When Information Minister Hasanul Huq Inu comments that women cannot count on their safety even from the police, the depth of the rot set in society can really be fathomed. A survey conducted by the ActionAid Bangladesh reveals that as high as 81 per cent women are reluctant to seek police help because of fear of further harassment. The objective of the survey is to get an idea of the perception of people on sexual harassment of women in public places and its link to violence against women. With its main focus on women's sexual harassment in urban situation, the survey tried to get a representative picture of gender disparity. Perhaps the choice of urban areas is prompted by the fact that city women are comparatively more educated, engaged in paid jobs and supposed to be enjoying greater liberty than their rural counterparts.
However, the picture that emerges is a grim one. About half of the women surveyed (actual figure is 47.5 per cent) have disclosed that they feel unsafe in public places like markets, streets and public transports and 88 per cent have claimed they were subjected to harassment by pedestrians, passengers of public transports and buyers in markets. What a dreadful situation for women who have to participate in different activities of public life on equal terms! No wonder, therefore, 64 per cent women avoid going out of homes at night and 60 per cent prefer doing so in a group.
Clearly this refers to an overwhelming predatorial instinct in the male members of society. Men and women are biologically different and therefore inquisitiveness for each other is quite natural and rational. But this does in no way approve aggression against each other. As a stronger sex, the male members certainly enjoy a few advantages but to abuse those advantages is to demean one's attributes. Even in rare cases where women are stronger than their male counterparts in a given situation, do the former take recourse to aggression?
In patriarchal society, sexual crime against women is on the rise. With far lower level of education, indigenous and tribal communities have always been free from the scourge of sexual harassment and aggression. At one extreme, women are considered inferior to men simply because the old tradition assigned the job of bread-earning to male members of a family. But this no longer holds true. Women have proved their ability to earn bread for the family in many cases. In this context, village women and teenage girls of poor families in Bangladesh have long broken the taboo by joining hands with male farm labourers and forming the backbone of workforce of the garments industry of the country respectively.
At the other extreme, though, the problem ensues from excessive consumerism as propagated by the market economy. Here women are treated as a commodity and in the entertainment factory they are presented as a sex object with explicit sex appeal. The result is disastrous for uninitiated young generation. In the indigenous communities, natural reverence for the matriarchal head has enough to develop a relationship based on esteem and tolerance for each other's obvious separate individualism between sexes. However in societies in transition with a loose cultural mooring, members of the young generation, particularly those hailing from poor and uncultured families, discover themselves in a neither-here-nor-there situation.
When their education suffers but nonetheless their exposure brings them face to face with reality on the one hand and on the other their yearnings for many temptations strike them off balance, they embark either on destroying themselves out of frustration or on a desperate mission to satisfy their cravings. These are the potential libidinous aggressors who are compelled to commit all kinds of crimes as attendant ills. This explains why 40 per cent teenage girls, one of the highest in the world, are falling victim to sexual harassment in this country. Decades ago, such behaviour was foreign to most youths and grown-ups. Now there is no age bar on either side -the aggressor and the victim. As young as three to nine years' old baby girls are preyed on by 40 to 60 years' old men -quite a few of them notably are teachers in 'religious' educational institutions.
The information minister has felt there is a need for gender-sensitivity training for the law enforcement agencies. While this can be of some help, the fear remains that without exorcising the genie of sexuality society cannot make strides on the road to gender equality. The precept that charity begins at home should be practised right in every family. But this is not to be. However the government can tag conditions of women's better treatment in families where they are under programmes like social safety net. In the same way, girls' stipend and similar other programmes can be brought under similar package and close monitoring by the local bodies such as the union parishad's concerned standing committee.
To make the subject acceptable to the general mass, though, textbooks right from the primary classes should be used as an instrument for instilling in students the value of gender sensitivity. Lessons thus imparted will foster mutual respect in boys and girls and this will bring them up as better persons when they grow up. Such exercises will go a long way to eradicate sexual harassment and discrimination from society.
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