Image source: Discover Society
Violence against women in India Three months into the year 2020, a nationwide lockdown in wake of the COVID-19 pandemic forced both, men and women, to stay indoors. This was across all social and economic strata. The lockdown also meant a lot of people lost their jobs due to businesses cutting costs to get through the lockdown. This meant increasing stress and frustration which sometimes manifests itself into violence. Gender-based violence is defined by the United Nations as any act of violence that results in physical, sexual, or psychological harm or suffering to women, girls, men, and boys, as well as threats of such acts, coercion, or the arbitrary deprivation of liberty.2 To speak about violence against women is to understand that violence is not just physical and does not just include battery or assault. Violence can manifest itself into physical, emotional, verbal, sexual, and economic violence. Emotional violence is difficult to understand even HUMAN RIGHTS IN INDIA - Status Report 2021 by IAMC
for women themselves. It could include humiliating in front of people, threatening to hurt or harm the woman or someone close to her, insulting or making her feel bad about herself. A study conducted by National Family Health Survey (NFHS) in 2015-16 found that 52% of women and 42% of men believe that a husband is justified in beating his wife in at least one of seven specified circumstances. The study observed that this trend had not seen much change since it last study of 200506.3 The NFHS study further found that 30% of women have experienced physical violence since age 15, and 6% have ever experienced sexual violence in their lifetime; 4% of ever-pregnant women have experienced physical violence during any pregnancy. Only 14% of women who have experienced physical or sexual violence by anyone have sought help to stop the violence; this percentage was 24% in the study of 2005-06.
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