About respecting and protecting our women

The United Nations in a recent study which surveyed around 10,000 men from nine sites in six countries, including Bangladesh and excluding India, found the prevalence of rape and violence committed by men on women to be a staggering 23% at the low end, amounting in 1 in 4 men admitting to have committed at least one rape.

In Bangladesh the numbers are chronically mortifying; incidences of physical and sexual violence were found to be at 57% to 55% of those surveyed on a rural-to-urban ratio.

I was shocked to have discovered this statistic. It blew away all my clichéd notions regarding the issue, including the problem being a “class centric” one. Pardon my ignorance but the report has also opened my eyes as to how wrong I was when I believed that sexual violence had a larger prevalence in India, Pakistan and the west than it had here in our own backyard. It also got me thinking as to why we hear so less of these incidences in Bangladesh as opposed to the hue and cry in India and elsewhere. Are men in our society more permissible of such brutal acts?

Abuse of women, both physical and sexual, in our society today is widespread and on the increase. It’s also on the up in societies where the female population is beginning to overtake the male population by significant numbers, especially where they are excelling in all strata of life.

Disturbingly, the study also found that the reasons/justification the men sighted for such actions ranged from them claiming a sense of sexual entitlement over women followed by when they claimed motivations arising out of fun or boredom, closely trailed by anger or punishment and finally inebriation.

There was a time when Asia as a continent, based on its rich culture, respect towards women traditionally, family bonding and shared history claimed moral superiority over the west. It is deeply distressing to realise that those days are well and truly over now.

The problem with violence towards women is not a distant one, it’s global and local. It exists by their very numbers, somewhere close to you, right now. The World Health Organisation reports statistics which alarmingly state that a third of all women around the world are victims of sexual violence.

We are at a crossroads in human history, where it is our duty to ask ourselves basic questions as to why this is happening and what we can do to stem the rise of such deplorable behaviour in our society. We need to collectively take control of this from the root.

You can’t just shrug your responsibility in fighting this, by citing western cultural imports as having resulted in an influx of such deviancies in our society and/or by saying there is nothing you can do about it. We can no longer continue to wear blinkers because our sons and daughters will inherit this future.

In a sad realisation from the statistic above, it’s highly probable that our sons and daughters will become victims of this trend if not an active participant in such a tragedy.

Yes there are laws, adequate and or inadequate to deal with rape, violence and sexual assaults on women but the debate for the protection of women must not end in parliament, media, NGOs or corridors of law enforcement. We need to tackle this within every home.

The epidemic requires a consistent and widespread personal effort from everyone because it chaotically reflects on our failure in protecting the honor of our women. Too long have we sat by and seen our mothers, sisters and daughters getting abused and/or raped.

So how do we combat this? For starters we, mothers, fathers, teachers, elders of the society must act with increased urgency and a much more proactive approach in combating this within our own houses.

We must, across the board break with traditions both social and pseudo religious that we have inherited in giving more priority to women rights. We must work harder to displace for-gender stereotypes that dictate women as having limits to what they can or cannot do.

We must guide our children into respecting women later in life. We must raise ourselves to a standard that visibly and vocally demonstrates such an attitude. We must become more open about discussing issues regarding sex with our children.

The men in every family have a duty to lead by example, and where needed intervene early in a child’s life to correct unacceptable behaviour because lets face it, a lot of these tendencies are visible early on and correctable. You must raise your voice and call out the names of friends, family and neighbours who have engaged in such acts.

History will judge us for not having done anything, so do something about it. Anything, no matter how small a contribution, will add to an ever growing voice against such brutal incidences, creating a society that acts when its moral values and dignity are attacked. If we fail, we risk leaving a legacy truly devoid of any courage or honour for future generations to look up to and be inspired by.

Lets not be the generation that finds it acceptable that the next series of gang rapes, child rapes, wife beating, servant abusing maniacs went free or kept multiplying because we failed to do what we had to.

Originally published at www.dhakatribune.com on September 28, 2013.