HOWELL, New Jersey — In 2018, India was ranked the world’s most dangerous country for women, and abuse from partners has played no small role in this ranking. Domestic violence in India is on the rise. While 37% of women in India report abuse from a domestic partner, only 2% of these women pursue institutional help.
Rates of Domestic Violence in India
The rates of domestic violence in India have only been exacerbated under COVID-19 lockdowns. Gender-based violence has been a “shadow pandemic” with a jarring 48% rise in incidences. Lockdown saw the highest number of cases reported in a decade. Unfortunately, these numbers only account for formally reported incidences, and many instances of emotional, sexual and physical abuse remain unreported and hidden. This lack of reporting is caused by many reinforcing factors.
Four Reasons Why Domestic Violence is Underreported
- Education and awareness. Primarily, culture teaches boys and girls from a young age that abuse is permissible in marriages. This maintains strong roots in adulthood. In a 2016 survey, 52% of women and 42% of men answered that it was justified for a husband to beat his wife. Beyond that, awareness of emotional and sexual abuse is even lower.
- Stigma. Women who report abuse from a spouse are oftentimes shamed, ostracized and blamed for the abuse. Many women who suffer from domestic violence in India have even reported being mocked and belittled at police stations and hospitals when trying to report or get treatment for abuse. Because of this, many women recant their stories to avoid shame.
- Financial dependence. Many women are also financially dependent on their abusers and have little to no options outside of the marriage. Children and other domestic entanglements further make escaping abuse difficult, as they stigmatize women leaving their abusers as poor mothers or wives.
- Lack of legal support. Abusers are often able to bend the law and find advantageous loopholes, especially with decent financial resources. This, coupled with a lack of consistency and clarity in a lot of laws about domestic violence in India, prevents proper enforcement. Many women are also unable to pay for a lawyer throughout lengthy, inefficient court proceedings. On top of that, the law offers little to no legal protection for rape that occurs within marriage.
SNEHA’s Work
The Society for Nutrition, Education, and Health Access (SNEHA) is an organization working in Mumbai, India to support women at every stage of life. It promotes women’s health and ending cyclical poverty, primarily through fighting domestic violence. They work alongside communities to stop violence against women, as well as the stigma surrounding reporting.
They also seek to make sure government entities, police and health care officials are properly trained to handle domestic violence and respect survivors. SNEHA has provided counseling for 16,328 women, trained 7,915 police officers how to support victims of abuse and taught 10,722 health care professionals how to properly treat survivors.
The Little Sister App
One of SNEHA’s more recent projects is The Little Sister app. This app aims to be an accessible, efficient way to teach young women how to pick up on initial signs of abuse in their community and properly report it.
These trained women record videos of abuse or file reports through the app, which then contacts SNEHA, the proper authorities or healthcare workers to help a woman in need. Users of the app can choose to either record a video (which instantly enables location tracking through the app) or file formal reports detailing the gender-based violence they witnessed. The app has been successful in spreading awareness about preliminary and continued signs of domestic violence, as well as uplifting women to help other women.
The sense of community given to women in need from other women using the app will encourage victims to seek institutional help. The app aims to give their stories credibility to police and authorities. The women trained through The Little Sister App bolster the voices of survivors and encourage and support them when no one else will.
When 52% of women in India still condone domestic violence, the kind of awareness and support garnered by this app for women being abused is crucial to fighting domestic violence in India. It helps spread awareness about domestic violence and encourages more women to speak out against it. It also helps victims know they are not alone in seeking to end their abuse.
Ultimately, the intervention and support this app fosters are saving women’s lives by spreading awareness about gender-based violence. It also gives survivors rare reinforcement from other women in their community to stand up to their abusers.
– Jaya Patten
Photo: Flickr