Gulabi Gang Essay

Much of human life is “given” to us but we are still placed into systems whether we like it or not. We have it here in America as well in other countries. Traditional Hinduism organized social life according to a caste system. Purity determined hierarchy of castes. The circumstances of birth determined the caste a person was in. The occupations were associated with the level of purity of each class. Brahmin is the highest class, and are the priests. The lowest in the hierarchy are the “untouchables”, who had occupations that excluded from the social life, such as tanning, and scavenging. After 1950, untouchability was outlawed and the name was changed to the “scheduled” class. However, they prefer to prefer themselves as Dalit, the “downtrodden”.

Everywhere around the world women and girls are terrorized, mistreated and victims of abuse, rape, and assault. Sadly this kind of treatment towards women and girls is often very common in Asian countries. The article by Gardiner Harris entitled, “Rape of Girl, 5, Draws Focus to Child Assault in India”, talks about how an innocent five year old girl was raped, tortured and almost killed in India. Harris wrote in the article that people demand stricter laws against sex crimes and that there should be more protection for women. In Asia women tend to be less desirable, and are treated with less respect than a man. Harris also claims that news reports are packed with stories about heinous crimes and assaults against women (Gardiner Harris, 2013).

Dalit women also face violence when they try to access rights and entitlements provided by the constitution and the government. In addition to facing discrimination and untouchability in accessing welfare schemes, women from Dalit community also faces sexual and other kinds of physical violence. In spite of the space (reservation) given to them at panchayat (village) level their participation is dismal in the local governance. Dalit women face direct impediments right from the time of filing nominations right up to announcement of the election results, including: caste and sexually-based verbal abuse; harassment, threats or physical assaults; property destruction; restrictions on freedom of movement; and illegal and fraudulent voting

India has an ancient caste system that separates Hindus into different classes. The Untouchables are below the 4 caste categories and are treated terribly. They are denied many jobs, and on a daily basis men and women are assaulted. The world Social Forum was made aware of the situation, yet not much has changed. Mahila Jagruthi is an untouchable women, otherwise known as a Dalit who has informed the world through her paper Commodification of Women Due to Imperialist Globalization.The protest so far has not resulted in a fair system. Most forms of protest are non violent. The resistance is found through forums, and world organizations. Many Dalits work to help the situation by going directly to government officials. Jagruthi wrote her paper

As a health care professional what inspired me to take a course in Global Issues for Women: Gender, Race and Global Health centers on my interest in patriarchal societies, the structural violence of global neoliberal economic policies that cause gender disparities for woman all over the world, particularly in India and middle eastern countries’ and the cost they have on the lives of women impacted by such polices as they are exposed to to risk, death, suicide, differential access to healthcare, social rights, commodification of their bodies bodies, reproductive health issues and loss of control over their lives. I am also taking this class to gain a better understanding of the “Gendered Violence of Structural Adjustment” as well as learn strategies’ to assist and help women who

Before we begin to explore the different types of sex exploitation, it is vital to understand the history and the role that women play in the Indian society. In India, women are treated very differently compared to how American females are

Despite 44 laws targeted towards the protection of women, crime rate statistics show that women are still very much at risk, evidenced by the Thomson Reuters Trust Law indicator which ranked India as ‘the worst G20 country in which to be a woman’ and the fact that one woman in India dies every hour because of dowry-related crimes, reported in 2013 by LifeNews.com. There isn’t a simple explanation as to why the laws are being broken, ignored, and have failed to be upheld in court.

Gender discrimination become one of serious disease in our society, and it is still increasing around the world. We easily see inequality in gender in our everyday lives such as at home, workplace, and school. However, we can’t solve this problem because in our natural law the men go out side to work, and the women stay home take care of their children. Therefore, in some developing countries, most of families invest on the male rather than the female. For instance, the male has more opportunities to go to school, the female must stay home to take care of families. Families invest more on their sons because “households without sons are more likely to participate in the pension program” (Jayachandran, 2014, p. 12). Some Asian families are more likely to have more son because they think that “raising a daughter is like watering your neighbors’ garden,” and raising a daughter as “ploughing someone else’s field” (Jayachandran, 2014, p. 11). Therefore, the female is still treated badly in some countries. In 1991, Crow Dog and Erdoes reported, “Her sister in law, Delphine, a good woman who had lived a hard life, was also found dead in the snow, the tear frozen on her face. A drunken man had beaten her, breaking one of her arms and legs, leaving her helpless in a blizzard to die” (p. 4). Indian women are not respect from people in their community such as Crow Dog’s sister was forced to sterilize even she did not want it. In addition, Crow Dog was hit many times because she held a

Shilpa Phadke, speaking in general about the Women’s movement in India points to the fact that:

Russia is one bad seed in this world, but the country of India is researching ways to better protect their women on the street. Rituparna Bhattacharyya wrote an article reviewing how the government of India responded to the increase of gang rapes and murders of women in Indian cities where a woman faces harassment every fifty-one minutes (313). While the punishments for these crimes became stricter, the justice system needs reform to be more welcoming

Gender inequality is undeniably outdated in today’s society, but this does not mean that it is non-existent. Through the ages, women all around the world have been mistreated and denied of basic fundamental rights. As we move forward in the 21st century, there have been several movements such as Emma Watson’s “He for She” which empower women to fight for their rights. Both India and Canada are countries which are changing to involve women in education, government and the general workforce, but the success in both countries varies. Canada is a developed nation which has been progressing on the path of gender equality for over a century, whereas India is a developing nation which is slowly moving in the same direction. The vast disparity in women’s rights in these countries can be seen by comparing the degree of education, presence in the workforce and overall respect women have in both these countries.

Imagine a woman whose ex boyfriend has forced her to drink acid because he has found out she is in an arranged marriage to marry another man. These are problems that women in India are always trying to avoid on a daily basis. For decades women in India have fought to have rights that protect them from the social injustice that overruns the country, slowly women have gotten more rights and laws to protect them but, there is still more to be done. It is not often that these issues are mentioned by those living in countries such as America because in other countries we often do not understand the complexities of these problems. In India, for years women have not had the rights they deserve, from inequality of basic rights, rights in the workforce, or more major rights such as protection against rape and sexual harassment.

The Caste System has been a part of India’s culture for a long time and it has caused many social controversies between the higher and lower castes. UCLA wrote, “The greater majority of the Indian people have no assurance of two nutritious meals a day, safety of employment, safe and clean housing, or such level of education as would make it possible for them to understand their constitutional rights and obligations” (“UCLA” para. 1). The higher castes believed that lower castes were bad and that association with them was unlucky. They also wanted to conserve their power and that is the reasoning behind the social division. The lower castes lived unhealthy lives and many of them died at young ages, and they wanted to have more equal rights. This controversy is old but it still continues today and it has

The chief contention of this project is that rape as a sexual and gender crime against women is a manifestation of the forces and sociological structures that are much less obvious than any literature on criminal jurisprudence on the subject of ‘rape’ and sexual crimes will suggest. Hence this necessitates a deep study and literature review of all dimensions that explain the institutional structures and forces that explain ‘rape’ in the Indian context and which through theoretical models and deep introspection can generate a well researched and relevant model of feminist activism that can mitigate the dangers of patriarchal power imbalance between the sexes.

Further on, on the economic front also, the government in power failed to remove the disparities between the rich and the poor, rather the disparities increased, and there started a voice being raised regarding the backward classes — who were regarded as economically backward — and a further class of ‘Other Backward Classes’, other than the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes came into being and Chaudhary Charan Singh, otherwise and originally a Congressman became the leader and the champion of the Backward classes.