2. Ensuring women’s
safety?
• Baby girls were (still are) killed; older girl children were unde
nourished, widows were burnt alive, honour killed, women’s h
and nutrition was neglected.
••self-preservation came first even in
the deepest crisis
••They had to prevent themselves from going o
the wild to fight animals
3. •Women did labour in the fields (which they did not own) and at home (which th
could be kicked out of) and brought forth a much needed new generation (who d
bear their names and took care of their spouse’s family and household (which ma
them paraya dhan in their birth families)
•In patriarchal societies marriage relocated women and took away thei
inheritance , freedoms and choices. Women could be forced to marry an
stay married to anybody; sex and children outside marriage could get wo
killed.
•The reason why the work women do is not seen as work is because, not only doe
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,
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. Fo
women, poverty doesn’t just mean scarcity and want. It means rights denied, opportunities curtail
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-sta
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 f
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.
can be bought and sold, as cattle
and they are a productive asset, a
cattle are. To this man, women w
extremely important – his cattle
certainly were – but they had the
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-inlaw,
is she empowered? No.”
Kassie McIlvaine, CARE’s
7. Violence against wom
and girls is both a glo
and local societal ill—
global because its
perpetrators and vic
are in every corner o
the world, and
local because its form
differ from one place
the next depending
specific cultural, pol
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
trafficking for sexual slavery in Thailand’s brothels to prostitution on the streets of the U
States, from female genital mutilation in Ethiopia to breast ironing in Cameroon, from fe
infanticide in India to forced sterilization of women in China, from child marriage in Bang
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—
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 spec
needed to grow to outnumber other species and ensure prosperity) without much medi
advances meant most women had to remain indoors, which translated to taking care of
work.
9. India is home to thousands of women’s
savings groups created with the help of numerous organiza
Recently it found
concluded research into our own and a random control group of other women’s self
groups in Orissa
State. Evidence shows that women who participate in our “Microfinance-Plus” proje
(the “Plus” includes
training in human rights, health and governance topics, similar to the training that M
members enjoy in
Niger) experienced higher levels of empowerment than women in a random control
Women who
received credit and who sustained social, political and business-development trainin
more than three
years displayed greater independence, increased household decision-making, more
of resources, and
more equality within the home. Further, evidence revealed that women in “Microfin
Plus” projects
spent 125 percent more money on the education of their children and 43 percent m
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
by dead Indian women is that safety for women in India is dead. India is the 4
dangerous place for women and in India
all the rape cases lack justice. So its clear that there is no safety for women in
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.
