Sexual Harassment in Karachi: Whose Fault?

Amrita

You, Ashutosh, and catfischblues have emphasized the important role of more direct, individualistic approaches in solving the problem of female harassment.

That is as it should be; all change must begin at the level of individuals.

At the same time, we must acknowledge, understand, and change broader structural conditions of rules, regulations, culture, tradition and religion. These create the key conditions, opportunities, costs and incentives for different behavioral choices.

Anybody who emphasizes one while not understanding or deliberating pushing the other off the agenda for entirely personal reasons is no friend of change.

Petition to repeal the Hudood Ordinance:

http://www.petitiononline.com/WFH1/petition.html

Corina

May be we need some real education - history, philosophy and literature. Subjects that are considered useless.

We are producing truck loads of profession orientated junkies - engineers, technologists, bankers, software wallas etc etc. Or plain simple religious extremetists.

Surprisingly, the illetrates, armed only with common sense & folk lore, are better than the above semi-educated class.

nhk

#60 by amrita

[ps - vagabond78: there`s plenty of female infanticide/foeticide in Andhra Pradesh.]

Nope. Cases of female infanticide were rampant in Tamil Nadu till a few years ago and not Andhra Pradesh. That stopped when Jayalalitha announced a scheme where some money would be deposited in a newborn female child`s name and at the age of 18, she would receive a sum of a lakh rupees or so.

kaal - its not a question of what A_G had to do in his childhood. it`s a question of the power each of us carries in society. he`s absolutely right when he puts the onus on parents. you have a kid living in your house for eighteen years, make those years count. kids can understand the diff between wrong and right, all you need to do is point out early on what is wrong and what is right. most of them are then capable of judging on their own... but you won`t bring up responsible adults by winking at their faults and depending on them to pick up the norms of civilized behavior by osmosis.

i`m an indian woman and i`ve had to deal with plenty of harassment on the streets, in theatres, in shops, in malls, in clubs, in pubs, you name it - and this has happened all over india, urban and rural areas. and what is more, i dont know a single woman who has never had to deal with it.

ps - vagabond78: there`s plenty of female infanticide/foeticide in Andhra Pradesh.

kaalchakra #56,
Seems like A_G wants to be politically correct.

Women who belonged to the privileged socio-economic backgrounds (in India) seldom suffer either at home or the work-place, in the cities these days. In the smaller towns, and I have lived in several much of my adult life, I find that television has given young girls the confidence that previous generations didn`t, to speak their minds. Perhaps it`s misconstrued as being precocious, but in time, the rebels amongst the girls will lead the way to a more open society. We really need good programs on all mass media to change the mindsets of those that aren`t `backward/fundamentalist` but not sure how to proceed with the choices the women of the family want to make. All in all, with more women joining the workforce, things are changing.

#53 by Ashutosh_Gandhi

Pls dont generalise when it comes to India. Female infanticide,foeticide is a north indian problem; places like punjab, haryana, rajasthan, delhi and gujrat.

In the absence of common culture we`ll rule that out. Let`s look at parental education: You say your friends never received moral lessons from their parents. You didnt tell us about your parents. Well I did. ``Speak truth, Dont steal, Respect elders and teachers (Guru brahma, guru vishnu..), make friends and never hurt others, dont throw food etc etc`` - thats all. They didnt tell me anything about rape, eveteasing.. never. And these lessons stop when child reach adolescence. You cant teach moral science to a 17yr old; I presume if a 10yr old teases a girl you cant call it eveteasing.
You missed role of the school so i`ll include it here. In my school till abt 7th std, girls and boys are made to sit alternatively next to each other. Two boys or two girls cant sit together on a bench. In high school of course you can sit wherever you want with whoever. We didnt have sex education then, now many schools conduct sex education classes.

In India, girls dont play with barbie dolls, they play with boys. You have six yr olds playing kajol-SRK and respective parents correcting their dance steps. I have friends who`ve married their girlfriends from 6th std!!. Such is the kind of healthy intermingling encouraged in India.

I`m south Indian who grew up in north. So I can say with some confidence that women
are given lot more respect in south than in the north.

Ashutosh_Gandhi

You required a talk with your parents to know that harassing women wasn`t a good thing?

Any more of your friends were confused about where it lay on the moral spectrum?


You are from India, right?

Re: # 56
kalachakra,
At the age of 28 sure I dont need to learn that eve teasing is wrong but at an age of 8 when you are influenced so much by your friends and some of whom are older for sure a talk with parents will go a long way.

A-G:

well said!

sorry about the author`s experiences

Urban life by nature is impersonal. It offers folks anonymity which encourages people to indulge in things that might not normally do.

Harasment of women is equally a problem in both india and pakistan. I will not agree with anyone saying that women are less harassed in India than Pakistan. In india the biggest crime committed against women even before she is born. Female infanticide should also be covered under women harasment. Reasons like culture, religion are blamed for female harassment. I would also blame this problem on parents. How many of you have been told by their parents that eve teasing is wrong? The morals come from religion but also parents are important player when kids learn about morality, right or wrong. Without proper education from parents boys go into the habit of eve teasing. This slowly becomes physical teasing and could lead to rapes, murders, throwing acid, etc.
Dont just blame culture or religion. Parents play a huge part in childs development and I dont know any of my friend who had coversation with their parents about wrong or right in terms of morality. They learn from other when they see or hear about those acts. Take responsibility and teach your kids about morality. In many family father is hurting mother either physically or emotionally. The child at home learns that its allright to harm a female.

jay

origami;)

tea?

Re:catfischblues

The real reason for this problem is the large-scale segregation of sexes in conservative countries. People develop warped notions about the other sex. They never get the chance to interact with the opposite sex and observe that they are also human beings made of flesh and blood. Instead they have absurd ideas of what the opposite sex wants.

Have you ever seen kids who attend same sex schools like all boys schools or all girls schools? They display weird, desperate behavior towards the opposite sex. Compare that with kids who attend co-educational schools and have grown up interacting with the opposite sex. They develop a much more relaxed and comfortable attitude towards the opposite sex. The same phenomenon gets maginified at the societal level, if the sexes are segregated.

Conservative countries are so obsessed with sexual purity that they do not realize the unnatural impact this causes on people. Since Pakistan is more conservative than India, you do not see the extreme behavior that you are describing in India. Still in places like Punjab and Delhi, there is a lot of eve teasing.

Pak mindset

Every time an educated pakistani like romair and temporal state that hoodood is due to zia they are in support of the hoodood. They refuse to accept that zia died more than 25 years ago, all of the later rulers including the present much respected highly educated mushy refused to change it. He is a person who changed the pak constituion whole sale, but will not touch hoodood, because like romair and the temporals he also beleives that he can do nothing, it is all due to zia.

As long as the spineless educated of pakistan identify the root cause of hoodood, there will be no change. More marathons will be banned. What the pakistanis have to accept is that the social values are evolving on a path set by TNT, a doctrine of hatred. As long as that is not changed the trend will continue. The fundamental premise of TNT is that it is all due to the others, initially it was due to hindus, then ue to ahmadis, then due to americans supporting jihad, then due to zia. The premis of TNt is that muslims cannot live with others of any value system other than that is in the book.

TNT systemetised and gave political dimension to intolerance. remove that picture from the walls.