Safety of Women in India: What is to be Blamed

Safety of Women in India: What is to be Blamed

Dr. Jamal Fathima. J. I

Department of Statistics

Justice Basheer Ahmed Sayeed College for Women, Chennai, India

Aishwarya Lakshmi. S, Niveditha. H

Justice Basheer Ahmed Sayeed College for Women, Chennai, India

Abstract: Women have been supressed, harassed and disregarded for generations now. This treatment is not indigenous to any part of the world, any town, city or country and, despite multiple government plans and schemes all over, there seems to be no visible difference yet. Instead, as humans were only becoming more and more regressive, and the increasing rate of crimes against women occurring on a daily basis is enough proof to justify the same. Therefore, its of utmost importance that people know the issues and troubles that women face and also come up with ways to curb them. Treating women with the respect they deserve just like any other human being does shouldnt be as difficult as it currently is.

Keywords: Safety, Logistic regression, Chi-square, Gender, Harassment

1. INTRODUCTION

   All over the world, violence against women is alarmingly on the rise regardless of age, caste, creed, colour et al. In the recent times, a lot of women have reached heights that have been unattainable by men despite years of attempt. However, all these achievements and progress have had nearly zero impact on the violence against women. Instead, it only seems to be an upward curve. According to the United Nations Declaration, violence against women includes any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in physical, sexual, or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivations of liberty, whether occurring in public or private life , (UN,1993).

   Thus, the study on womens safety is practically the need of the hour. It is only now, through extensive activism and with thanks to the internet, all forms of violence against women is receiving substantial attention globally. Unfortunately, even as awareness amongst the people is on the rise, so are cases of violence against women. According to an article in The Wire, up to 39 crimes against women were reported per hour in India in the year 2016, which however distressingly saw the lowest conviction rate (18.9%). Four rape cases were reported every hour in the country in 2016, up from two every hour in 2007. Of 39,068 rape victims in 2016, 43% were girls below 18 years. Offenders were known to the victim in 95% reported cases. Further saddening is the fact that, as a nation we believe that factors, especially demographic details like the age and locality of the victim influence the occurrence of such untoward events. It is this thought that has to be reviewed and dealt with in the best way possible.

   From all these given statistics, it is perspicuous that violence against women is growing to be an issue of

   alarming global concern that has to be looked into and appropriate action to be taken at the earliest.

2. OBJECTIVES

   • To check how safe the society is for women who are just carving their way into it.

   • To check if the harassment that women go through regularly in life actually has anything to be blamed on them also, as claimed.

   • To provide possible solutions to all these problems, however small they may be.

   • To encourage women to come out in the open with any of the above-mentioned issues that they may have faced in their lives.

3. LITERATURE REVIEW

   Dr. Rajeshwari M.Shettar (April 2015) finds Women empowerment involves the building up of a society, a political environment, wherein women can breathe without the fear of oppression, exploitation, apprehension, discrimination and the general feeling of persecution which goes with being a woman in a traditionally male dominated structure. Women are adept at mobilizing diverse groups for a common reason. They often work across ethnic, religious, political, and cultural divides to promote liberty. We are all aware of importance of women safety, but we must analyze that they should be properly protected. say Sujata P.Salunkhe, Bhausaheb S.Sonawane and Geeta N.Sonawane (October 2016).

   United Nations Human Rights Organization (2014) on their study titled Womens rights are human rights have discussed the cause of violence in a womans life, Understanding that violence against women is a manifestation of historically unequal power relations between men and women, a human rights analysis posits that the specific causes of such violence and the factors that increase the risk of its occurrence are grounded in the broader context of systemic gender-based discrimination against women and other forms of subordination. Vulnerability to violence is understood as a condition created by the absence or denial of rights.

   Department of Foreign affairs and trade, Australian Government (2015) believe that Responding to such violence requires women to access essential and integrated support services. This is fundamental to responding to such violence, whatever the context.. Depression is also common, as victims are made to feel guilty for provoking the abuse and are frequently subjected to intense criticism. It is reported that 60% of victims meet the diagnostic

   criteria for depression, either during or after termination of the relationship, and have a greatly increased risk of suicidal tendencies., Pankaj Chhikara, Jitender Jakhar, Anil Malik, Kamal Singla, S. K. Dhattarwal (2013) feel that this is the mental impact of violence on women. Vic health (2017) has declared that in Australia Young women are especially vulnerable to sexual assault. The ABS has found that in the 12 months leading up to the PSS, the rate of sexual assault among young women (aged 18

   24 years) was higher than the national average (Cox 2015). The fear of what an aggressor will do next gives any kind of harassment its gut-wrenching power. People react to the underlying threat, not just the surface words or actions. Stop street harassment (2014).

