WUNRN
NEW DELHI, June 15 (TrustLaw) -
South Asia may boast a number of women leaders and be home to cultures that
revere motherhood and worship female deities, but many women live with
the threat of appalling violence and without many basic rights.
From forced marriages in Afghanistan and "honour killings" in
Pakistan to foeticide in India and trafficking in Nepal, South Asian women face
a barrage of dangers, experts say, but add growing awareness, better laws and
economic empowerment are bringing a slow change in attitudes.
"It is true that South Asians don't, in general, value their daughters,
which for instance is apparent in the dwindling gender ratio in
"Domestic violence is rampant and various forms of sexual assault often
remain an untold horror that women endure. To a large part it is cultural,
stemming from a feudal tradition where sons were the inheritors as well as
caregivers in old age.
But since then, it has become
embedded in attitude, where women are simply considered
inferior." Ganguly cites the high-profile case of Mukhtaran Mai -- a
Pakistani women gang-raped by 14 men in 2002 to settle a matter of village
honour -- as a sign of how age-old attitudes have not
changed.
Six men were sentenced to death for Mai's rape, but earlier this year
lives in fear that those who raped her will return.
Such injustices against women
in the region are widespread, experts say.
In insurgency-wracked
While in
"SILENT
KILLERS"
Afghanistan, Pakistan and India are in the top five countries deemed most
dangerous for women in a poll of gender experts carried out by TrustLaw, a
legal news service run by Thomson Reuters Foundation (www.trust.org).
Yet the region has an impressive record of women reaching the highest political
echelons.
In
There is also Bangladesh's Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, Pakistan's former
Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto who was assassinated in 2007 and Sri Lanka's
Sirimavo Bandaranaike, who became the world's first elected woman prime
minister when she took office in 1960, to name a few.
But generally speaking this part of the world remains conservative and
patriarchal and progress to protect ordinary women has been poor.
Every three minutes an act of violence is perpetrated against a female in
attacks and dowry deaths are "just the tip of the iceberg", say
gender experts.
But violence is not the only problem. Women also face discrimination and continue
to have little say over their lives.
More women die in childbirth in South Asia -- 500 for every 100,000 live births
-- than any other place in the world except sub-Saharan
cannot read or write, according to the United Nations.
These and other statistics indicate less visible discriminations such as a lack
of access to resources including finances, land, inheritance rights, education,
employment, justice, healthcare and nutrition.
"I believe that the most widespread and silent killer of women and girls
is a combination of poverty and the low status awarded to women," says
Maria Joao Ralha, team leader for South
Asia at the European Commission's humanitarian aid arm (ECHO).
"Consequently women and girls are always the last to eat at home. They
will most of the time not have enough to eat. They are more likely to become
ill and often there's no money to take them to the doctor and they are more
likely to die early."
"MISSING
GIRLS"
Experts say attitudes are slowly changing, partly due to the region's growing
economy, the advent of satellite television in even remote communities,
exposure to western values and the percolation of social benefits to rural
women as countries like India notch up near-double-digit growth.
But the dangers to women remain starkly evident and in some countries the risks
start even before birth.
A major issue confronting the region is the skewed sex ratio and the increasing
number of "missing" girls, a euphemism for the murder of female
foetuses. Recent studies suggest up to 12 million girls were deliberately
aborted in the last three decades in
The discovery of nine female foetuses dumped in a drain in western
place, implementation on the ground is very weak.
There is a lack of political will, money and human resources for gender
policies and laws.
"It's not enough to have a law. The implementation needs to be resourced
well enough for it to work," says Mona Mehta, who is leading Oxfam's
"We Can" campaign against violence against
women in
"Also, a lot depends on
the attitudes of local officials charged to implement (change). They come from
the same
communities, have the same
patriarchal biases that the community has ... they don't think it's important,
they don't think it's relevant."