Regress report: Editorial on ever-increasing rape cases in India

 Almost ten years on after the Delhi rape case, 4,28,278 cases of crimes against women were registered in 2021, almost double when compared to the 2,44,270 reported cases in 2012.

The gang rape of a woman in a Delhi bus on December 16, 2012 is seen, for many reasons, as a watershed moment in the discourse of crimes against women and relevant deterrence. A decade is perhaps an adequate time to take stock of the situation. A year after the horror, the rape law was amended — the definition of sexual assault was expanded, the quantum of punishment for rape increased, the unscientific ‘two-finger test’ discontinued, and filing police complaints made less bureaucratic — at least on paper. Almost ten years on, 4,28,278 cases of crimes against women were registered in 2021, according to the National Crime Records Bureau, almost double when compared to the 2,44,270 reported cases in 2012. These are just official figures. The ground reality could be far worse because sexual crimes often go unreported owing to shame, ostracisation, fear of perpetrators, and an expensive, long-drawn-out and often fruitless legal process. After 2012, a dedicated corpus called the Nirbhaya Fund was established, partly to get rape victims easy access to justice — 30% of this fund remains unutilised; in Maharashtra, the money was used to provide security to legislators. The conviction rate of rape cases stood at a poor 28.6% in 2021. This can be attributed to institutional warts: poor investigation, procedural flaws that weaken prosecution and so on. Combined with institutional failures is the attendant social regression: rapists being asked to marry their victims by quasi-judicial authorities is not unheard of; these days, there seems to be tacit political support for certain instances of transgression — Bilkis Bano’s tryst for justice is a case in point. The popular endorsement for instant retribution — the death penalty remains in place in India — is an outcome of larger failures.

NCRB data also throw up a more potent source of threat — the home — but the law remains non-committal. Even though 32% of all crimes against women were committed by their husbands, there is a dogged refusal to address, even recognise, marital rape. The regression on women’s safety is also evolving. India saw a 45% increase in rapes of Dalit women and girls between 2015 and 2020, many of these were punishments for ‘violating’ caste lines. An NGO working to provide legal aid to rape survivors has noted that the nature of the crime itself has changed — the rise in gang-rapes bears evidence of the transformation. Things have certainly changed in 10 years — but for the worse.

Source: The Telegraph, 21/12/22

Nai Chetna Campaign

 Nai Chetana Campaign was launched by the Central Government on the occasion of International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women (November 25).

What is Nai Chetana Campaign?

• Nai Chetana is a gender campaign launched in all Indian states under the National Rural Livelihoods Mission.
• Over the next five years, this campaign seeks to build a common understanding and recognition of disadvantages and discrimination faced by women across all levels among community institutions, rural communities and government departments.
• The theme for this year’s campaign is Gender Based Violence. It will be organized from November 25 to December 23 this year.
• This nationwide campaign aims to sensitise women, especially those in rural regions, about gender-based violence and make them aware about various institutional mechanisms that are available to help them address such violence.
• It is envisaged as a Jan Andolan (people’s movement) to change the popular opinion that gender-based violence is normal.
• The campaign will help women identify violence meted out to them due to the normalization of gender-based discrimination and violence.
• It will create public awareness about redressed mechanisms for victims of violence.
• It will also help prepare women to raise their voice against gender-based violence and put end to it at the grassroot level.
• The campaign will deepen the understanding of gender through multisectoral approach.

Who is implementing the Nai Chetana Campaign?

The Nai Chetana Campaign is being implemented by the state governments in collaboration with the civil society organizations (CSOs). It is being organized at all levels, including the state, district, block engaging with the community institutions and extended communities. As part of this campaign, all concerned stakeholders will come together to create a concerted effort in acknowledging, identifying and addressing violence-related issues.  Knowledge workshops, leadership training, seminars on sexual violence and other such events will be conducted as part of this month-long campaign.

