The not-so-empowered women

In today’s world we talk often of women’s empowerment and equal opportunities for women and we see pictures of women smiling with sports trophies, Cabinet posts and as CEOs of companies, and we think to ourselves, all is well with the world. At the same time, in a village in Pakistan, a boy from a lower caste is seen speaking to an older girl from a higher caste. The powerful higher caste family claims that he raped her. The local village council, or jirga, decide that a woman from the lower caste family must be gang raped in public in return, and this verdict is carried out. The boy who committed the “crime” is also beaten up and sodomized by the “victims”. The woman is thrown out half naked into the street to walk back home. It so happens that this woman went on to sue the rapists and won worldwide fame (all but one of her rapists were acquitted though). Mukhtar Mai has since then written a book, In the Name of Honour, which is the basis and inspiration of this article, which looks at the atrocities committed on women in the name of religion, honour and other such meaningless words.

In another village in Pakistan, a woman is raped by her brother-in-law and gets pregnant in the process. She refuses to disown the child, and hence is found guilty of zina, the sin of adultery and is sentenced to be stoned to death. Somehow she manages to escape the stoning sentence and has been in jail ever since, while her rapist is protected by law.

Many such incidents happen every day in Pakistan, Afghanistan and many other countries. Women are at the mercy of merciless chauvinists who treat them as mere objects. In India too, honour killings are commonplace in the countryside as punishments for inter-caste marriages, intra-caste marriages without the consent of the family, affairs with the opposite sex before marriage etc. Women in rural areas are illiterate and unaware that they are actually entitled to rights of their own. In rural Pakistan, women are never even spoken to or asked their opinion in decisions that very much affect them. Their marriages are never organised with their consent. They get to see the groom only on the day of the wedding. It’s another issue that grooms are sometimes old enough to be their fathers or even grandfathers. The common punishments for women there are cutting off their noses, burning them alive, and raping them.

There is almost a barter system in these areas that deals in them. Any petty quarrels can be settled by one party handing over a woman to the other. If a man rapes a woman, then in return a man from the woman’s family gets to rape a woman from the man’s family. True story : two neighbours had a quarrel over a barking dog. To settle it, the victims were “given” two girls of eleven and six who were married off immediately to a forty-six year old man and an eight year-old boy respectively. Like judicial law relies on paying damages as cash to the victim, this system relies on the accused “giving” women in payment to the victim. The woman is, of course never consulted. All she is told is that she is going to be “given” to the other family (where she will most probably be beaten, raped and treated like a slave).

Then, on top of that, the Sharia (as it is interpreted by people here) forms a sort of support system that men rely on to get away with such atrocities time and again. Just to give you an example, these are the conditions under which men may be found guilty of rape: i) If the accused man/men provide a complete confession (Sure, that’s likely to happen)   or   ii) If there are four MALE eye witnesses to confirm that the rape took place. Umm, forgive me for wondering, but if there were four male eye witnesses, wouldn’t they have just stopped the rape from happening in the first place? What if there are ten FEMALE eye witnesses? What if there are THREE male eye witnesses? Are you f***ing kidding me? Not stopping here, female rape victims are often found guilty of ridiculous charges like adultery etc and end up getting punished even more after they have suffered.

The sad part is, the country’s judiciary and police, which follow the Constitution, most often choose to corroborate with the decisions of the local councils and upper castes and suppress any women who try to protest. When the women do get the courage to approach the police, they are misled and thumb impressions are taken from them on blank pieces of paper, which are then filled with fake testimonies. This results in contrasting statements of the victim in court, and she is far less likely to win. Another issue of great concern is that other women themselves look down upon women who challenge and point fingers at men. They feel it is a disgrace for a woman to speak out against a man.

And I’m not pointing a finger at Islam only. Hindus have had their own share of practices suppressing women: Sati, dowry, child marriage etc etc. Women still aren’t allowed into some temples, they aren’t allowed to choose their grooms, many are not allowed to get educated or get jobs, some have been burned alive or killed for marrying without parental consent etc. Even Christianity, which is seen as progressive, won’t allow a woman to abort a baby, even if it’s the result of a rape, among other things. 

Religion has always denigrated women, granting them secondary status, being extremely lenient and even encouraging to men who commit atrocities on them, so much so that I’m surprised that women still believe in religion. A classic case of can’t live with it, can’t live without it, I guess.

I wish I had a witty line to end this article. I don’t. It’s just too damn sad.

 

Notes:    The stories, laws and practices involving Pakistan are all taken from Mukhtar Mai’s book, In the Name of Honour, from which I draw my conclusions and which I recommend to one and all. I  hope I’m not infringing any copyrights by putting them here. Just thought people should know about this.

~ by thebloggernextdoor on June 12, 2009.