'Small window of opportunity' to reduce violence against Indian women: Harvard - Firstpost

International Women's Day this year in India is less celebratory for obvious reasons. The women's empowerment cliches that crowd popular cultural narratives around this time has been replaced by subdued reflections on how relevant symbolic gestures like these are in the larger scheme of things.  The Delhi gangrape victim has been declared a woman of extraordinary courage and has been awarded the International Woman of Courage award by the US. Gender dynamics in the Indian social structure is suddenly under international spotlight following the brutal rape and murder of the student on December 16, 2012. The Women's Center of Harvard University had recently announced a study of the subcultures of violence in Asian societies. India is one of the countries they will be focusing on. Protests following the incident of gangrape in Delhi. Agencies. Jacqueline Bhabha, Professor of the Practice of Health and Human Rights, Harvard School of Public Health who will be leading the study with a few others spoke to Firstpost about why they chose to focus on India and why Indian women's activists shouldn't feel offended by their efforts. 1. First of all, what prompted you to take up this research? Like many others we want to take advantage of this window of opportunity to offer suggestions to policy makers in India about how to improve interventions to curb gender based violence. The fact that the government and many sections of civil society who have not been concerned with rape and gender violence are now engaged with the issue creates an urgency and an opportunity for all those who wish to see change. 2. What are the sources that you plan to fall back on and references you're turning to, to understand gender violence in Asian countries? Many of the people working in our task force are Asian/have long experience of living and working in Asia, so there is already considerable expertise on this topic. We plan to work closely with colleagues in India and elsewhere who are engaged with this topic, as scholars, advocates, activists or survivors. 3. Violence against women, like a lot of people have argued after your announcement, is not typical to just this part of the world. Any specific reason why you wanted to focus on Asia? Some of us have spent many years working on gender based violence in other parts of the world too. There are many commonalities between countries – though of course there are differences too. We do not believe that expertise should have a passport attached to it, that engagement with important and complex social issues should be defended on a nationalist or territorial basis or that advocates should feel insulted when comrades or sisters from other countries offer to contribute their time and energy to trying to find solutions to difficult problems. 4. Do you plan to visit India, speak to people involved in the government mechanisms that attempt to protect women and also the ones critical of them? Of course. Some of us were in India in December 2012 and subsequently. Many of us spend large amounts of time in India, and have lived there. We have not yet decided exactly who we will attempt to meet but of course government and civil society experts in India will be critical sources of advice, information and collegian dialogue. 5. Have you met, spoken to rape victims from South Asian countries? In the past yes. Not since December 16. 6. How hopeful are you about the government of India considering your recommendations? The government of India will consider a large set of recommendations from a wide range of sources. We imagine that our views will blend in with those of other colleagues, and feed into a process of consultation where many experts offer their best recommendations. All of us hope that there will be changes in Indian law and improvements in implementation of existing laws that are mainly observed in the breach. 7. There has been some criticism about your attempt to understand how violence permeates Asian, especially Indian societies. Some are of the opinion that your intervention is unnecessary and more about asserting your superiority in the field of gender studies, than of any real consequence. How would you react to that? Frankly we are surprised by the reaction of a few people, but gratified by the numerous expressions of support, interest and encouragement that we have received. We have never asserted our superiority in any way whatsoever or implied that our work has been undertaken because of inadequacies in Indian feminism, gender studies or legal scholarship. Indeed many of us work with colleagues in those fields all the time. We wonder how people can assert that our intervention is unnecessary before it has happened – clearly some colleagues know more about what we might do than we do ourselves! More seriously, this territorial and defensive attitude is somewhat depressing. We wonder how would these colleagues react if following 9/11 or the gun violence incidents, US based advocates criticised colleagues from other jurisdictions commenting on terrorism or gun violence? 8. How long do you think the entire process will take and have you been familiarised with the kind of work women's activists here are doing in this regard? Not sure how long our work will take us – we are at the very beginning. We have already collaborated with some Indian groups who made submissions to Verma and intend continuing such collaborations. via Top Stories - Google News http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&fd=R&usg=AFQjCNFQ156yCh2Wfbm3C_ZTogHY1kv8Wg&url=http://www.firstpost.com/living/small-window-of-opportunity-to-reduce-violence-against-indian-women-harvard-653059.html

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