Is Television a Powerful Agent for Positive Social Change for South Asian Women?

[Riaz Haq]

Freakonomics is a series of books by authors Steven D Levitt and Stephen J Dubner who find data points, patterns, correlations and trends that are often missed by mainstream economists and researchers. For example, the authors see how legalization of abortion may have caused significant crime rates decline in the United States in recent decades. They argue with various statistics to reject other possible explanations like gun control, strong economy, three-strikes laws etc. Authors say that the termination of unwanted pregnancies has led to fewer criminals on the streets of America.

In their latest book of the Freakonomics series, Superfreakonomics, the authors cite the findings of two American economists Robert Jensen and Emily Oster that cable TV in 2700 households empowered Indian women to be more autonomous. Cable TV households had lower birthrates, less domestic abuse and kept more girls in school. Here are some more highlight from the book about India:

1. If women could choose their birthplace, India might not be a wise choice of a place for any of them to be born.

2. In spite of recent economic success and euphoria about India, the people of India remain excruciatingly poor.

3. Literacy is low, and corruption is high in India.

4. Only half the Indian households have electricity, and fewer have running water.

5. Only one in 4 Indian homes has a toilet.

6. 40% of families with girls want to have more children, but families with boys do not want a baby girl.

7. It's especially unlucky to be born female, baby boy is like a 401 K retirement plan, baby girl requires a dowry fund.

8. Smile train in Chennai did cleft repair surgery. A man was asked how many children he had. He said he had 1, a boy. It turned out that he also had 5 daughters which he did not mention.

9. Indian midwives are paid $2.50 to kill girls with cleft deformity

10. Girls are highly undervalued, there are 35 million fewer females than males, presumed de ad, killed by midwife or parent or starved to death. Unltrasound are used mainly to find and destroy female fetuses. Ultrasound and abortion are available even in the smallest villages with no electricity or clean water

11. If lucky enough not to be aborted, baby girls face inequality and cruelty at every turn,

12. 51% of Indian men say wife beating is justified, 54% women agree, especially when dinner is burned or they leave home without husband's permission.

13. High number of unwanted pregnancies, STDs, HIV infections happen when 15% of the condoms fail. Indian council of medical research found that 60% of Indian men's genitalia are too small to fit the condoms manufactured to international standard sizes.

14. Indian laws to protect women are widely ignored. The government has tried monetary rewards to keep baby girls and supported microfinance for women. NGO programs, smaller condoms, and other projects have had limited success.

15. People had little interest in State run TV channel due to poor reception or boring programs. But cable television has helped women, as 150 million people between 2001-2006 got cable TV which gave them exposure to wider world.

16. American economists found that the effect of TV in 2700 households empowered women to be more autonomous. Cable TV households had lower birthrates, less domestic abuse and kept daughters in schools.

Freakonomics series authors Steven D Levitt and Stephen J Dubner use the above facts to prove what they call the "Law of Unintended Consequences".

They argue that access to cable TV, not originally intended to help liberate women, has done more to improve the lives of Indian women than the many laws and government programs designed to help them.

Cable television is present in over 16 million Pakistani households accounting for 68% of the population in 2009. I am not aware of any studies done on the impact of cable TV on rural women in Pakistan, but my guess is that trends similar to India's are empowering women in Pakistan's rural households with growing cable TV access.

Related Links:

Media Boom in Pakistan

Gender Inequality Worst in South Asia

Grinding Poverty in Resurgent India

Women's Status in Pakistan

WEF Global Gender Gap Rankings 2009

India, Pakistan Contrasted 2010

Female Literacy Through Mobile Phones

Pakistan's Woman Speaker: Another Token or Real Change

Female Literacy Lags Far Behind in India and Pakistan

Female Genocide Unfolding in India

[Riaz Haq]

Five women killed in #India by villagers suspecting witchcraft. Some dragged out of homes, stoned to death http://gu.com/p/4bc48/stw

In the latest incident villagers with sticks and knives attacked the five women on Friday night in the town of Kanjia, police officials said.

