Misogyny in India

To be a woman in India. Articles like this make a mockery of the multiculturalist idea that all cultures are the same and the feminist doctrine that women experience widespread misogyny and discrimination in western countries. Maybe such feministas like our own PM, with her pathetic misogyny speech, should learn something about the real thing.

What has often struck me is the difference between being a woman in Delhi and a woman in Melbourne. In India there is a constant feeling of insecurity that is almost oppressive.

You are hyper-aware, never speaking to anyone you don't know - particularly men - avoiding eye contact, taking the women's carriage on the Metro and dressing conservatively to blend in as much as possible. And yet in spite of all of these measures you are still never safe. There isn't one trip where an attack on a woman - often publicly, by a gang of men - is not reported in the media. But more devastating is the knowledge that thousands of women across India often experience similar behaviour without an outlet for assistance or justice.

In light of this experience, the recent gang-rape of a young female student on a bus in Delhi shocks but does not surprise me. In a country where women are silenced, and any harm done to them is seen as indicative of their own recklessness, men are able to act with impunity.

This unfortunately means that acts of violence become more aggressive. The media attention surrounding the recent tragedy has highlighted the pervasive misogyny that is present in contemporary India.

A politician called women ''painted and dented'' for protesting and alleged that ''rape victims'' were often prostitutes who were not paid.

Exposés of Delhi police show they believe women who come forward with rape accusations just ''cry wolf''. In any event, they are to blame for dressing immodestly and conducting themselves inappropriately, and in extreme cases victims have committed suicide after police harassment.

This apathy towards violence against women begins in the womb with female infanticide. With dowry deaths and child marriage so prevalent, India is regarded as the worst country in the G20 to be a woman.

Gary Johns

AMONG the world's biggest economies, infanticide, child marriage and slavery make India the worst place to be a woman.
In India, women and girls continue to be sold as chattels, married off as young as 10, burned alive as a result of dowry-related disputes and young girls are exploited and abused as domestic slave labour.

The numbers of missing women is highest in two northwestern states Punjab and Haryana (Siwan Anderson and Debraj Ray, Economic & Political Weekly, December 1, 2012) where attitudes to women are crudest.