GENDER VIOLENCE AND LEGAL FRAMEWORI l IN INDIA
THE STORY OF SEX SELECTION
Introduction
These lines from a letter written by one of India’s first woman doctors
and fe foremother Anandibai )oshee to her husband C•opa1rao J shee, reveal
the te relationship between the patriarchal order of society, laws and
women .Writing
back as 1884 Anandibai raises two very signi6cant points abriut gender
vio The first point that she raises is the normalizing of the everyday violence
that face and suffer in silence and the second is be gunmen of the lack of
laws to this form of violence against women. The interrogation of the
State and regarding the position and status of women iii India
continues to be framed Aiiandibai’ s questions about gender violence and
the general lack of protectiv progressive legal framewrirks.
The ubiquity of gender violence and the lack and necessity of
progressive address it has been the primary focus of the women’s
movement in India, esp since the l970s.While it would be wrong to view
the worrien’ s movement in In a monolithic whole, the engagement with
framing laws and holding the accountable for addressing violence
against women in society has been a co feature of the multiple variants of
feminist activism arid women’s movements in The dowry murder of
Taivinder Kaur in 1979, the custodial rape ol Mathura years earlier, the
gang-rape of a Gothic (rural social worker) Bhanwari Drvi years later, the
iminolation of Roop Kanwar in 1987, the rise of sex selective ab from the
1920s onwards and the increase in the trafficking of young girls for
polyandry or for sexual exploitation from the 1980s onwards, became
rallying for the women’s movement in India to pressurise the State for
progressiv protective legal frameworks.
The resulting legislations may not have led to significant changes in
the realities but to a certain extent it has led to a limited recognition of the
prevale gender violence in India. The social and cultural acceptance of
gender viole
normal and everyday has come to be at least ‘mildly questioned’ and a
persistent women’s movement continues to push the envelope furtheT.
Pointing out to the importance of laws in addressing gender violence, Ratna
Kapur says, “Feminist engagement with law can be seen as an etc:ort to
transform the meaning of equality, gender and gender difference. It is part of an
effort to challenge dominant meanings. and the constructio:o of women therein
and supplant these meanings with alternative visions about women’s roles and
identities in be WOTld. Law’S TOIL should be
reconceptualised as including one of pro€esS. It *7 *e the process of engaging
with law • of litigation, of Taw reform, of legal literacy — that will offer the most to
feminist struggles, and that iriay be able to mci st empower women .... law remains
ari important
site of struggle. law has been and can continue to be a site of discursive struggle
with
a subversive potential.... It is a terrain of contested meanings, where the women’s
movement has won important victories, particularly in condemning violence against
women. Campaigns for law reform have provided opportunities for women to raise
public awareness about issues that were previously unrecognised anct/or simply
accepted as a natural, unspoken part of life.”'
In this essay one specific form of gender violence will be discussed with an
attempt to understand the complexity, the contradictions and the challenges in
adctressing gender violence through laws. The methodology to understand the
issue of gender violence by feminists has been the life-cycle approach. Popularly
termed as violence
:from the womb to the tomb, the minus forms of gender violence are
chronologically arranged in terms of the stages of life of a woman beginning
with sex selectiori/sex selective abortion to female infanticide, child marriage,
child abuse, trafficking, doiliestic violerice, dowry harassment and murder, rape,
sexual harassment, arid ending with old age abuse .This essay will be mainly
examining the idea of sex selection as gender violence and the law - the PCPNDT
Act which addresses it. The definition and nature of gender violence, be reGsitiag
of the public —private divide and the critical examination of the close
interactions and transactions between the women’s movement and the State
on this will endeavc›ur to explore the possibilities and potentialities of
countering gender violence through laws.
DEFINITION, NATURE AND EXTENT OF GENDER VIOLENCE
Put simply, violence refers to acts of aggression or intimidntir›n, the use of
force or the threat of the use of force which has both physical and mental
consequences for the victim. Sangari situates this in the context of gender
violence. ”Violence is a foundational and systemic feature of all contemporary
patriarchies. Women’s consent to patriarchies is often an effect of the
anticipation of violence, or the guarantee of violence: in the last instance — to
ensure obedience. inculcate submission, punish transgression.”’ The wide
definition of violence finds resonance in a hierarchical society based on
exploitative gender relations. It often becomes a tool to socialise family
members according to prescribed norms of behaviour within an overall
perspective of male dominance and control. The family and its operational unit,
the
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