4. METHODOLOGY

   Data for the study was collected through the questionnaires from women of the age group 18-24 from various districts of Tamil Nadu. The sample size of 486 was selected and these samples were divided into two groups, harassed or not harassed, on comparing their socio-economic status some of the statistical tests were applied. The purpose of logistic regression is to correctly predict the outcome category for special occasions using logistic regression model. To achieve this goal, it has been created a model that includes all predictor variables that are useful to predict the outcome. (Ramosacaj.M, Hasani. V, Dumi. A) (September 2015). The Chi- Square test and the Logistic regression were the two main tests that were used to compare the age, their locality and the harassment faced.

   1. Logistic Regression

      The Regression model is given by:

      [ [()] = [ () ] = + + +

   2. Chi-square Test

   TABLE 2: OBSERVED FREQUENCY DISTRIBUTION TABLE OF AGE VS THE KIND OF ARASSMENT/EVE- TEASING.

   YEARS			KIND OF HARASSMENT
   		VERBAL	PHYSICAL	VISUAL	TOTAL
   18		55	24	36	115
   19	57	26	48	131
   20		44	24	29	97
   21		31	16	20	67
   22		15	9	5	29
   23		7	4	7	18
   24		16	10	12	38
   TOTAL		225	113	157	495

   TABLE 3: OBSERVED FREQUENCY DISTRIBUTION OF RESPONDENTS TYPE OF LOCALITY AND WHETHER BEEN HARASSED OR NOT.

   TYPE OF LOCALITY	HARASSE D OR NOT
   	YES	NO	TOTAL
   NORTH CHENNAI	37	20	57
   WEST CHENNAI	64	35	99
   SOUTH CHENNAI	78	73	151
   SUBURBAN CHENNAI	24	16	40
   TOTAL	203	144	347

   On using the Chi-square test for finding the relation between the kind of harassment/eve-teasing faced by the respondents and their respective ages, the null hypothesis (H0) was assigned to be that the age of the respondents is independent of the type of harassment undergone. After calculating the observed and expected frequencies, the Chi-

   1()

   +

   1 1 2 2

   Square value was 0.90995697 which when compared with

   TABLE 1: PARAMETER ESTIMATES AGE OF THE RESPONDENTS VS BEEN HARASSED OR NOT.

   HarassedOrNot		B	Std. Error	Wald	Df	Sig.	Exp(B)
   YES	[Age=18-19]	.065	.120	.292	1	.589	1.067
   	[Age=20-21]	.548	.181	9.121	1	.003	1.729
   	[Age=22-24]	.634	.243	6.822		.009	1.885

   From the above analysis, it is known that irrespective of the age of a person, she is subjected to harassment. So, any woman of any age group can be and become a victim of abuse in this nation.

   the table value at 5% level of significance which is 21.026, it is inferred that the age of the respondent is completely independent of the type of harassment faced. The same test is repeated to find the relation between the type of the locality the respondent is from and whether she is harassed or not. The null hypothesis assigned here was that the Harassment is independent of the locality the respondent is from. Further after the test was conducted, the Chi-square value calculated was 0.243558245 and on comparing it with the table value 7.815 at 5% level of significance, it was inferred that the harassment a victim undergoes is completely independent of the locality she is from.

5. CONCLUSION

In conclusion, it is evident that the rate of crime against women seems to be severely on the rise and something has to be done as soon as possible so as to bring about a change in this situation. Women are continuing to feel unsafe outside their homes, even inside them in a few cases, and there is a huge number of cases of harassment that are going unreported every year. From this it is apparent that either weve failed in teaching our women to step up for themselves, or the judicial has let people down so bad that they no longer believe in it enough to even file a complaint,

let alone hoping for action to be taken against the accused. Whatever may it be, the situation is in dire need of improvement. One very important conclusion that can be drawn from the above analyses is the fact that women face violence and go through harassment regardless of their demography, be it their age, locality et.al. This disproves all the baseless theories that for any untoward event happening to a woman, she is just as responsible if not more as the harasser.

Few solutions can be proposed with the help of the elaborate analysis of this survey. Firstly, it is the sole responsibility of parents of any generation to teach their sons to respect women and their daughters to fearlessly face every challenge. Only when this groundwork is strong, our nation will be a desirable place to live for the sisterhood. Respondents believe that severe punishments and faster judgements will help curb such violent crimes occurring against women on a regular basis. Oppression of women is just a daily routine in some houses in India. Women are being subject to so much discrimination and stereotyping in the society. Solution to such a problem is the woman herself. She must courageously fight such social stigmas, break every stereotype and prove to the world that women are meant to do more. This research is a small attempt to bring a small difference in this big world.

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