Crimes against women
Recent events in India and Pakistan, in the cases of a schoolgirl shot by Taliban, Mahala Yousafzai, and the medical student who died after a horrific sexual assault in Delhi, highlighted the problem of crimes against women by men in South Asia. Bangladesh was spared in the news, but is certainly not in daily life, writes Dr Tanveer Ahmed
WHEN Bill Gates was asked to speak to an audience once in Saudi Arabia, he looked at the crowd and saw that four-fifths were men and the rest were completely covered with veils on a separate, partitioned side. A member of the audience asked Gates whether it was realistic that Saudi Arabia aimed to be one of the top ten countries in technology by 2010.
Gates’s reply has made him a hero among feminist activists in the Middle East and was recounted by Nicholas Kristof in a New York Times column.
‘Well, if you’re not fully utilising half the talent in the country,’ Gates said, ‘you’re not going to get too close to the Top 10.’
The December 2012 edition of The Economist reports that one of the key reasons that labour market figures have improved in Britain is the increasing participation rate of Bangladeshi and Pakistani women, long regarded as one of the most disadvantaged ethnic groups in Britain.
The article says: ‘Whereas Pakistani and Bangladeshi men have employment rates roughly comparable to black men, the women’s employment rate is around half that of other ethnic-minority women. Lack of a second income is the main reason why more than half of Bangladeshi and Pakistani families live below the official poverty line, and why so many rely on welfare payments to top up their income.’
But in recent years there has been a proportionately greater increase in this group of women seeking work, partly related to tax incentives, greater job insecurity for men and improved educational outcomes, particularly for Bangladeshis born in the United Kingdom.
A marker I often use when I visit institutions in Bangladesh is whether I am served by a woman or not. It is an instant signal to how modern an organisation is.
For example, in the average restaurant or upscale hotel, it is unlikely a well-dressed, attractive, articulate woman will be the person greeting and helping you. This is in spite of there being no shortage of such women in Bangladesh. They are unlikely, due to a combination of stigma, logistics and fears about working at night, to accept a service job.
I remember being taken by my friend, Shakil Ahmed, who is head of news and current affairs at the new, dynamic television network Ekkator, to his workplace in Baridhara and being impressed at almost half the workers being female, including some of the highest positions in management.
The contrast when the same women arrive in a country like Australia could not be more marked. Forced to fend for themselves and facing huge student fees, they quickly take up jobs that they wouldn’t be seen dead doing in Bangladesh, such as washing dishes in restaurants, cleaning houses or serving customers in retail outlets.
It is evidence that when social stigma is removed, the women are freed to make choices as they please.
In an article on the website World Pulse, Zahida Khan writes that she has been a victim of verbal abuse, sexual harassment and outright manhandling right throughout her entire life as a young female. She also alludes to figures alleged by the Bangladeshi women’s lawyers association that close to 90 per cent of Bangladeshi women claim to be similar victims.
The figures are not so farfetched in my opinion. In my Sydney practice, I regularly treat Bangladeshi patients who have recently migrated to Australia. I have had more than a handful of people who were victims of sexual abuse as children.
Much like anywhere else, the perpetrators were inevitably family members and it was something the victims never spoke about again. But the traumatic memories were not so easily erased, and would rear their head in the form of nightmares, difficulties sustaining relationships and greater anxieties that often limited their achievements in work and study.
While sexual abuse is common in all cultures, it is more likely in cultures where large extended families often live together in relatively small dwellings, where sexuality is largely repressed and women are easily shamed with regards to matters sexual. Bangladesh satisfies all these characteristics. When you add problems such as regular hartals (general strikes) that keep people indoors, the problem is magnified further.
Recent events in India and Pakistan, in the cases of a schoolgirl shot by Taliban, Mahala Yousafzai, and the medical student who died after a horrific sexual assault in Delhi, highlighted the problem of crimes against women by men in South Asia. Bangladesh was spared in the news, but is certainly not in daily life.
As someone who is a UN ambassador for White Ribbon Day in Australia, a programme that aims to help men change the environment in which they live, especially amongst their fellow males, and thereby improve the treatment of women, trends such as greater work participation by Bangladeshi women actually increase the risk of more violence against females.
Violence or sexual assault is an act to assert power, usually when men feel that it might be threatened. As horrible as it is to consider, the rise in prominent sexual assault cases is likely to occur as a part of the journey for better women’s rights and participation.
Dr Tanveer Ahmed is a Sydney-based psychiatrist and author.
drtahmed@gmail.com.
Link requested by Tanveer Ahmed | original source at http://newagebd.com/detail.php?date=2013-02-01&nid=38597#.UQs0uI6UA4Y