“The women were dragged out of their home while asleep and beaten to death by the villagers suspecting them to be witches … some were even stoned to death,” said Jharkhand police spokesperson SN Pradhan.

According to Indian government statistics around 2,000 people, almost all women, were killed after being branded witches between 2000 and 2012. Many attacks go unreported, campaigners say.

[Riaz Haq]

Here's an interesting interview of Sujit Saraf of Naatak.org with KQED's Michael Krasny on treatment of Hindu widows, obsession with white complexion and high rates of rape and crime against women in India:

Since 1995, Naatak has been staging plays in the South Bay. The theater company identifies itself as the "largest Indian theater in the U.S." Its latest musical production, "Vrindavan," takes a closer look at the politics and social ills behind the city of Vrindavan, where widows are sent to live after their husbands die. We talk to playwright and artistic director Sujit Saraf about the new production and the company's larger artistic role in Silicon Valley. We'll also talk to KQED senior arts editor Chloe Veltman about what to watch for this fall arts season.

Host: Michael Krasny

Guests:
Sujit Saraf, novelist, playwright and director of Naatak, a theater and film company in Santa Clara
Chloe Veltman, senior arts editor for KQED

http://www.kqed.org/a/forum/R201508261030

[Riaz Haq]

#India's #Maharashtra temple ‘purifies’ #Hindu diety after a woman's worship "desecrates" it - #Modi #BJP #gendergap http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/other-states/article7930551.ece …

A Lord Shani temple in Ahmadnagar district of Maharashtra performed a ‘purification puja’ on Sunday after a young woman offered worship to the idol placed on a platform from where women are traditionally barred.

Authorities at the Shani Shingnapur temple also suspended seven workers for “negligence” while one trustee resigned taking moral responsibility.

The incident took place on Saturday afternoon when the woman, whose identity is unknown, caught security personnel unawares and climbed the platform to perform puja. According to the temple authorities, it all happened within 30 seconds. A few devotees confronted her after the incident but eventually let her go.

“Women have been barred from climbing the platform for hundreds of years. This act was against the rituals that have been going on for years,” said Sayaram Bankar, a temple trustee, justifying the purification ceremony.

Priests bathed the idol with oil and milk, while all shops in the vicinity remained closed till the ceremony was over.

Mr. Bankar said the woman was let off unharmed. “We do not know who she is. She was confronted and let go. She was not attacked or abused,” he said. Mr. Bankar will resign on Monday, bowing to demands from the Ahmadnagar gramsabha.

Practice prevalent in Maharashtra

The Shani Shingnapur temple in Ahmadnagar district of Maharashtra attracts thousands of devotees daily. Worshippers of the famous Sai Baba temple in Shirdi make it a point to visit the Shani Shingnapur temple, also.

The practice of barring women from the inner sanctum of religious places is prevalent in some of Maharashtra’s most revered shrines, among them the Haji Ali Dargah in Mumbai. The dargah’s trust has cited menstruation as one of the reasons for not allowing women into the ‘mazaar.’

In response to a public interest litigation petition filed by activists Noorjehan Niaz and Zakia Soman of the Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan, the trust said many religions impose restrictions on women owing to menstruation, perceived as “unclean or embarrassing.” “A woman can at any time have menstrual periods,” the trust said in its affidavit earlier this year.

Many organisations have condemned the Shani Shingnapur temple’s action. “Purifying the temple is an act that has to be condemned. It’s a discrimination against women. At a time when young men and women are coming together with progressive ideas, such actions only take society backwards,” said Ranjana Gavande of the Maharashtra Andhashraddha Nirmulan Samiti.

[Riaz Haq]

Widows in #India: My children threw me out of the house. #Vrindavan #Hindu @AJENews http://aje.io/9l5k

Vrindavan, India - Self-immolation on a husband's pyre may have been banned in India, but life for many widows in India is still disheartening as they are shunned by their communities and abandoned by their families.

