Violence Against Women

Denmark’s minister of gender equality and ecclesiastical affairs on Feb. 19 visited the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) to learn more about the organization’s work on gender equality and preventing violence against women – particularly in the context of recent political attacks on women’s health and rights.

ICRW was the only nongovernmental organization that Minister Manu Sareen met with during his short visit to Washington, D.C., to help kick off the Nordic Cool 2013 international festival at the Kennedy Center for the Arts. A member of parliament for the Danish Social-Liberal Party, Sareen has been instrumental in, among other efforts, promoting the incorporation – or “mainstreaming” – of gender and equality perspectives in policy.

Indeed, for the past six years, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden have claimed the highest level of gender equality in the world, according to the Gender Gap Report. Gender equality ministers in each Nordic nation are keen to maintain this ranking, even amidst increasingly vocal opposition to some of their efforts.

“We’re holding the gender torch high,” Sareen said. “We’re doing this because other countries rely on us.”

Sareen met with ICRW’s Suzanne Petroni, senior director of gender, population and development, and Stella Mukasa, director of gender, violence and rights, for an hour-long conversation that centered largely on women’s health and rights and often touched on the upcoming session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), which will focus on eliminating all forms of violence against women.

Petroni discussed challenges that advocates for women’s sexual and reproductive health and rights continue to face in the United States and globally, and stressed the importance of sharing facts to counter opposing voices. “We have the evidence to make the case,” Petroni said.

Meanwhile, Mukasa shared her expertise on violence against women, saying that in tandem with prevention programs, there must be efforts to encourage communities to reflect on and adjust their attitudes about violence. “This has to be reinforced,” Mukasa said, “with long-term public messaging.”

In terms of incorporating gender perspectives into programs and policies, Sareen spoke of a need to develop “a new language” for the public, “explaining that this is for all of us – that men have a role; that we face problems, but also have to be part of the solutions.”

Sareen will return to the U.S. in March to represent Denmark at the CSW.

New findings from an International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) survey show that 95 percent of women and girls may not feel safe from sexual violence in public spaces in India’s capital of New Delhi, where the brutal gang rape of a 23-year-old woman on a bus sparked international outrage.

The household survey was conducted by ICRW during the two months before the December rape that resulted in protests nationwide in India and in the swift arrest of five alleged perpetrators. The survey is one element of a larger ICRW project called Safe Cities that is underway in partnership with UN Women, the Indian government and the New Delhi-based organization, Jagori, and is part of an overall effort to make Delhi a safer city for women and girls.

The survey reached about 2,000 women and 1,000 men, ages 16 to 49. Researchers say the findings are representative of most men’s attitudes and behaviors toward women and what most women experience when they step outside of their homes in Delhi.

Indeed, nearly 75 percent of women and girls surveyed said they had faced sexual violence in their own neighborhoods. Nine out of 10 reported experiencing sexual aggression or violence – from obscene comments, to being groped, stalked or sexually assaulted – in a public space in their lifetime. Six out of 10 reported this for the last six months preceding the survey.

Nearly 65 percent of the women and girls said they feel fearful or extremely fearful when they go out alone at night.

Meanwhile, half of the men ICRW surveyed said they had sexually harassed or been violent with a woman in a public setting at least once in their lifetime. Male respondents blamed women for being the brunt of harassment, with three out of four men agreeing with the statement, “Women provoke men by the way they dress.” Two out of five men partially or fully agreed that women moving around at night “deserve to be sexually harassed.”

Such attitudes among men and the sexual violence women experience in the market, at parks and on public transportation are – and have been – par for the course for generations in Delhi, said Nandita Bhatla, senior technical specialist for gender and development in ICRW’s Asia Regional Office.

“We urgently need to change men’s attitudes and behavior toward women, which are deeply rooted in patriarchal norms that are engrained from childhood and persist,” said Bhatla, who directs the Safe Cities project for ICRW. “Indian society continues to apply a different standard for boys and girls. Every act that grants privilege and power to boys over girls, feeds into the mentality of inequality and violence.”

However, the outrage ignited by the gang rape of the physiotherapist student who later died of her injuries could represent a turning point in society, Bhatla said.

As the trial gets underway for the accused perpetrators, ICRW and its partners are continuing to develop the Safe Cities project. Among other efforts, they plan to roll out two major interventions to address  safety in Delhi’s public spaces and conduct a follow-up survey.

Read more:

Does the New Delhi Rape Mark a Turning Point?  ICRW's Nandita Bhatla explains how diverse groups have galvanized to ensure a safer environment for India’s women and girls

95% Women Feel Unsafe Outdoors – Results from an ICRW survey about sexual violence against women in public spaces in New Delhi are featured this Times of India article.

Beyond Rape Trial, a Bigger Question about Women’s Status in India – The Christian Science Monitor quotes ICRW’s Priya Nanda in this feature that appeared on the day court proceedings began for the five men accused of the gang rape and murder of a 23-year-old New Delhi woman.

