Dangerous to be a woman
From managers to maids, all females face sexual abuse in India
NEW DELHI: Pepper spray, safety apps and covered clothing – a mental list Kanika Johri checks off before stepping out of her house in New Delhi, dubbed “India’s rape capital”.
These are also must-haves for her friends and family in India, where official data shows nearly 40 crimes against women take place every hour.
For Johri, 28, who worked for seven years in the city as a marketing professional, fending off daily threats from men who ogle, cat-call, stalk, flash and grope is a “disturbing reality”.
“It was packed, this bus, and suddenly I felt something hard pressing up against my thigh and I froze and tears streamed down my cheeks, just uncontrollably,” she said about one of her experiences from early 2017 as she travelled to work.
“First you deal with creeps on the streets, the buses, the metro ... Then at office, there’s another nightmare waiting – flirty messages, winking, lingering hugs. It was too much,” said Johri, who quit her job last year.
Her story is common in India, which was named yesterday as the world’s most dangerous country for women in a Thomson Reuters Foundation poll of experts.
Women across India – from executives in gleaming corporate towers to those toiling behind closed doors of middle-class homes, in factories or farms – face the same dangers of sexual violence and harassment.
At least 20 million women – the combined population of New York, London and Paris – have left the workforce of Asia’s third-largest economy since 2005, World Bank data shows, partly due to their poor treatment. Only 27% now work.
Those in the private sector opt for company-paid taxis rather than public transport, with many women saying that they skip office or networking events at night over safety concerns.
Crimes against women in India spiked more than 80% between 2007 and 2016, according to government data.
Nearly 40,000 rapes were reported in 2016 despite a greater focus on women’s safety after the fatal gang rape of a student in New Delhi in 2012 that sparked nationwide protests and led to tougher laws against sexual abuse.
Rekha Sharma, head of the National Commission for Women (NCW), said it was a case of more women reporting crimes rather than a greater incidence of sexual violence.
An Air India flight attendant made headlines in May when she took to Twitter to accuse a “predator” senior officer of sexually harassing her over six years, describing him as “Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby put together”.
When she approached the airline’s internal complaints committee (ICC) – a legal requirement for Indian firms to investigate sexual harassment at the workplace – the chief brushed it off, saying “you know how he talks”.
“I have almost never seen ICC members go against the person who has been accused,” Sharma said.
“They have a tendency to say, ‘oh, the woman was at fault’.” — Reuters