"I used to wash dishes and clothes in people's house to earn money, but the moment they heard that I am a widow, I was thrown out without any notice," said 85-year-old Manu Ghosh, living in Vrindavan, a city in the Northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.

Vrindavan is home to more than 20,000 widows, and over the years, many shelters for widows run by the government, private enterprises and NGOs have mushroomed in the city. The city, which is considered holy by Hindus, has become known as the 'City of Widows'.

"I had to sleep on the street as even my family abandoned me after my husband's death. I was married off to him when I was 11 years old and he was 40.

"My daughter died of malnutrition as I could not give her food since nobody wanted to help a widow.

"After her death, I decided to come to Vrindavan. A woman should die before her husband's death so that she doesn't have to live through hell like this," Gosh says.

The women often live in acute poverty and are ostracised by society due to various superstitions - even the shadow of a widow can wreak havoc and bring bad luck, people believe. Lack of education and any source of income forces them to beg on streets and many turn to prostitution for survival.

"My children threw me out of the house after my husband died," says Manuka Dasi. "I try to earn money by singing devotional songs in temple and manage to get one meal for the day. I am just waiting to die so that I can be out of this life of misery."

[Riaz Haq]

79% of women in #India faced public harassment. #misogyny http://toi.in/04JmDa via @timesofindia

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/79-of-women-in-India-faced...

Nearly four of five women (79%) in India have experienced some form of harassment or violence in public and a third groped or touched in public (39%), according to a ActionAid UK report released on Friday on occasion of the International Safe Cities for Women Day.
India is third among four countries surveyed which includes UK, Thailand and Brazil. The YouGov poll, which surveyed 2,500 women aged 16 and over in major cities across India, Brazil, Thailand and the UK, found that in India 84% of the women who experienced harassment were in the age group of 25-35 years, 82% of them were full time workers and 68% students.
"Shockingly, 89% of women in Brazil, 86% in Thailand and 75% in the UK have faced harassment or violence on the streets. The research highlighted that across the four countries, women in the lowest social economic groups most likely to experience violence or harassment in cities,'' the report said.

Over a third of women (39%) in India have been groped or touched in public, compared with 41% of women in Brazil, 44% in Thailand and 23% in the UK.
The research found that more women in the UK (43%), Brazil (70%) and Thailand (62%) felt at risk on the streets, whereas in India women felt more at risk on public transport (65%). ActionAid India director (programmes and policy) Sehjo Singh said, "The fear of harassment and violence has a crippling effect on women's abilities, and in itself it is an attack on women's rights."

[Riaz Haq]

BBC News - #India textbook lists bride's 'ugliness' as cause for #dowry. #misogyny

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-38852290

A textbook in the western Indian state of Maharashtra has caused outrage after it listed "ugliness" as a reason for the increased demand for dowry.
The textbook said: "If a girl is ugly and handicapped then it becomes difficult for her to get married. To marry such girls [the] bridegroom and his family demand more dowry."
A minister told local media that the offending passage would be removed.
Pictures of the text were widely circulated on social media.
Many pointed out that such texts did little to remove existing prejudices in Indian society.
Paying and accepting dowry is a centuries-old South Asian tradition where the bride's parents gift cash, clothes and jewellery to the groom's family.
Why are India's housewives killing themselves?
Five bizarre 'lessons' in Indian textbooks
The practice has been illegal in India since 1961, but it continues to thrive and campaigners say it leaves women vulnerable to domestic violence and even death.
Disputes can arise over how much money should be paid and over what timescale. In some cases when grooms and their families do not receive their desired amount, brides can be subject to terrible abuse.
In 2015, the Women and Child Development Ministry told parliament that more than 8,0000 dowry deaths had been reported for each of the previous three years.

This is not the first time Indian text books have been in the spotlight for the wrong reasons.
A teacher in the central Indian state of Chhatisgarh last year complained about a textbook for 15-year-olds in the state, which said that unemployment levels had risen post-independence because women had begun working in various sectors.
And in 2006, it was discovered that a textbook for 14-year-olds in the northern Indian state of Rajasthan compared housewives to donkeys.