India Confronts the Problem of Violence Against Women – During this National Public Radio broadcast, ICRW's Priya Nanda discusses the vulnerability of women and girls in public spaces in India and the root causes of their unequal status in society.

ICRW Policy Advocate Lyric Thompson argues in this commentary why now is the time for United States legislators to ratify the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). The piece appears on RH Reality Check, an online community serving organizations and indivduals devoted to advancing sexual and reproductive health rights. 

ICRW has documented the impact CEDAW has had around the world in select countries where CEDAW ratification and implementation have led to concrete changes in the opportunities afforded to women and girls. For more information, read Recognizing Rights, Promoting Progress.

As the year draws to a close, the International Center for Research on Women's (ICRW) Asia Regional Office in New Delhi, India, is preparing to expand a groundbreaking program that uses sports as a vehicle for social change.

In this case the sport is cricket, omnipresent in India, from high-end neighborhoods to slum communities. The ICRW program is called Parivartan, an innovative effort that from 2008 to 2012 drew in young men and boys through cricket to challenge them to question traditional notions of manhood in their society and teach them about respecting women and girls and preventing violence against them. Targeting boys 10 to 16 years old, the program took place in formal cricket sessions at Mumbai schools as well as informal settings in two Mumbai slum communities called Shivaji Nagar and ChittahCamp. With funding from The Nike Foundation, Parivartan was modeled after the "Coaching Boys Into Men" program by Futures Without Violence (formerly Family Violence Prevention Fund).

Now, ICRW will launch another version of Parivartan in 2013 with a new group of youth in two underserved areas. In a separate effort, experts in the New Delhi office also are proposing to scale up the original Parivartan model in two states that hold the highest incidences of violence against women nationally.

In each of these new endeavors, youth may play cricket or a different sport that is popular in their particular community.

ICRW's move comes at a time when the role of sports in international development and social change is gaining traction globally. The growing effort includes programs such as Fight for Peace in Brazil, which uses boxing and martial arts to help youth from violent communities realize their potential; Grassroot Soccer in South Africa, where with soccer games come lessons about HIV prevention; and Women Win, which uses sports as a strategy to advance the rights of girls and women around the world. Meanwhile, the United Nations General Assembly last month reaffirmed in a resolution the power of sports in empowering women and girls, strengthening education, facilitating conflict and more.

Indeed, Parivartan's program proved to have an impact on shifting participants' ideas about manhood and women's roles in society - their views became less patriarchal and more gender equitable after the program. Results from ICRW's evaluation of Parivartan demonstrated that sensitizing boys to gender issues can potentially change stereotypes they hold as well as their attitudes about violence against women.

For the next phase of the program, ICRW will develop "Parivartan Plus" as part of the British Department for International Development's STRIVE effort, which aims to address structural drivers - such as poverty and HIV-related stigma - that continue to fuel the AIDS epidemic. Parivartan Plus will take place in rural Karnataka in southern India and again in Shivaji Nagar, the Mumbai slum community of about 600,000 residents by using the local sport as a medium of engaging with adolescents.

The original Parivartan program model will be at the core of Parivartan Plus. However, ICRW and its partners will build upon the model by designing a curriculum to include components of HIV prevention, sexual and reproductive health as well as substance and alcohol use. And, for the first time, girl athletes will be included in the program.

"Part of what we want to evaluate is the feasibility of incorporating this Parivartan Plus model into the overall STRIVE strategy," said ICRW's Madhumita Das, a senior technical specialist who directs the Parivartan program. "We also want to better understand the links between gender norms, violence, substance use, HIV and sexual and reproductive health among youth."

The Parivartan Plus curriculum will be implemented by Kartnataka Health Promotion Trust (KHPT) with girls and boys in 40 to 60 schools and their catchment areas including thousands of villages in two districts in North Karnataka.

Girls also would be included for the first time in the other proposed Parivartan effort, which would involve a major expansion of the program. ICRW is proposing to replicate the original Parivartan model - this time with girls, too - in the states of Bihar and Rajasthan, which respectively have the highest and second-highest incidence of violence against women.

ICRW would partner with Magic Bus, an organization that uses sports-based curriculum to improve children's lives to reach an estimated 7,500 participants with almost 360 mentor coaches by engaging boys and girls of similar age from 90 villages across two districts of Bihar and Rajasthan. The original Parivartan program reached about 1,200 athletes.

Das said that the original Parivartan curriculum for the proposed expanded program should easily be transferrable to an audience of girls. "It's the way that you take up the discussion, not the content," she said. "And for girls especially, being involved in sports can be transformative in terms of boosting girls' confidence and self-efficacy."

"If you really want to achieve gender equality and reduce gender-based violence and see a larger impact on the lives of women and girls, you need to engage with boys and girls," Das added. "It's an investment in both."

Additional Resources: Parivartan: Transformation Through Sports