Time to prioritise women’s issues
CHITRA RAMAKRISHNAN
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Are we out of perspective when we confront life-threatening issues?
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We watch saas-bahu dramas and discuss how difficult it is to be a woman. We talk about freedom and education. Somewhere in some part of our world, women are being brutalised. They are being raped and mutilated. When I learnt that organised rape camps which specialise in this type of sexual violence in epidemic scales exist, I was shocked.
This barbaric act is a way of life in Sudan, eastern Congo and many other places. This is part of government policy; ‘a strategy of war’ used to terrorise civilians and is considered less risky than actual warfare. What you are reading is not a figment of my imagination, it was a news article carried by The Hindu on the 16th of June.
It was rather devastating to know how little I knew of our world. Most of the victims are below 14 and sometimes below the age of 12. It sets me thinking. Are we a bit out of perspective when we speak about women’s issues and rights? This is a case in point. Maybe we should do a rain check before we condone certain things. Don’t get me wrong. I am all for our righteous indignation and feminist condemnation. But something is wrong here.
While we blow our domestic and non-domestic ailments out of proportion, in some other part of the world children are being snuffed out before they reach womanhood. I am sure it is happening in some corners of our country too. Like inequalities in wealth, the description of women’s rights varies from place to place.
Shocking truths
If you asked a child in Sudan today, the answer will probably be the right to grow up into a woman without being raped. Not just raped, but brutalised with machetes, AK-47s and pointed sticks. I don’t even believe what I am writing. But this is information as laid down by Nicholas D Kristof in his article ‘The weapon of rape’. Shocking! So what is the issue here? We need to attend to life threatening problems first, before we stretch our legs and discuss women’s rights ad nauseum. It is like when somebody says your country is the reason for the food crisis, when nearly a third of the population is actually dying of starvation. There is definitely a creamy layer which might be contributing to the crisis. But what we feel when we hear such things is ‘not fair.’
Burning questions
Exactly how our Congolese counterparts must be feeling right now while we pry, prod and analyse every single issue we can find, both real and imagined, ignoring the burning questions of violence and rape. I really wish we could discuss other things instead of being stuck with this pre–historic barbarism which makes your skin crawl. But it looks like we have a very long way to go before we can sit down to discuss other issues without wondering if somebody in some part of the world is not in a position to assert even the most basic of human rights, the right not to be violated sexually or otherwise. It is time to prioritise the issues we have on the women’s rights agenda.
Here is a ray of hope. The U.N Security Council will be taking up ‘sexual violence’ in a special session to help it ‘graduate from an unmentionable to a serious foreign policy issue’.
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