[Riaz Haq]

#India: Men gang-rape woman, then smash her skull with bricks @AJENews #rape #Modi #BJP http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/05/india-men-gang-rape-woman-sma... `An Indian woman was gang-raped and then brutally murdered by men who smashed her skull with bricks after she had threatened to inform authorities, police in the northern state of Haryana said on Monday.

 

Two men were arrested for rape and murder in Sonipat town, and six more were being investigated after the victim's mother accused them of involvement, Ashwin Shenvi, superintendent of police, told the Reuters news agency.

 

The 23-year old woman, a labourer, was taken by the men - at least one of whom knew her - by car from near her home in Sonipat to the nearby city of Rohtak, where they raped her, Shenvi said.

 

"When she said to them she would complain, they hammered her skull in with bricks," he said. "The way that they brutalised her is horrific."

[Riaz Haq]

A 10-year-old #Indian girl was raped and impregnated. A court denied her an #abortion. #rape #India

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/07/20/a-10-...

India has the world’s largest population of sexually abused children, with a child under age 10 raped every 13 hours, as the BBC reported in May. More than 10,000 children were raped in the country in 2015. In most cases, the abusers are relatives or family friends, according to the BBC.

A court in India on Tuesday ordered a 10-year-old girl whose parents say she was raped and impregnated by her uncle to carry her fetus to term, ruling she is too young and her pregnancy too advanced to have an abortion.

The girl, who has not been identified, is six months pregnant and sought medical attention after her maternal uncle allegedly raped her several times, CBS News reported.

The district court in the northern city of Chandigarh based its decision on an opinion by a panel of doctors from the city’s Government Medical College and Hospital, where the girl was examined, according to the hospital’s medical superintendent.

“If you abort then the risk to life is greater,” the superintendent told The Washington Post in a brief phone interview Wednesday.

A 1970s law in India known as the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act bars abortions beyond 20 weeks, though courts have made exceptions if the fetus is not viable or if the mother’s life is at risk.

According to CBS, the hospital’s eight-member panel determined that the fetus was viable and could survive even if it was delivered immediately. CBS quoted an unnamed senior doctor on the panel who said abortion was “not an option at this stage.”

The hospital told the Times of India on Tuesday: “The victim is six months pregnant, as revealed by her ultrasound reports. We have submitted our medical advice to the court regarding termination of the foetus.”

The girl’s parents found out their daughter was pregnant after she complained of stomach pains, according to the Indian Express. She later reportedly told her mother that her uncle had raped her a half-dozen times when he visited the family home. The uncle was arrested, and the parents petitioned the court for an abortion, the Indian Express reported.

Doctors say it is biologically possible for a girl to become pregnant as soon as she begins ovulating, although rare for a 10 year old. By and large, medical experts agree that carrying and delivering a baby at age 15 or younger can come with life-threatening complications, including anemia, high blood pressure and hemorrhaging.

On top of that, pelvic bones do not fully develop until women reach their late teens. Before that point vaginal births and full-term pregnancies are dangerous, and even Caesarean sections present significant risks, they say. Such problems, along with complications from unsafe abortions, were the top cause of death among female adolescents in 2015, according to the World Health Organization.

[Riaz Haq]

A health journal estimates #India underreported almost 15 million #abortions in a year. #femalegenocide #savegirlchild https://qz.com/1153722 via @qzindia

Abortion is a lot more common in India than government data suggests.

A study published this week (pdf) in The Lancet Global Health journal estimates that 15.6 million abortions occurred in the country in 2015, significantly higher than the 701,415 recorded by the ministry of health and family welfare for 2014-2015. Moreover, a staggering 78% (12.3 million) of these abortions were undertaken outside of health facilities, suggesting that Indian women are taking the procedure into their own hands.

The study was conducted by a team of authors from the Guttmacher Institute in New York, the International Institute for Population Sciences, Mumbai, and the Population Council, New York.

To estimate the national abortion incidence, they used data mostly from the 2015 Health Facilities Survey of six Indian states—Assam, Bihar, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, and Uttar Pradesh—NGO clinics, and abortion pill sales and distribution.

