 some, having no voice is among the most intolerable. Heroines the world over who struggle to be free and to make their voices heard, even when confronting lethal consequences. Malala was shot because she voiced the right to education for women in Pakistan, and Nirbhaya in India was brutally raped and murdered because she expressed her right to travel freely. For any known story, there are millions of lesser known cases such as Khusboo. This young woman in Uttar Pradesh, India received an education—a gender-based education that made empowerment the central goal—and she thereby found the courage to voice her right to complete high school. She resisted her father’s attempt to marry her off at 16 and for that she was beaten mercilessly and cast out of his house. To share her story and her voice, she recently made an award-winning autobiographical video that showed the abuse she faced and the triumph of holding up the diploma she earned.
On International Women’s Day, let us celebrate women’s triumphs, but let us also consider what more can be done to confront the reality that so many women face. The following are strategies that show promise in India and can be replicated and scaled.
Strategy #1: Self-Organize and Challenge the Status Quo
Advocacy campaigns that demand gender equality, examine gender norms and address the inconsistency of patriarchal structures in democratic societies are critical and can be highly effective. On February 14, 2013, Valentine’s Day, millions of women and many men rose up against gender-based violence across the globe. In India, thousands of people of all ages and gender took to the streets with banners, slogans, songs, street plays and dances, celebrating women and supporting their right to control their lives, their right to a safe world, their right to a voice. The India’s Daughters Campaign represents a civil society effort along these lines and has used mobile technology to engage and organize youth in the most rural areas, including the students at 28 girls’ schools.
Campaigning as a part of the ongoing public outcry following the rape and death of Nirbhaya has resulted in the constitution of a high-level committee to review laws related to sexual crimes. The committee produced The Justice Verma report in record-breaking time. The report makes several recommendations to the government including judicial, political, police and military reforms. The committee also recommended that the Parliament promulgate a special bill of rights for women to ensure a life of safety and dignity, including in marriage. For the first time there is mention of “sexual autonomy” for women, and there is some recognition of marital rape as a crime. Severe punishments for rape and for all sexual offences are recommended, including stalking and sexual harassment in the work place. The committee writes that all marriages should be registered, which will make it possible to identify and prevent child marriages, which are widely prevalent in India. In addition, police should be subject to punitive action for not registering cases of rape and other sexual crimes. Jody Williams, civil rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner for her work on the Campaign to Ban Landmines, states “impunity” as the single biggest reason that violence against women continues to exist in such large numbers. Accordingly, the Justice Verma Report tries to make the law more responsive.
People in India are demanding that the issue of women’s safety be taken seriously by the government, and the state has, in this instance, responded. Their actions pave the way for further progress. For instance, a recent budget declaration allocates 200 million USD for the “safety of women” and civil society organizations are now organizing to understand how the Ministry of Women and Children will spend this money. The fact that the elections are only a year away could be a factor in government’s responsiveness to civil society demands. Even so, women are being taken seriously as a political constituency to be recognized and considered.
The movement that led 