Four in five women in India experience some form of harassment or violence in public. This was the study done by UK-based NGO ActionAid a report of which was released on Saturday to mark the International Safe Cities for Women Day. Shockingly, the vast majority of women across the globe have experienced violence in a city with 89 per cent of women in Brazil, 86 per cent in Thailand and 75 per cent in the UK subjected to harassment or violence on the streets of their cities. The research highlighted that across the four countries, it was the poorest women who were most at risk with women in the lowest social economic groups most likely to experience violence or harassment in cities. The findings show that most of women are at risk in cities or towns and found more women in the UK (43 per cent), Brazil (70 per cent) and Thailand (62 per cent) felt at risk on the streets of their cities, whereas in India women felt more at risk on public transport (65 per cent). Safety of women is directly related to patriarchal mind sets that manifests itself in streets, homes and workplaces. Beti Zindabad, a campaign for gender equality supported by ActionAid and several networks and organisations seeks to challenge these mind sets. The fear of harassment and violence has a crippling effect on women’s abilities and potential, and in itself it is an attack on women’s rights. This is the global scenario of woman harassment. Right at home a police officer is involved in custodial rape of woman within the police station premises. And the victim has gone public after more than six months of harassment and hardship by the protector of law. The fault of the woman was she eloped with her lover and her parents filed a report with the concerned police authorities. And taking the advantage of the situation the concerned officer did not miss the opportunity to coerce the woman to surrender to his desires and the journey of hardship continued. Like that every day fairer sex is subjected to rape, molestation, physical abuse and mental harassment on one or the other pretext in India. Women are the easy target for the male dominated society. There is a need to change the mindset of people to make women safe and not just by framing programmes which are women-centric.
