One in three women faces some form of violence in her lifetime: Lakshmi Puri
PremiumPuri speaks on empowering women and how quotas will help break gender-based stereotyping of division of work
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New Delhi: United Nations assistant secretary general Lakshmi Puri, who is also the deputy executive director, UN Women—an organization that espouses gender equality and women’s empowerment—says reservations for women in legislature, judiciary and the police force will help break gender-based stereotyping of division of work.
In an interview, Puri, who joined the UN in 2002 after 28 years with the Indian Foreign Service, also said India should not be singled out as an unsafe country for women; violence against women is a global problem with one in three women facing some form of violence in their lifetime. Edited excerpts:
In a statement recently you said if women are put down and held back, humanity cannot progress. You had also said words alone wouldn’t end violence against women. What are some of the goals and priorities of UN Women that are bringing change at the grass-roots level?
One of the key motivations for the creation of UN Women was that there was no one single international organization that would be a global advocate on gender equality and women’s empowerment. Global advocacy, being the voice of conscience on gender equality and women’s empowerment issues around the world, is one of our strong suits. That has an impact at the global, national, regional and at the grass-roots level as well.
Reaching the grass-roots level on advocacy is the leap we have to make. Because unlike other issues, in case of gender equality and women’s empowerment, the whole project is about mindset change, bringing about structural changes in the way that societies for centuries have discriminated against women.
Since the creation of UN Women, gender equality and women’s issues have become centre stage in so many arenas of development. Somehow, women’s issues were seen as some kind of a social issue to be relegated to a secondary consideration and add-on to other policies. Today, gender equality is seen as both a key enabler and beneficiary of sustainable development.
We have mobilized governments and inter-governmental consensus around having a stand-alone, dedicated, comprehensive, transformative goal on gender equality as a sustainable development goal, new generation goal in the future framework...we will achieve gender equality and women’s empowerment by 2030. Ending discriminatory laws, practices, measures is one of the targets. Then adopting special measures and laws that promote equality.
Gender inequality and gender violence seem to be a growing concern around the world. To what do you attribute this growing concern?
Even the Nordic countries, which in many ways are seen as a gold standard in gender equality and women’s empowerment, have high incidence of violence against women, particularly intimate partner violence, domestic violence. Globally, one in three women faces some form of violence in her lifetime. It is a global issue and so we have to work and set norms and standards at the global level and then implement it at the national, regional and local level as well. Local government is a very important part. We really need to make a concerted move through prioritizing of this issue and try to reach that goal, maybe we will never be reaching the perfection point, but most certainly we want to aspire to that.
In the post-Nirbhaya (16 December 2012 Delhi gang rape-murder) case, what we saw was an upswelling support and outrage on one side and support for action against violence and action in favour of gender equality (on the other), because the public discourse at that time was not confined only to the issue of violence. It dug deeper into what is the cause. So, more of this comes out and there is a public discourse and the political discourse changes—that’s very important. We have to end centuries-old negative patriarchal constructs that confine women to a secondary role. We need to deconstruct long-held belief systems.
Despite a new, strong law, India’s rape crisis seems to have no end in sight. Can it be ended and how? We have a legislation, but what needs to be done to put an end to what is happening?
We need to have implementation of this legislation in every sense of the term. And to have a clear strategy for prevention, protection, prosecution of perpetrators and access to justice, and provision of multi-sectoral services. And investment in institutions that carry this out. Unless we do this, we are not going to be able to stem this evil tide. We need to make sure that there is awareness. If we just look at the prevention aspect, we have to make sure that right from school, children are taught that boys and girls are equal. The other aspect of ending VAW (violence against women) strategy that needs to be addressed is the protection aspect—how we can have all mahila (women) police stations, how we can have at least one woman in a police station who is authoritative and can respond sympathetically in a gender-sensitive way. Also training police appropriately on this is very critical…also there is a need to make courts gender-sensitive.
There is a lot of talk even among the major political parties for a need for greater representation of women in Parliament. How do we increase women’s representation in Parliament? Is reservation the answer?
Numbers are very important. For example, a country like Rwanda, which was devastated by ethnic war and genocide. Just by sheer necessity, women became very prominent and they now account for 60% of the Parliament...across party lines they have caucused for legislation, for anti-violence, for pro-women and also generally for the larger good of the society. They have been a force of positive change. About how should we do that here, I don’t think we have an easy formula here. It’s not sufficient to have reservation, but it is necessary. It is the first step. Even have reservation in judiciary, police force. Unless you do that, you don’t break that stereotyping of the division of labour. These are men’s spaces...they have to be broken into.
Calling India an unsafe country for women—would you say that this is a fair characterization?
VAW is a global problem. One incident is too many. On one hand we have to recognize there are high levels of VAW in India, but at the same time it should not be singling out of any country or the other in terms of labelling it. It is not about labelling, but addressing the issue. The international community should, in fact, support the efforts of the government and the people of India in the democratic context. Everyone should play a role to bring out the context of everything that happens.
Elizabeth Roche contributed to this story.
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