The importance of consent: On marital rape

 

The institution of marriage cannot be allowed to sanction force and violence

A split verdict in the Delhi High Court on the question of criminalising marital rape has reignited the controversy over legal protection for disregard of consent for sex within marriage. On Wednesday, while Justice Rajiv Shakdher, who headed the Bench, struck down as unconstitutional the exception to Section 375 of the IPC, which says that intercourse by a man with his wife aged 18 or above is not rape even if it is without her consent, Justice C. Hari Shankar rejected the plea to criminalise marital rape pointing out that any change in the law has to be carried out by the legislature since it requires consideration of social, cultural and legal aspects. With the judges differing on key points such as difficulty in getting evidence, the importance of consent, whether the state’s concerns about safeguarding the institution of marriage were valid, and if other laws against sexual violence protected married women, the issues involved may have to be ultimately adjudicated with the help of a third judge or a larger Bench of the High Court or the Supreme Court. The Union government has been opposing the removal of the marital rape exception. In 2016, it had rejected the concept of marital rape, saying it “cannot be applied to the Indian context” due to various reasons, not least because of the “mindset of society to treat marriage as a sacrament”. However, in the final hearing, the Union government did not take a stand on the issue.

Justice Shakdher’s opinion goes to the heart of the matter, inasmuch as it treats the absence of consent as the core ingredient of rape. He says what is defined as rape in law should be labelled as such, irrespective of whether it occurs within or outside marriage. He finds that the marital exception violates equality before law, as well as deprives women of the right to trigger a prosecution for non-consensual sex. Besides, it also discriminates among women based on their marital status and robs them of sexual agency and autonomy. In contrast, Justice Hari Shankar’s opinion, somewhat disconcertingly, de-emphasises the element of consent and lays much store by the importance of preserving the institution of marriage to such an extent that he holds that any legislation that keeps rape out of a marital relationship “is immune to interference”. If marriage is regarded as a partnership between equals, an exception in a 162-year-old law should have had no place. While there are other laws governing civil relationships that legitimise conjugal expectations, these cannot be seen as giving a free pass for violence within marriage, which is essentially what sex without consent is. Whether the legislative route is more appropriate in making marital rape a criminal offence is a matter of detail. What is important is that sexual violence has no place in society, and the institution of marriage is no exception.

Source: The Hindu, 13/05/22

Marital rape is rape: Why modern India still won’t accept this

 On May 10, 2022, a two-judge bench of the Delhi High Court gave a split ruling on marital rape, thus ensuring a future hearing in the Supreme Court. The legal battles will, of course, continue but this may nevertheless be a good moment to examine the issues that lie behind it.

Obviously, marital rape is rape within marriage. But for most of history and in most parts of the world, such a thing simply did not make sense. Indeed, it could not make sense because the concepts of rape and marriage were seen as mutually exclusive – they could not be brought together.

To understand why this was so, we need to look at marriage. Across the world, and till very recently, marriage has been explicitly treated as being outside the purview of rape. Even in the Western countries that we associate with the more “advanced” practices of gender equality, marital rape was treated as an exception to the crime of rape till the early 1990s. Only the former Soviet Union had marital rape on its statute books soon after its creation in 1922. In the absence of a universal definition, several scholars take marriage to be an institution where a man and a woman live together, have sexual relations and engage in cooperative economic activity.

Others have emphasised the link between marriage and property, or more precisely, the passing on of property from one generation to the next. The dominant form of marriage in the modern West became quite distinctly patriarchal, visible in late 18th-century British law, for instance, whereby a wife became the property of her husband upon marriage. Sexually, economically and legally, she belonged to him. Husbands, therefore, had the right to access their wives sexually, without the question of coercion or consent being on the horizon in the first place. As property, wives had to be protected from the (illegal) sexual access of other men, and here too, their consent was irrelevant.

We can now appreciate why the idea of marital rape simply could not exist, much less become part of criminal law. As one of the first English legal writers on the subject put it, a man can no more rape his wife than he can rape himself. Moreover, sexual intercourse was necessary to “consummate” a marriage, within which, once again, consent was beside the point.

