Tunnel vision on women

New Delhi has earned for itself the unfortunate reputation as the rape hotspot in the world. This has been particularly so since 2012, when a young woman who consequently died as a result of terrible injuries inflicted on her as a result of rape and torture on a bus suffered the crime while traveling on public transport late at night with a male friend. The case ignited shockwaves across the city and the rest of the country, with women and also men coming out to protest the heinous act and the lack of safety for women.

Pakistan has mercifully not yet matched the rate of rape seen in New Delhi, where one woman is raped every five hours according to available figures. In Pakistan, across the whole of the country, the figure stands at 11 women every day and one gang rape every eight hours. This is hardly a figure we can be proud of, especially as we strive to turn ourselves miraculously into the State of Madina that is the ideal of our prime minister.

In a recent interview, the prime minister has suggested that women are raped because they wear too few clothes, though his aides have since argued that his statement was misconstrued in his interview to overseas media. It is almost impossible to believe that in a country like Pakistan, all the women who suffer rape could have been under-dressed or inappropriately clad. The truth is that according to limited studies dress makes no difference to the degree of molestation or harassment faced by women using public transport buses for example, with both those wearing hijab and those choosing not to do so suffering equal incidence of abuse at the hands of male passengers.

The issue of dress and what women choose to wear has been brought up in other countries around the world, and in court cases there have been detailed rulings which indicate that what a woman wears has very little to do with how men act. The issue is not one of being unable to control desire but of establishing power over women. This is something that all Pakistanis, no matter the gender, need to understand.

If this was better understood, perhaps the signboards appearing in the northern areas where a somewhat controversial musical festival was recently held, suggesting that women should don hijab, would become less visible. Most women who grow up in our country or visit it are both familiar with the dress code for various occasions and various places. Certainly, what they wear is not a factor in rape – although of course women everywhere in the world must have the right to choose how to dress and where to go as a simple principle based on human rights and personal freedoms. Good sense does however to some degree come into play, but no matter how a woman dresses a perpetrator of rape cannot be defended on the grounds that he was somehow provoked.

How precisely does a six-month-old baby provoke a man to rape her? How does a five-year-old? The evidence that men use rape as a means of asserting power needs to be made more familiar to people and certainly to members of government and other influential individuals who determine the manner in which a society shapes itself. Misogynistic remarks, which now appear with shocking frequency over social media and even in parliament, simply feed into the culture of a lack of dignity and recognition for the rights of women. To add to this, we have the pseudo ‘liberal’ men who claim they stand for the rights of women but in one way or the other echo the culture that is so familiar to most men and boys in the country.

We need to re-educate our boys and by doing so re-shape society. Rather than asking women to don layers of clothing, which many cannot do given that they work long hours in agriculture fields sowing seeds or harvesting crops, boys need to be taught that women are an equal species even if biologically differences exist. Indeed, education about the biology of the human species is important for all, and we hope the denial by the Education Ministry that diagrams depicting anatomy are to be kept out of textbooks is accurate.

The Single National Curriculum should also focus on imparting to boys the strong message that women are equals and not in any way lesser beings. Too many growing up in our society are bred in a culture where the abuse of women is commonplace and where domestic violence takes place within homes. The replication of domestic violence by children and young people who are witness to it is widely established.

Of course, rape should be punished. But this does not mean castration, public hangings or other cruel and inhumane forms of punishment. The key is consistent penalty under the law of the land, without consideration for influence or wealth. In nations where this happens, rape falls to far lower levels. When it does not, it rises. We also need society-based constraints such as a register to identify child sex abusers so that they can be identified if they repeat a crime and a situation created where their whereabouts are known to law enforcers. This of course requires a far more efficient law enforcement system, as well as one which is sympathetic to the rights of children and women. We do not as yet have such a system in place. But rather than blaming women for being subjected to torture and indignity through rape or other sexual crimes, we can focus on training men to engage in more civilised behaviour. This after all was a part of the state that the prime minister has said he wishes to replicate in Pakistan.

We must be able to protect all citizens in our society. Some of the rise in rape figures may be because more cases are being reported. This of course is a positive development. But to go with it must come efforts to bring misogyny to an end and at the very least pressurise the leaders of political parties to ensure language offensive to women is not used by their members either on the social media or on public talks at any point. This step alone will go a long way in helping prevent violence faced on a daily basis by women.

The writer is a freelance columnist and former newspaper editor.

Email: kamilahyat@hotmail.com