|
Thousands of kilometers away, at Columbia University in New York, a student was harassed by an older classmate for months until she decided to speak out and approach the university authorities. The story is the same; only the cast and cultural contexts are different. Whether in India or the United States, sexual harassment has become a “silent epidemic,” with more and more cases of molestation and sexual assault being reported from college campuses in both countries. The victims are mostly women students (although male students are also victims) and the perpetrators are faculty, students and university support staff.
The statistics are alarming. In the United States, one out of every three to five students report being sexually assaulted by the time they graduate, says Suraiya Baluch, director of Princeton University’s Sexual Harassment / Assault Advising, Resources and Education office. Baluch, along with Karen Singleton, director of the Columbia University Sexual Violence Prevention & Response Program, visited India recently to interact with students, faculty and NGOs working in this area.
|
In most cases, the perpetrator is an acquaintance: 94 per cent of women know their tormentors. The victims suffer prolonged emotional trauma, skip classes or work and are no longer able to trust their peers or teachers, especially those in power |
In most cases, the perpetrator is an acquaintance: 94 per cent of women know their tormentors. The victims suffer prolonged emotional trauma, skip classes or work and are no longer able to trust their peers or teachers, especially those in power. According to a study by the American Association of University Women, which has funded pioneering research on gender issues, 60 per cent of women experience some form of sexual harassment. In India, a predominantly conservative society with pockets of urban, liberal living, the situation is no better. According to a 2007 research report by Akshara, a Mumbai-based NGO, that covered 44 city colleges, 61 per cent of the 533 women students interviewed had been sexually harassed in college, either by their peers or by staff. It’s not just women who are being victimized. More than half of the 327 male students interviewed said they had been sexually harassed during their college years. The findings also disclosed that 66.7 per cent of the male students admitted having sexually harassed their victims “just for fun.” According to Nandita Gandhi of Akshara, “Sexual harassment can range from eve-teasing to molestation and rape.”
At Jawaharlal Nehru University, “most cases [are] related to students and relationship abuses,” K.B. Usha, assistant professor at the Centre for Russian and Central Asian Studies told SPAN. She also chairs the gender sensitization committee.
In 2009, JNU, which boasts one of the most progressive Indian university campuses with a mixed-gender residential community of nearly 5,000, saw 30 cases of sexual harassment reported to the committee. This panel was formed after prolonged student activism in 1999 following the landmark 1997 Supreme Court judgment in the Vishaka versus State of Rajasthan case that brought sexual harassment in the workplace to public notice.
|
“In DU, girl students are often harassed by outsiders with the police very often acting as bystanders,” says Madhu, a volunteer with Jagori, an NGO, who works on youth and sexual harassment at Delhi University. In September, Delhi University students organized a massive rally to sensitize the university community about harassment |
The actual cases of sexual harassment are, however, much higher, as victims don’t approach the authorities for a cluster of reasons ranging from fear (especially when the harasser is faculty) to cultural inhibitions rooted in a predominantly patriarchal Indian society, says Shaweta Anand, a student at JNU involved in creating gender sensitization discourse on campuses.
“It’s a very complex issue, involving legal, cultural and psychological aspects. It requires a multi-dimensional response,” says Usha. Part of the problem in India, she says, is that there is no specific legislation dealing with sexual harassment except for some criminal laws dealing with rape and sexual assaults.
 |
 |
| KB Usha (left) with students Ahalya Sial and Neha W |
Shaweta Anand (left) and Rebecca John, volunteers with the gender sensitization committee, at the interaction |
With a perceptible spurt in awareness and a proactive student community, more cases are being reported and the punishment is sometimes severe. “The numbers have risen over the years, but at the same time, awareness has also increased,” says Asha Bajpai. She is associated with the Centre for Socio Legal Studies and Human Rights at the Mumbai-based campus of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences. The executive council of JNU recently upheld the findings of the gender sensitization committee against a faculty member of the Centre of Indian Languages in a year-old sexual harassment case. He has been suspended for one year, in addition to a cut in his three-year increment.