In the long century since feminist voices were first raised, the idea took shape that the dominant institution of marriage needed to be fundamentally rethought, such that, among other significant issues, marital rape was conceivable. For this to be possible, a woman must continue to be a person who can give or withhold consent, even after she consents to be a man’s wife. If what distinguishes the relationship of husband and wife from other relations between men and women is the legitimate expectation of sexual relations, then the introduction of marital rape signals the entry of a new and equally legitimate expectation: A wife’s consent to sexual relations is essential, and in this, she is no different from other women. Husbands no longer enjoy unquestioned rights over the bodies of their wives — this is what it means for a wife to be a person with bodily integrity.

It is strange, indeed, that most parts of the world, India included, became modern while continuing to believe that wives are the property of husbands. Hindu society upgraded prior notions of kanyadaan, the gift of the virgin from father to husband, in which, again, no notion of consent on her part was required. This became the subject of slow reform from the 19th century.

Why is it so hard even for contemporary society to accept that the commitment to marriage between two persons presupposes a kind of mutual respect that cannot include forcing oneself on the married partner? Why, instead, do we hear the opposite, for instance, the government of India’s argument in 2017 that removing the exception of marital rape would “destabilise the institution of marriage”? And why, in the words of the learned High Court judge who upheld the exception clause, should it be far worse to be “ravished by a stranger” than by one’s own life partner?

Written by Mary E John

The writer is an independent scholar, formerly professor at the Centre for Women’s Development Studies, New Delhi)

Source: Indian Express, 12/05/22

Making all workplaces safer for women

 

Some measures that can be implemented immediately include sensitising informal sector workers on gender-based violence and informing them in simple language about the laws that deal with such violence

The Female Labour Force Participation Rate, already low in India, received a further setback with the pandemic. Women were the first to lose their jobs once the lockdown was announced, two years ago, and they are yet to get back into the labour force. The female labour force participation rate was at 9.4 per cent for the period between September-December 2021, according to the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE). This is the lowest female labour force participation rate since 2016 when the data was first compiled.

In understanding the all-time low female labour force participation rate, there is a need to factor in a longstanding problem — the safety of women in workplaces. All women deserve a non-discriminatory and safe working space. But those in the informal and unorganised sector deserve particular attention. The pandemic aggravated the situation for women in the informal economy.

The informal economy in India encompasses a variety of activities. The agricultural sector has the highest level of informal employment, followed by manufacturing, trade and construction. In terms of rural-urban differentials, informal employment constituted 96 per cent of total jobs in rural areas, where female informal employment was 98 per cent compared to 95 per cent of male informal employment. Seventy-nine per cent of the jobs in urban India were of an informal nature, with 82 per cent of total female workers engaged in informal employment compared to 78 per cent among urban male workers.

Statistics show that women are more likely to be engaged in the informal sector in both rural and urban areas. They are also more likely than men to be working as informal workers in the formal sector. However, not much has been done in terms of understanding the violence faced by women in the informal sector which can range from harassment to sexual assault and rape. Such violence can be tied up with several aspects ranging from a male-dominated workplace to harassment by labour contractors to a lack of basic amenities for women in the workplace. A few studies also indicate that women in the informal sector face sexual harassment in workplaces.

A recent study by Oxfam India on tea plantation workers reveals that the extremely hierarchical nature of their jobs, the migrant status of workers and the lack of other job opportunities for women tea pluckers contribute to the normalisation of workplace violence. Facilities such as canteens and toilets — generally available in factories where workers are predominantly men — are lacking in the fields. Because of the presence of the mostly male “sardars” (supervisors), women try to seek privacy far away from where their colleagues are working. This makes them vulnerable to sexual abuse or attacks by wild animals. It is now quite well known that women sugarcane cutters undergo forceful hysterectomies. These workers also face domestic violence and verbal, physical, and sexual abuse.