The authors say that India’s national surveys and official statistics have so far offered an incomplete picture as they don’t take into account abortions by private-sector doctors who don’t work at registered facilities or abortion services provided by professionals of alternative medicine, notably Ayurveda, Unani, and Homeopathy. The government data also excludes untrained providers of abortions and abortion pills that don’t require prescriptions. These pills have become increasingly available in pharmacies from the early 2000s.

“Most abortions are happening without prescriptions and outside of facilities via chemists and informal vendors, which suggests the need to improve facility-based services,” the authors write. While abortion pills can be effective and safe when administered correctly, they say it is unclear if Indian women are getting the right information and using them properly.

In conservative India, where talking about sex remains a taboo, previous studies have shown that the use of contraceptives has been declining. More people are turning to morning-after pills and abortions despite the potential health risks. While the study was unable to determine the reasons for the high rate of abortions in India, they accounted for one-third of the pregnancies in 2015. And almost half of the pregnancies that year were unintended, the authors say.

[Riaz Haq]

“Sexual violence back to the fore in #India” #rape #women #children #crime #AcidAttacks #honor https://goo.gl/gN2sy2 , via @LowyInstitute

The brutalisation of women in India has increased alarmingly in recent times. Rape, molestation, and abuse have spiralled out of control, with the incidents of violence becoming uglier and more frightening.

Violence against women happens everywhere. While its causes vary in different settings, in India the root of sexual violence is largely seeped in cultural factors and values that have continued in perpetuity. These have engendered beliefs in male superiority and the social inferiority of women.

Therefore, it is no surprise that little has changed since December 2012, when a 23-year-old physiotherapy student was gang-raped in a moving bus. The incident sparked global outrage and led to a major reform of India’s rape laws in a bid lower the number of sexual assaults in the country. Given the enormous public reaction, many perceived this to be a tipping point.

The reforms sought to speed up trials, increase penalties for offenders, and expand the legal definition of rape. In addition, the government set aside $480 million, known as the Nirbhaya Fund, for new women’s safety initiatives.

A little more than six years later, change is slow. The collective sense of outrage is ignited as each fresh incident hits the headlines, only to be followed by a deathly silence.

Take this example. In January, a 28-year-old man was arrested in Delhi on charges of raping his 8-month-old female cousin. Prior to that, five alleged rapes, mostly of minors, occurred within five days in the northern Indian state of Haryana. The crude and frighteningly brutal nature of these attacks led to widespread shock and despair across India at the inability to prevent such crimes.

Vulnerable and poor families also face humiliation and intimidation if they choose to pursue cases and seek justice. The Human Rights Watch report “Everyone Blames Me” found that women and girls who survive rape and other sexual violence often suffer humiliation at police stations and hospitals. 

The statistics speaks for themselves. According to data from India’s National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), the country recorded more than 36,000 cases of rape, sexual assault, and similar offences against children in 2016. The rising number of cases and the inordinately low conviction rate have brought no cheer to victims.

What’s more, sexual violence is especially prevalent in rural areas where gender-based marginalisation is intensified by low social status. The NCRB has found that more than four women belonging to the Dalit caste – the lowest in Indian society – are raped each day. Frustration has grown with the insufficient protection provided by the legal system.

Instances of acid attacks, which are a form of sexual violence, have been reported in nearly all parts of the world, but they are particularly endemic to South Asia, especially India.

Laws restrict the sale of acid and chemicals in India; however, up to 300 acid attacks are reported each year, according to Stop Acid Attacks. Activists on the ground say this number is just skimming the surface, and the real rate is much higher. Spurned marriage proposals or property disputes are often blamed for attacks.

Another major reason for the systemic violence against women is that, despite the catchy slogans and advertisement blitzkriegs to save and help the girl child, Indian parents retain an entrenched preference for sons over daughters. This in many ways accounts for skewed gender ratios across several states, especially in northern India, that have led to sex determination tests and consequently feticide.