Page 84 - DSOC202_SOCIAL_STRATIFICATION_ENGLISH

Unit 5: Forms of Social Stratification

Gender-based violence in the form of rape, domestic violence, honour killing and trafficking in Notes
exacts a heavy toll on the mental and physical health of affected women. Increasingly, gender-
based violence is being recognised as a major public health concern and a serious violation of
basic human rights. According to a UN report, on an average, one rape happens every hour in
India. Delhi is the sexual-crime capital. The reason for such statistics, according to many is the
inefficacy of India’s rape laws. Women’s rights groups allege that the narrow and conservative
outlook of Indian society is responsible for the lackadaisical attitude of authorities and the
confidence of wrong doers. Indian families are closed to the concept of sex as a topic of discussion
and hence avoid highlighting it in any way and rendering steps towards justice ineffectual. Around
60 to 70 per cent of cases of rape go unreported. The reasons are well known. To get a conviction,
the victim has to prove in front of an open court that she was sexually penetrated by the rapist.
Add to this the social stigma of the whole incident. In many cases, such girls/women are even
unable to get husbands. They are shunned and ostracised by the society and if already married,
even deserted. Of the few reported cases, convictions are rare.
United Nations Report, 2005 said that around two-thirds of married women in India were victims
of domestic violence and one incident of violence translates into women losing seven working
days in the country. “Discrimination against girl child is so strong in the Punjab State of India that
girl child aged two to four die at twice the rate of boys,” quotes a 2002 UNIFEM document.
The problem is not only external but intrinsic too. The socio-psychological makeup of most rural
and many urban women has been shaped and moulded by more than a century of patriarchal
beliefs and a family system where the man (in form of father or husband) is the equivalent of God.
The feeling of inferiority has been embedded in their psyche so much so that far from condemning
acts of violence against them they are more likely to throttle the voices in favour of them. This is
part of the cliched vicious circle of illiteracy and social backwardness that accounts for all the
resultant backwardness of the gender.
Regional Variations in Gender, Caste and Class
An analysis of the status of women depends on an understanding of gender relations in a specific
context. Examining gender relations as power relations makes clear that these are sustained by the
institutions within which gender relations occur. For women, absence of power results in the lack
of access to and control over resources, a coercive gender division of labour, devaluation of their
work, and a lack of control over their own labour, mobility as well as sexuality and fertility.
Gender equality thus demands substantive transformation, a set of policies and conditions created
by the state that facilitate the reallocation of resources, thereby increasing women’s control over
resources that confer power at individual, household, and societal levels.
Transformation for gender equality envisages the empowerment of women, requiring conditions
that enable women to exercise their autonomy; it also envisages a process of self-empowerment,
in which women regain to re-examine their lives critically and collectively. While the former
involves the facilitation of women’s access to and control over resources, the latter emphasizes
women’s agency in seeking greater access and control.
Measures of gender equality therefore require an assessment of the degree to which resources
have been’ redistributed; whether state policy has facilitated women’s autonomy’ and the extent
to which unequal gender relations have been transformed. Contemporary Indians political
landscape is characterized by a great deal of social upheaval. This is the result of growing democratic
consciousness which is increasingly conflicting with the forces of domination, authoritarianism
and hegemony.
The control of women’s physical mobility, a crucial aspect of status, is also influenced by caste,
class, religious, and community structures. While women’s physical mobility my increase with
their entry into the labour force, it also makes them vulnerable to assault, molestation, and rape.

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