Difficult working conditions are aggravated in the absence of proper redressal mechanisms and women’s access to them. It’s well-known that laws such as the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act 2013, Criminal Amendment Act 2013, and Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005 are not implemented well and do not take the difficulties faced by women in the informal sector into account. An effective body for this purpose could have been the Local Complaints Committee structure under the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act 2013, But such bodies are almost non-functional.

The quest for inclusive growth in the post-pandemic should catalyse endeavours to make workplaces in the informal sector safe for women. Some measures that can be implemented immediately include sensitising informal sector workers on gender-based violence and informing them in simple language about the laws that deal with such violence; employers must ensure that complaints committees are functional; sensitising local labour contractors on how to deal with cases of sexual harassment at workplaces. These bare minimum measures can be implemented with technical support from local women’s rights organisations. The government should also step in to improve the implementation of existing laws and increase budgetary provisions for workplace safety.

Written by Ranjana Das

Source: Indian Express, 4/04/21

Gender justice remains elusive in Malayalam film industry

 In April 2021, SAG-AFTRA, the union of entertainment industry professionals in the US, standardised its procedures for filing sexual harassment claims in the entertainment sector through a digital platform called “Safe Place”, that would locate patterns in the complaints and prevent repeat offenders from going unchecked. While the #MeToo movement in the US has led to some positive actions, such as the creation of the Hollywood Commission headed by Anita Hill to safeguard the rights of the complainants without fear of retaliation, the response to the movement has been tepid — even hostile — in many other industries, including South Korea and India.

Take, for example, the 2017 assault against an actor in Kerala, which continues to rock the state. The assault and the ensuing events — which resulted in the survivor recently making her identity public and seeking the chief minister’s intervention to ensure justice — are a blatant exhibition of male privilege and show a disregard for the professional and personal dignity of women who work in the industry. In other instances, we have seen brief apology statements; but a majority of the allegations have been countered by defamation suits — a silencing strategy seen with filmmaker Leena Manimekalai and journalist Priya Ramani. Most telling is the sheer apathy with which even the Association of Malayalam Movie Artists (AMMA) responded to the 2017 assault, which was allegedly masterminded by another actor. While both actors remained part of the organisation, the survivor received little support.

The formation of the Women in Cinema Collective in 2017 was a result of such institutional silences that allow sexual harassment, wage inequity and lack of safe working spaces to prevail. Right from its inception, there have been concerted efforts to delegitimise the WCC as an exclusive space built through a nexus of class privilege. While it is true that there is room for improvement in the WCC’s larger coalition-building efforts, especially with women’s collectives outside cinema, social scientists such as J Devika have noted how there are “common threads of patriarchy that run through our (separate) struggles.” This patriarchal hegemony can be observed in how the WCC’s actions are monitored and held to higher standards than organisations such as AMMA or the Film Employees Federation of Kerala (FEFKA). Even media platforms are guilty of perpetuating such gendered expectations. Take the WCC’s press conference in 2018, when members who were addressing the media were met with a barrage of questions, demanding that they reveal the names of harassers, as if only the declaration of names could legitimise their claims. One wonders if the journalists would have addressed an AMMA meeting the same way. Not long after the formation of the WCC, as part of its Silver Jubilee celebrations, AMMA staged a “comic” skit that disparagingly portrayed a thinly-veiled reference to the WCC through the fictional organization “WhatsApp Women Empowerment Group”. Among its many offensive strategies was the inclusion of a character who was shown to be negotiating an abusive marriage—a tactical move to delegitimise the political awareness that led to the constitution of WCC in the first place. Such diversionary strategies came across as part of a hypermasculine tradition of labelling women as “emotional,” “lacking real skill in organising” and as a “bunch of feminists” pushing their personal agendas.

When one considers the focus of the WCC, it’s not hard to see why such responses emerge. The WCC demands accountability from film organisations and seeks the constitution of an internal complaints committee (ICC) as per the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013. While this is yet to materialise in Malayalam cinema, one wishes that the Film Chamber of Commerce (FCC), FEFKA and AMMA would proactively institute a complaints redressal mechanism that does not alienate the complainant. While the functioning within workspaces needs to be addressed using the mechanism of the ICC, it is equally crucial to ensure that cyberattacks on women actors are also dealt with strongly, as fan groups are ready to rally behind male stars, no matter their offences.

