The recent gang rape and murder in Delhi has brought unprecedented attention to the scale of violence against women in India. How can we use this opportunity to make concrete gains for women’s safety and human rights? We’ve been heartened to see young men joining young women on the streets demanding change. The public has rightly called for better laws and stronger enforcement.
But for women to have safety and power in the future of India — and the world — we must also make sure they have safety and power at home.
As a young man eloquently said in a recent op-ed: “Rape is the monstrous face of ordinary domestic injustices.” We must use this moment to make clear the connection between gender inequality in the home and violence against women in public spaces.
Disrespect for women starts at conception, with female embryos frequently aborted. And what begins at home spills into the burn wards of hospitals, full of young women set on fire for more dowry, and onto the streets, where men harass and rape women with impunity.
Yet the public keeps calling on men to protest rape because women are their “daughters, sisters, mothers and wives.” We should call on men as “fathers, husbands, brothers and sons” to look in the mirror and take responsibility for the ways in which they practice or excuse discrimination and violence against women. After all, men who rape are related to women, too. And women deserve human rights not because they are connected to men, but because they are human.
We must demand that the state protect and promote the fundamental human rights of half its citizenry. However, given India’s weak leadership and acute governance crisis, women will have to seize power wherever they can. And men, like those I am so pleased to see marching in Delhi, will have to partner in the culture change necessary to enable all people to thrive.
It is my hope that with women’s and men’s shared leadership, this moment will mark India’s transition from the country that is one of the worst places in the world for women to the country that caused the tipping point for ending violence against women worldwide.
by Mallika Dutt
As originally published in the New York Times, Room for Debate
