in brief: of all g20 nations, india is the worst for women

A poll of 370 gender specialists has named India the worst place to be a woman out of all G20 nations. Saudi Arabia was named the second worst—a country where women cannot vote or drive (the former, however, will change come 2015). While many in India were offended by the ranking, an article by The Guardian reveals events that may justify the ranking.

One month after the poll was released, a young woman was sexually assaulted by a gang of over 12 men in a busy street in Guwahati. The men took her onto the road and tore at her clothes and grabbed at her breasts. A reporter and his cameraman from a local TV station filmed it all, and her attackers smiled and laughed. It took 45 minutes for police to arrive. No attempts were made to arrest the men until footage of the attack went viral and civilians shamed authorities into action. The chief minister of Assam (the state where Guwahati is located) promised the victim 50,000 rupees (approximately $870 AUD), but her attackers will not be charged with rape. To quote Helen Pidd of The Guardian:

There is currently no special law in India against sexual assault or harassment, and only vaginal penetration by a penis counts as rape. Those who molested the woman in Guwahati would be booked for “insulting or outraging the modesty of a woman” or “intruding upon her privacy”. The maximum punishment is a year’s imprisonment, or a fine, or both.

This is not an isolated incident. Pidd goes on to cite some terrifying statistics (for example: 12 million girls have been aborted over the past three decades, motivated by a preference for sons) and even more harrowing examples of violence including stoning, gang rape (by police officers) and, in an extreme example, ‘a father beheaded his 20 year-old daughter’ and paraded ‘her bleeding head around [his village] as a warning to the other young women who might fall in love with a lower-caste boy’.

While the community outrage that stemmed from the attack in Guwahati may provide some hope that change may soon occur, those in a position of power offer little hope: Mamta Sharma, chairperson of the National Commission of Women (NCW) (a government body charged with protecting the interests of women in India) blamed the West, stating that ‘Aping the west blindly is eroding our culture and causing such crimes to happen’.

By Cory Zanoni

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