which they did not own) and at home (which
they could be kicked out of) and brought forth a much needed new
generation (who didn’t bear their names and took care of their spouse’s
family and household (which made them paraya dhan in their birth families)
•In patriarchal societies marriage relocated women and took away
their inheritance , freedoms and choices. Women could be
forced to marry and stay married to anybody; sex and children outside
marriage could get women killed.
•The reason why the work women do is not seen as work is because, not only
does it come for free (in fact it comes with dowry) it generally does not
empower the worker the way paid labour does. Quitting or seeking another
job, until recently, was not seen as an option.
4. Walk to Equality: Ensuring safety and empowerment of wome
Background
Women’s Empowerment
Of the 1.3 billion people who live in absolute poverty around the globe, 70 persent are women.
For these
women, poverty doesn’t just mean scarcity and want. It means rights denied, opportunities
curtailed and
voices silenced
5. Women earn only 10
percent of the world’s
income.
• Where women work for money, they may be limited to a set
of jobs deemed suitable for women – invariably low-pay, low-status
positions.
Women own less
than 1 percent of the
world’s property
• Where laws or customs prevent women from owning
land or other productive assets, from getting loans or credit, or from
having the right to inheritance or to own
their home.
6. In India, a CARE project working with
adolescent girls noted that-
“they are often seen only as temporary
people who will cease to be – at least
for
the father – once they have
disappeared
inside a marriage.”
“Women are like
livestock,” meaning many things. They
can be bought and sold, as cattle can,
and they are a productive asset, as
cattle are. To this man, women were
extremely important – his cattle
certainly were – but they had the
status
of a commodity.
“If we’re going to talk about women’s
empowerment, we have to talk about
the problem of sexual violence. It’s
great if the head of the community
development committee is a woman.
But if she’s going home and getting
raped every night by her brother-in law,
is she empowered? No.”
Kassie McIlvaine, CARE’s
7. Violence against
women and girls is
both a global and
local societal ill—
global because its
perpetrators and
victims are in every
corner of the world,
and local because its
forms differ from one
place to the next
depending on
specific
cultural, political and
socio-economic
circumstances
8. The Many Forms of Gender-Based Violence
•Gender-based violence, which includes sexual, physical or
psychological violence and harmful practices based on gender, is one
of the most common human rights abuses in the world. It is also one
of the least discussed and confronted.
• From sexual harassment on Japan’s public transport system to spousal battery
in Russia, from trafficking for sexual slavery in Thailand’s brothels to prostitution on
the streets of the United States, from female genital mutilation in Ethiopia to breast
ironing in Cameroon, from female infanticide in India to forced sterilization of women
in China, from child marriage in Bangladesh to murders in the name of honor in
Jordan, from rape to “correct and cure” South Africa’s lesbians to rape as a weapon of
Serbian ethnic-cleansing in Bosnia-Herzegovina—this list of human rights violations
endured by the world’s women and girls is nowhere near exhaustive.
• In a relationship (marriage), birthing and nursing a child (which were many as our
species needed to grow to outnumber other species and ensure prosperity) without
much medical advances meant most women had to remain indoors, which translated
to taking care of indoor work.
9. India is home to thousands of women’s
savings groups created with the help of numerous
organizations
Recently it found
concluded research into our own and a random control group of other women’s
self-help groups in Orissa
State. Evidence shows that women who participate in our “Microfinance-Plus”
projects (the “Plus” includes
training in human rights, health and governance topics, similar to the training that
MMD members enjoy inNiger) experienced higher levels of empowerment than
women in a random control group. Women who
received credit and who sustained social, political and business-development
training for more than three
years displayed greater independence, increased household decision-making,
more control of resources, and
more equality within the home. Further, evidence revealed that women in
“Microfinance-Plus” projects
spent 125 percent more money on the education of their children and 43 percent
more on health care than
10. Women are not at all SAFE in India...
The regular rapes and assaults on women, that are occurring, is the proof. Men treat
women as a medium just for enjoyment which according to every women and girl is
wrong. The culprits should be soaked in petrol and lit fire and made to return over on
to the area where they used to live, they should be burnt to death.
Dead Indian women
Can you approximately say how many rape cases happen each minute? What I mean
by dead Indian women is that safety for women in India is dead. India is the 4th
dangerous place for women and in India
all the rape cases lack justice. So its clear that there is no safety for women in India.
Its dead.
Where are women safe?
The fight to for equality has been on the agenda for infinite nations. The condition of
women in workplaces, in the domestic realm and in the community has improved.
However we hear of incidences across the world causing uproar and rage due to
disrespect and misogyny. India still experiences the brutal blueprint of female
foeticide and dowry. It will take much more to make India and the world a safer
place.
