Domestic Violence Against Women As A Violation Of Human Rights

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Abstract

Every woman has a right to live , and right to live with dignity and freely express herself! In the present times, various crimes against women are prevalent in India ,including be it domestic violence, cruelty, desertion, or stalking, rape, harassment, extortion or other crimes. Vision is to spread legal and cyber awareness among all sections of our society, particularly children who are leaders of tomorrow ! The aims to contribute to the social cause of spreading legal awareness and cyber knowledge through capacity building in order to manifest the dream of Digital India. It has a customised value based training program to meet the awareness needs of every section of our society and state of art workshops, interaction modules and e-learning programs. The Foundation has empowered , motivated & touched the lives of several people including students, teachers, law enforcement, professionals, corporate groups and NGOs through capacity building programs.

Introduction

Women are regarded with high respect in our Indian society. Earlier women too faced certain problems like child marriages, practice of Sati ,exploitation of widows, Devadasi systems , Pardah systems ,ect. Which are almost disappeared now with technological advancements , universalisation of education ,socio-political movements, modernization and similar social developments changed the approach of people towards women to a certain extent. It increases the morale, status , self-confidence, individuality, personality, self-respect, talent, capacity and efficiency among women. Equal right, responsibility and more opportunities for women to experience and exposed for varied environment. Even though our legislations provides equal opportunity and rights to women and they are also positively responding to the changed socio- political situations but even then they are facing certain problems. Violence against women isn’t a women’s rights issue, it’s a human rights issue. More ladies are killed each year by domestic violence. The term used to define this exploding problem of violence within our family is Domestic Violence. Violence against women means any act of violence that results in or is likely to result in body, sexual or mental harm or suffering to women. The violence against women are steadily developed in the country. Defines domestic violence as any act, omission or commission or conduct of the respondent, which includes threat or actual abuse.

Most of the world’s population is being gradually killed off by the other half. How did we get to the point in our current society where almost 1/2 of ladies face domestic violence. Whereas fifty million girls are killed in a womb. In India, approximately fifty thousand dowry related death occured. In india more than 1000 rural women of reproductive age revealed that both male and women consider wife beating acceptable and that forty percentage of all wives have been beaten by their husbands.

Worldwide, thirty percentage of all women who have been murdered by their intimate partners. Around two-third of married Indian women are victims of domestic violence and 70 per cent of married women in India between the age of fifteen and fourty nine are victims of beating, rape or forced sex.

Increasing Crimes against Women: Violence against women happens because women and men are not equal.

Orthodox and idiotic mindset of the society that women are bodily and emotionally weaker than the men.
Gender inequality at the national level in education,
Access to employment,
Economic and property rights,
Freedom to marry and divorce
Partners torches
Where male authority over women’s behaviour

This violence is towards someone who we are in a relationship with,

Be it a wife, son , husband
Mother, daughter, father,
Grandparent or any other family relative.

The most common causes for

Women battering and stalking
Dissatisfaction with the dowry
Exploiting women
Arguing with the partner, neglecting children
Refusing to have sex with him, not cooking properly or on time,
Indulging in extra marital affairs, going out of home without telling the partner,
Not looking after in-laws
Infertility in females also leads to their assault by the family members.
The greed for dowry, desire for a male child and alcoholism
Young bride – bringing home the amount of demanded dowry.
Women in India also admit to hitting or beating because of their suspicion about the husband’s sexual involvement with other women.

Domestic Violence of women in employment:

Related to family(Family disorganization)
Stress and personal care
Resistance to misconduct of senior and officers
Economic dependence
Job insecurity
Low wages

Domestic Violenceof under-privieged sections of community

Lower status –unholy, lowinferior , social stigma
Educational disabilities
Civic disabilities
Religious disabilities
Economic disabilities
Political disabilities

In urban areas there are many more factors which lead to various in the beginning and later take the shape of domestic violence. In a family wife getting high salary when compare to partner , abusing and neglecting in-laws, her absence in the house till late night, being more forward socially etc. Working women are quite often subjected to coercion sex and assaults by employees of the organization. At times, it could be voluntary for a better pay and designation in the office.

Violence against young widows has also been on a rise in India. Most often they are cursed for their husband’s death and are difficult to get proper food and clothing. They are not allowed for second marriage in most of the family, especially in rural areas. There have been cases of molestation and rape attempts of women by other family members or someone in the neighbourhood. Sometimes, married women are even sexually coerced by their husband themselves against their will. They are brutally beaten and tortured for not conceiving a male child. Incidents like, ripping off a woman’s womb for killing the female foetus when she disagrees for abortion have also come to light especially in rural areas. Female foeticide and infanticide continue to be a rising concern.

Legally the age of marriage is usually lower for females as compared to males. In many countries, the minimum level of marriage with parental consent is considerably decreased. Some of the countries allow marriage at sixteen and below with parental consent.

Dowry Related Violence

The practice of dowry has persisted and driven many women to suicide. The causes of death in the women who died were: Burns 46 percen, drowning 36 percent, 25 percent of them were childless and 22 % mother had only female children.