The recurrent demands from the film fraternity to release the Justice Hema Commission report speaks volumes about the way reports of constitutional bodies end up in the attics of bureaucracy. In 2017, the Kerala state government constituted a three-member commission headed by the retired High Court Justice K Hema, to explore “options for improving women’s safety, security, a better salary, service conditions and creation of a conducive working environment.” Despite the submission of the report to the government in December 2019, it has not become a public document yet. While one can understand why the Commission might not want to make the entire contents of the report public, particularly to guard the confidentiality of the respondents, one wonders if an amended version redacting the concerned portions is not within the scope of legal and ethical possibilities. The material collected by the Commission is crucial for policy-level actions pertaining to gender equity in the film sector. Not making its core findings and recommendations public restricts meaningful engagement with the issues highlighted by the Commission and makes a mockery of the labour, emotion and time invested by those who have testified. What we require are not just judicial commissions, but tangible possibilities of implementing corrective measures to ameliorate the conditions of women who work or want to enter the industry. Alongside infrastructural support and financial resources, work conditions have to be inclusive enough for any long-term change. While the state government’s decision to constitute a cinema regulatory authority for resolving labour disputes is certainly a welcome move, only careful deliberation can tell us whether it will have the desired impact. Since we do not have any comprehensive data set on issues related to gender, wage, and labour rights in the film industry (except the survey that the WCC has initiated), the time is ripe for considering the inputs of cine-workers. Perhaps, a survey on the labour conditions of cine-workers could showcase how apprenticeship and unpaid labour is normalised in the system as one way of going forward. And at every step, we must remember that it is never a question of either labour or gender, but about labour and gender. Intersectional thinking is key, if we want to see lasting change in this industry, and perhaps we would all be well served to remember Audre Lorde’s dictum, “There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.”

Written by Darshana S Mini 

Source: Indian Express, 13/01/22

Bulli Bai is latest example of harassment women face online

 

Meeran Chadha Borwankar writes: Prompt reporting of cases, well-trained investigators and prosecutors, fast and fair trial are essential to control cyber crimes against women.

The first email in the morning was from a young girl threatening to commit suicide. She had approached me earlier complaining about her former boyfriend, who, she alleged, had morphed her photos that she had shared with him on social media. I advised the lady officer heading the Pune Police Cyber Cell to register an FIR. But the officer investigating the case had to proceed on emergency leave. Since the boy had not been arrested, the young girl had threatened to kill herself. I was the Commissioner of Police, Pune and the story is of 2011. The sordid tale continues with the blatant abuse of cyber technology, especially targeting women of all ages, professions and communities.

As per the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) there were around 825 million internet users in India at the end of March 2021. Most of them are genuine ones with a minuscule number of rogue elements. But such rogue elements have the lethal capability to create havoc in the nation, its polity, economy and the personal and professional lives of citizens. They can also strain the fragile social fabric of the country as can be seen in the open-source app, Bulli Bai, hosted on the web platform GitHub for “auctioning Muslim women”. Similarly, in July last year, Sulli Deals had been created with profiles of around 80 Muslim women, describing them as “deals of the day”. Recent arrests by the police in the Bulli Bai case will, hopefully, disclose details behind the heinous crime.

While Bulli Bai and Sulli Deals made headlines and the Mumbai and Delhi police are working with the Computer Emergency Response Team, India (CERT-IN) to track down the criminals, there are many unreported cases of women facing cyber bullying, stalking, threats, and blackmail. Many times, police officers are approached by anxious parents, days before marriage, seeking help about fake profiles or morphed photographs of their daughters on the internet. Marriage being a very delicate affair in India, the slightest aspersion on the bride’s “character” can lead to cancellation of the ceremony. A formal police case is thus never lodged. The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) in “Crime in India 2020”, therefore, accounts for only 251 cases of defamation or morphing of women’s photos and 354 cases of their fake profiles under the Indian Penal Code, Information Technology Act and Indecent Representation of Women (Prohibition) Act.