More Indian universities are setting up committees and gender cells on campus. In Uttar Pradesh, the state government directed 1,600 colleges in 2009 to set up “special cells” to check sexual harassment and other problems faced by nearly 60,000 women students.
“The issues are very similar. But they manifest differently,” Singleton told SPAN after she and Baluch had an interactive meeting with members of the gender sensitization committee at JNU. The two discussed strategies of dealing with sexual harassment that included risk reduction, primary prevention, issues relating to penalizing offenders, intervention and response.
Since the perpetrators are mostly men, Baluch said the American universities have tended to focus on enlisting men as allies in gender sensitization and dealing with sexual harassment cases. “We are trying to encourage male intervention in a non-confrontational, low-key way. This involves educating men about finer nuances of a situation in which they can intervene,” says Baluch.
This is one area where gender empowerment committees in Indian universities can learn from their American counterparts’ experience. Laments Akansha Kumar, the only elected member of the committee: “We have not been able to involve men much. Male participation in greater numbers will help.”
“Dialogue and exchange of experiences, research and resources could empower both sides to deal with sexual harassment cases more effectively,” says Baluch, who was impressed by a number of Indian NGOs doing pioneering work in gender sensitization. These include Breakthrough Media’s Ring the Bell multimedia campaign that urges men to take a stand against domestic violence.
Singleton stressed more collaboration in developing research tools to analyze and evaluate the impact of preventive measures taken to avert sexual harassment on campus. A case in point is the success of the “Take Back the Night” campaign in the United States and other western countries—started in the mid ’90s as a protest rally against rape and other forms of sexual violence. “We will encourage American students to do fellowships with an Indian NGO. Anything you can learn from each other will be a success,” says Singleton. The idea is to review notions of masculinity and transform cultures that allow sexual violence, she says.
“There should be more campus to campus coordination. It will bolster capacity building, dismantle stereotypes and expand our horizons,” says Savita Singh, an advocate before India’s Supreme Court who works on gender and HIV issues with the Centre for Legislative Research and Advocacy, a New Delhi-based NGO. Clearly, there is an urgent need for greater gender sensitization on campus, she told SPAN. “In DU, girl students are often harassed by outsiders with the police very often acting as bystanders,” says Madhu, a volunteer with Jagori, an NGO, who works on youth and sexual harassment at Delhi University. In September, Delhi University students organized a massive rally to sensitize the university community about harassment.
Neha W., a Ph.D. student at JNU specializing in gender issues, agrees on the need for mutual exchange of ideas, but feels strongly that the exercise must take into account cultural differences between Indian and American societies to be meaningful. “The American system is more choice-based and conditioned by individuality and freedom,” she says. “We haven’t reached that stage. There is a huge social and cultural pressure to conform. That has to be factored in any collaborative effort,” Neha told SPAN.
With women’s empowerment becoming a vital area of partnership between India and the United States, home to a 2.7 million-strong Indian American community and more than 100,000 Indian students studying at American universities, both sides feel a need to initiate and sustain a continuous dialogue on gender issues.
During the first state visit hosted by U.S. President Barack Obama in honor of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in Washington, D.C., on November 24, the two leaders “affirmed the importance of women’s empowerment to advancing global prosperity and stability” and announced the establishment of a Women’s Empowerment Dialogue to promote women’s participation and equality in all spheres. “They emphasized that women’s empowerment is a cross-cutting goal that should be pursued across the full scope of U.S.-India Strategic Dialogue initiatives,” said their joint statement. Pitching for a more broad-based people-to-people dialogue, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said during her visit to India in July, “...the Indian people and the American people share many traits; and one of them is that we like to roll up our sleeves and get things done.” Preventing sexual harassment on campus and creating a trans-continental dialogue is just such an issue over which students, faculty and activists on both sides can roll up their sleeves, share experiences and research and make a difference.
—Courtesy SPAN.
|
