Imagine being raped because you are a working woman.
Hard to believe but this is the nightmarish reality women in New Delhi face.
The New York Times reported that a couple was accosted by five drunken young men from a nearby farming village accosted a couple last month. They beat the young man and gang-raped the woman. It was the latest in a series of brutal sexual assaults and gang rapes of women in Indias booming capital and its sprawling suburbs.
In each case there has been an explosive clash between the rapidly modernizing city and the embattled, conservative village culture upon which the capital increasingly encroaches. The victims are almost invariably young, educated working women who are enjoying freedom unknown even a decade ago.
The accused are almost always young high school dropouts from surrounding villages, where women who work outside the home are often seen as lacking in virtue and therefore deserving of harassment and even rape.The mother of two of the men who attacked the couple, had the audacity to blame the woman. If these girls roam around openly like this, then the boys will make mistakes. The woman was not roaming around openly.
She was with her boyfriend. And since when are gang rapes classified as mistakes?This is the kind of attitude that has made New Delhi Indias most dangerous large city for women. The rate of reported rape is nearly triple that of Mumbai, and 10 times as high as Kolkata, formerly Calcutta, according to government records. A survey completed last year by the government and several womens rights groups found that 80 percent of women had faced verbal harassment in Delhi and that almost a third had been physically harassed by men.
Nearly half the women surveyed reported being stalked, a statistic grimly illustrated earlier this month when a student at Delhi University was shot in broad daylight by a man the police suspect was stalking her.The attackers often do not see their actions as crimes, the police said, and do not expect the women they attack to report them. They have no doubt that they will get away with it, said H. G. S. Dhaliwal, a deputy police commissioner in New Delhi who has investigated several such cases.
If people continue to call these heinous actions mistakes men will continue to stalk and attack women. Granted, the rate of these violent crimes against women have dropped in the past four years, thanks to the polices efforts and measures taken to ensure the safety of women such as train cars for women only and companies driving women home from late shifts. However, many crimes that go unreported. Its a case of the old culture clashing with the new. New Delhi is behind the times. Men are not used to seeing women out in the workforce. There is a lot of tension between the people who are traditional in their mind-set and the city that is changing so quickly, said Ranjana Kumari, a leading womens rights advocate. Men are not used to seeing so many women in the country occupying public spaces (
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/27/world/asia/27india.html?_r=3&emc=eta1).
Imagine not being able to pursue a career after you have graduated from high school. This was the case for 20 year old Seema Chowdhury, the sister of one of the accused men. After Seema graduated from high school she tried to enroll in college to become a teacher but her brothers refused to allow it. They argued that young women who wander too far face many dangers. Seema was disheartened. I wanted to do something in my life, she said. But they thought it was not a good idea.
Unlike Seema, the young rape victim was a career woman. She had a job as an accountant at a garment factory and her own cell phone and e-mail account. According to the police, she used these to carry on a secret romance with a young man she met online despite the fact that her parents had arranged for her to be married to someone else. The young man whom she arranged to meet in the secluded spot next to a field of wheat had a good paying job too and lived in a good neighborhood unlike the attackers who lived in a run down area and had not finished high school. The men thought they would get away with the attack because the young woman would not come forward out of shame.
Unfortunately, the rape charges did not stick because the victim refused to come forward. Even though the police promised to protect her, she said in an email that they could not restore her honor. Her father tried to persuade her to come forward but the police had to stop pressuring her to cooperate when she tried to hang herself.
Unlike this victim who didnt come forward to press charges against her attackers, another young woman who was abducted and gang raped was eager to cooperate with the police and as a result five men were arrested and charged. Mr. Dhaliwal, the senior Delhi police official who investigated that rape case, estimated that only one in 10 rapes in the Delhi region were reported.But this girl was very brave, Mr. Dhaliwal said. It is a very difficult thing in the Indian context, but you have to report it(
Rapes of women show clash of old and new India).
This brave young woman was a working woman. It is a sad state of affairs when women are prevented from pursuing careers because the old India refuses to keep up with the times. According to the old mentality, women are not supposed to be educated or a part of the workforce. They are not supposed to be enjoying the freedom and independence that comes with working for a living. The old India wants to keep on oppressing women and stifling their aspirations.
Women like Seema have the right to pursue their dreams. Its time for the old India to give way to the new one and realize that women can make valuable contributions to their societies. A woman should not be harassed, stalked or raped because she wants to make a living.
Adele Butler, A Celebration of Women 2011