The stark reality is that cyber blackmailing, stalking and bullying is a humongous issue, causing a lot of stress to women and their families. It is not confined to metros or peculiar to a particular caste or community. Small towns too have been badly afflicted. Reluctance to report is, however, common. NCRB statistics show that total cyber crimes in India during 2020 were 50,035, and those specifically against women were only 10,405. These statistics are but a fraction of the ground reality.

To find out the true magnitude of cyber crime, prompt reporting and registration are the only options. The reluctance to report/register the crimes is encouraging and emboldening cyber criminals. They are harnessing pictures of women from social media to promote online sex chats and pornography besides blackmailing and bullying the victims. They have become reckless “experts” in changing one image to another using morphing tools and also, in evading law enforcing agencies. There are many international gangs which successfully avoid detection as “servers” used by them are located outside India. International cooperation through formal treaties and informal channels has to be pursued. CERT-IN has been doing commendable work in this regard. However, registering a criminal case is the first crucial step as it sets the law into motion, leading to tracing, arresting and prosecuting the rogues even if they are located outside the country.

Another step could be to increase awareness about cyber safety and security so that youth, especially young girls and women, take proper precautions while surfing the virtual world. This cannot be left to the law enforcement agencies. Schools, colleges, universities and communities must take an active role in educating their wards about the rampant cyber abuse and safety measures/avenues available. We also need to involve social media platforms and encourage them to monitor and check abusive traffic and create more safeguards for users, especially women and children.

As for the police, we do need better infrastructure, more special cyber cells and police stations, regular training, and collaboration with cyber experts on a continuous basis. Strengthening the capability of forensic laboratories can lead to timely collection of evidence of cyber bullying, threatening, morphing and profiling. It is a highly technical job requiring sharp skills as the virtual world is constantly changing at an unimaginable speed. But many state labs do not have sufficient numbers of cyber experts to seize, preserve and store images of digital evidence essential for securing conviction in courts. The central government has given funds to states and Union territories under the Cyber Crime Prevention Against Women and Children (CCPWC) scheme to start “cyber forensic-cum-training laboratories”. Considering the gravity of the issue, states need to allocate similar resources for their forensic units.

Fast trial of cyber crimes would indeed help. As per the NCRB, during 2020, court trials were completed in only nine cases of cyber blackmailing and threatening with a 66.7 per cent conviction rate — 393 such cases are pending in courts. Similarly, 29 cases of cyber stalking and bullying of women and children were completed with a 27.6 per cent conviction rate — 1,508 cases are pending in courts. Trial has been completed in only two cases of fake profiling while 148 cases are pending. Systematic training of prosecutors and judicial officers in dealing with cyber crimes would definitely speed up trials.

Prompt reporting of cyber crime by citizens, technically proficient investigation by police adequately supported by forensics, and time-bound completion of court trials are essential for catching cyber offenders who are terrorising people, especially women, in the virtual as well as the real world.

Written by Meeran Chadha Borwankar

Source: Indian Express, 6/01/22

Crimes against women keep them out of the job market

 India’s female labour force participation rate (FLFPR) is a puzzling feature of our economy. Though output more than doubled and the number of working-age women grew by a quarter over the last two decades, the number of women in jobs declined by 10 million. Global indices and gender empowerment measures also paint a dismal picture. The 2021 Global Gender Gap Index revealed that India ranks 140th of 156 countries, compared to its 98th position in 2006. India’s FLFPR (24.5% in 2018-19) has been declining and is well below the global average (45%). So, what is keeping women away from the labour market and can we address these constraints?