Death due to dowry related problems is increased today. More than 5000 women’s are killed every year by their in-laws and life partner, who burn them in “accidental” kitchen fires if their ongoing demands for dowry before and after marriage are not met.

Every day five women are burned and many more burns cases go unreported. The reason of such type of violence like dispute highest property, physically injure, emotional abusing by family member , conflict arising during a religious ceremony, jealousy, financial status of other family and inter-caste marriage etc. This form of violence is common in many states like, Punjab, Haryana,Andhra Pradesh etc.

The effective interventions to end violence against women

Increasing women’s agency and mobilising women to come together to know and claim their rights is critical in combating violence. This includes providing women-only safe spaces, supporting ladies to become financially independent, providing training on rights and supporting women to take leadership positions. In the countries and projects studied all of these contributed to shifts in gender roles at the individual, household and community levels.

Challenge attitudes, norms and behaviours
Empower women and girls ,
Community-based
Promote self-led change
Make a long-term commitment to communities
Gain support of traditional and religious
Leadership include men and women
Increases awareness and understanding of the issue among government officials
Supports women’s access to comprehensive services.

Nearly half of the women leave their family immediately after first few atrocious attacks and try to become self-dependent. Their survival becomes difficult and painful when they have to work hard for earning two meals a day.

Many such women come under rescue of women welfare organizations like:
Women Welfare Association of India (WWAI),
Affus Woman Welfare Association (AWWA),
Woman’s Emancipation and Development Trust (WEDT).

Violence Against women what has been done Domestic legal remedies in India

Article14 : Guarantees to all citizens equality before law and equal protection of laws.

Under Article 15(3): For the advancement of women and children state is empowered to make special provisions eg: reservation of seat ,employments

Article 21:Guarantees right to life ,that means to live with human dignity.

Under 73rd amendment: women have been given 1/3rd reservation in Gram Panchayat and local bodies.

Criminal Procedure Code 1973: Under this a legitimate wife can claim maintenance ,if her husband is living with another women and he has neglected to maintain her Dowry Prohibition Act 1961 :Under this Act, women have been given special rights .If any unnatural death take places of bride within 7 years of her marriage , it is presumed to be dowry death unless proved otherwise . The punishment is imprisonment of not less than 7 years and it can get extended to the remaining period of life

Factories Act 1948: To protect women labours, it is the production given to women labourites that they should not be employed near hazardous machines

Hindu law: Under Hindu law women have given –which were denied to her earlier and right in the ancestral property and father’s self acquired property

Maternity Benefit act 1961-2019

As per this Act , before the delivery women should be given 6 weeks holiday and after the delivery 6weeks
In case of abortion she should be given 6 weeks holiday with pay
After delivery for the production of child ‘s health and until the baby in 15 months old she should be allowed to feed baby twice a day during working hours

Minimum Wages Act 1948.

Women have been given right to claim minimum wages fixed by the Government .Even though women agrees to work for less than the minimum wages she should not be allowed to do it.
To product dignity of women in work places, in the case of vishakha and others vs state of Rajasthan the Hon’ble supreme court has cast duty upon employer to see to t that women work in free and peaceful environment.
In case where women are arrested on the allegation having committed an offence they should be examined by women police only and arrested women should be kept in separate room.
Apart from passing from various laws the government has also extended certain facilities. They are:
In district levels legal services authority has been set-up to extend free legal facilities for needy women.

National Commission for Women

Has been set-up, which makes various recommendations to government for maintaining security of women at all places and bringing necessary constitutional amendments. It also deals with women adults, and family counselling centres.

Police and Health Care

Some specific police plays a major role in handling the domestic violence cases. They want to be treated domestic violence cases as seriously as any other crime. Special training are need to handle domestic violence cases should be imparted to police force. They should be provided specific information regarding support government agencies, network of judiciary. Gender training should be made mandatory in the trainings of the police officers.

There should be a selected wing of police dealing with women’s issues, attached to all police stations and should be excluded from any other duty. Authorities should take steps to identify the Domestic Violence as a community health issue. A crisis support cell needs to be established in all Government and nongovernmental hospitals with a special trained medical social worker for provide good services.

Specific training must be organized for health professionals in order to develop their skills to provide basic support for domestic violence women. Documentation on the prevalence and the health consequences of domestic violence should be undertaken by the concerned government departments, counselling centres, NGOs and health care institutions. Anodal agency should also be set up for the annual consolidation of the documented work and publish the same for wider publicity among the masses for increasing awareness.

Conclusion

In this good topic of “Domestic Violence in India”, we can focus the very importance of life of such a topic. The different causes which can spark the violence within the walls of homes need to be analysed carefully and a wise study of the factors causing the violence are control a family to suffer from domestic violence. The domestic violence may have a far wider and deeper impact of life event than what has been covered in this topic. What is required is to see closely the association of the factors provoking a particular form of domestic violence. If these factors can be controlled more than one form of violence can be controlled from harming an person or our society and India would be a much better place to live in.

References

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