
Women Safety : Important Topics for UPSC Exams
Violence against women is a worldwide phenomenon. Women across the world have to face various kind of acts of aggression like trafficking for sex tourism, kitchen accidents, sexual war crimes like rape, marital rape, honor killings and other kinds of brutality they face globally. According to World Health Organization (WHO), there are five stages of violence against women in the life cycle-- (i) Pre-birth, (ii) Infancy, (iii) Girlhood, (iv) Adolescence and adulthood and (v) Elderly.
Gender violence in India is an old issue, but consciousness among the people about the violence against women (VAW) has heightened, specially post Nirbhaya case of December 2012. Indian cities and villages are not regarded as safe places for women. The National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB) data shows that the rate of crime against women stood at 52.2%.
It should be understood that gender violence is not just a legal crime but a violation of human rights directed against the female human population. This violence against women get compounded in areas where exposure and literacy rates among women are low. Due to this illiteracy, women do not become financially independent to break out of the dependence barrier to speak out against violence. Besides this economic barrier, presence of a relatively more conservative atmosphere about social and familial prestige attached to the crime against women. The issue of VAW in India, further being added by the lack of awareness among women, especially rural, of their rights.
The Gender vulnerability index, 2017 gives us a bad picture of vulnerability of Indian women in different states as shown in the given infographic--