The scenarios of women in education and employment over the past two decades are paradoxical. India neared gender equality at the primary level about a decade after the enactment of the Right to Education Act, 2009. Between 2011 and 2019, there has been an increase in the rate of women enrolling in higher education. As more women pursue higher education, we would expect them to enter the job market. But our labour market trends are alarming. On one hand, India’s FLFPR has suffered since the start of the 2000s. On the other, the unemployment rate of women in the country has rapidly been increasing. This contradiction—that as more women pursue higher education they are less likely to join the workforce—merits attention and greater analysis. Our declining FLFPR, which has fallen from 31.2% in 2011-12 to 24.5% in 2018-19, can be attributed to restrictive gender and social norms.

Evidence shows strong correlations between a declining FLFPR and barriers that impede women’s labour-market choices. These barriers include: 1) domestic responsibilities and the burden of unpaid care, 2) occupational segregation and limited opportunities to enter non-traditional sectors, 3) inadequate supportive infrastructure such as creches or piped water and cooking fuel, 4) lack of safety and mobility options, or 5) the interplay of social norms and identities. Yet, crimes against women and girls (CaW&G) arguably constitute the most prevalent barrier to women’s equal participation in and contribution to society.

In 2020, Initiative for What Works to Advance Women and Girls in the Economy (IWWAGE) undertook research to understand why lack of safety affects the participation of women in the labour market. The research analysed data from Crime in India published by the National Crime Records Bureau in 2011 and 2017. The study looked at crimes that deter women from stepping out to work and raise perceptions of lack of safety; these are rape, kidnapping and abduction (K&A), and sexual harassment and molestation. We found that while the all-India FLFPR saw an 8 percentage-point decline, the rate of CaW&G more than tripled to 57.9%. The rates of K&A and sexual harassment increased by more than three times, and the rates of rape and molestation about doubled.

A state-level analysis shows that there is a low but negative correlation between the FLFPR and rate of CaW&G, as well as the FLFPR and K&A rate. Thus, an increased crime rate is associated with an FLFPR decrease. State-level data suggests that K&A can be considered a strong factor that can influence women’s willingness and ability to step out for work. It discourages women from participating in the workforce. This strengthens the hypothesis that CaW&G lead to regressive societal norms around why women should not step out of their homes.

The results for crimes of rape, molestation and sexual harassment show unexpected results, with a positive correlation suggesting that an increase in the crime rate is associated with an increase in the FLFPR. This can perhaps be attributed to underreporting of crimes due to either the victims’ lack of legal awareness or fear of shame. Also, these findings are a result of pure crime-FLFPR correlations, and several other factors could result in these observed trends.

Trends in Himachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Chhattisgarh and Sikkim show consistency: They maintain a high FLFPR and low rate of crime in comparison with other states and Union territories. Similarly, states which have had the lowest FLFPR, Bihar, Delhi, Assam and Tripura, strengthen the research’s argument that the crime rate is strongly correlated with women’s participation in the workforce. Bihar’s rate of CaW&G approximately tripled while it nearly halved in the observed time period. It had the lowest FLFPR in India. The rates for K&A and rape also increased. Tripura saw the biggest decline in FLFPR, as it fell by over 24% points. In 2017, its rate of CaW&G was as high as 51%. Delhi’s rate of CaW&G rose by more than four times from 31% to 133% as its FLFPR declined marginally. Rates of K&A and molestation surged by over 26% points, and the rate of rape sharply increased. In Assam, the rate of CaW&G quadrupled and its FLFPR declined. The rates of K&A and molestation were very high, and the rate of rape almost doubled during the observed period.

While violence against women and girls is one among several barriers that restrict their mobility and reduces the likelihood of their labour force participation, we need a comprehensive mechanism that involves the state, institutions, communities and households to address this challenge. Adopting a ‘SAFETY’ framework—focused on Services, Attitudes, Focus on community, Empowerment of women, Transport and other infrastructure, and Youth interventions—can be a critical element in framing policies and interventions to stop crimes against women and girls.

Neelanjana Gupta is a project manager at the Initiative for What Works to Advance Women and Girls in the Economy (IWWAGE), an initiative of LEAD at Krea University.

Source: Mintepaper, 1/12/21