婚姻家庭与法律

双击滚屏，单击停止

Family violence and the politics of silence: A comparative Perspective

	大学生与婚恋

	反家庭暴力研究

	妇女老人与儿童保护

Tulsi Patel
Department of Sociology
University of Delhi

Paper presentation at the International Conference on Contemporary Family Issues, 9-12 October, 2004 at Guangzhou, China
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Family and household
the household at one end and kinship at the other end of the continuum.

It is both a site and interactive association

The family relations are a complex maze of emotions
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socially meaningfully activities

Paper based on data from Bundelkhand
(14 districts of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh in India)

The family’s private sphere differs from the outside public sphere.

Women’s protection and control over their sexuality earns special prestige for the family.

Violence Women Encounter

The National Commission for Women in India in its report for the year 2000 states, ‘Everyday, almost every six hours, somewhere, married at some place, in India, a young woman is being burnt alive or beaten to death or being pushed to commit suicide. Over the past few years, the cases of bride burning has registered a sharp increase through out India’.

Patrivirilocality and authority

Protection and isolation of women may be oppressive in other ways.

Women’s protection and control over their sexuality earns special prestige for the family.

Physical violence on them may be justified as being necessary for their protection

Centrality of marriage, especially for women

Protection and control of women’ s sexuality significant for men and the family
It impacts both the Public sphere and the Private sphere

Living with married daughters is not a preferred practice.

Rural women meet their parents slightly more frequently their urban counter parts.

Those few women respondents who live with parents are outliers.

Questions and background
What are the various forms through which violence brews, surfaces and perpetuates?

What trivializes the varied forms of violence?

Severe beating of the dependent and the weaker is common around 34% of the female.

Centrality of marriage, especially for women
Violence signifies authority
Authority vested in ‘age’ over one’s dependents, wards and apprentices.
Women’s subordination to her superior makes her fair game for beating.
She is openly beaten as a small girl by the parents , less openly and often within the conjugal four walls as a married young woman and still more secretly abused, if it is the case, as an old widowed mother.
Shrouding Violence
Inter-spousal conflict and clash is quite common.

Denial of conflict and violence: about one-fifth of the respondents said there was no clash.

80% clashes and fights happen when tasks are not carried out to the husband’s satisfaction, including other household chores carried out by women.

Let’s see the reasons given for wife beating in the next slide

If any task at home is not carried out as per the husband’s satisfaction

For not carrying out the wishes of the husband

For not taking proper care of the children

For trying to prevent the husband from drinking and other such bad habits

If the wife ignores the husband’s family

If husband is unable to perform outside tasks well

If wife suspects the character of the husband

If husband suspects the character of the wife

If the husband innuendos the wife’s relatives

If the wife ignores the husband’s family

Speaking a lot invites beating by the husband

Responses to beating/abuse
Just as the beating of children and wives is common so is the intervention.
70 to 80% of the respondents said they would try to save a female being beaten.
Not reporting to the police is not indifference or passivity.
It is wise to keep off the police ,private family matters.
Wife beating and scolding are internal matters of the family and are best left alone.

Routinization of violence

Making public private family matters is putting the family’s honour at stake.
Non-recognising family violence enhances the social status of the family.
Silence is a value in itself: a golden daughter-in-law has come, whose voice has never been heard
Violence may reduce with age and birth of son or sons
The hassles involved in dealing with the police. Their casual attitude.

They in turn blame the women and sexually abuse or assault them.

The fear of the police through the word of mouth and mass media.

blaming the victims

Meera recounted the case of a twelve year old girl who was raped
are there two medical examinations conducted on a rape victim?”
“But one has already been conducted in the police station”.
They asked my father to sit outside, once inside they made me repeat every detail of what happened to me.
Now I am being told that I will be medically examined again”.
This victim had NGO support.

Around a quarter of all respondents were of the opinion that women of all ages are vulnerable to rape violence, while to the remaining women are especially vulnerable until the end of their reproductive age .

men aged 25 to 40 usually commit rape

women of all ages are vulnerable to rape violence, especially vulnerable until the end of their reproductive age
men aged 25 to 40 usually commit rape
rapists are from higher castes (22 to 25%) and from lower castes (4 to 9%), and an insignificant number (.5 to 3%) from middle castes
nexus between caste, wealth and power
quarter offered preventive measures and said girls should be clever
reasons lust, terror and settling family scores brought dishonour to the family of the victim.

Violence and natal kin
Only when women are dead or about to die that their parents break the silence and report the violence
do not feel confident to interfere in their daughter’s conjugal family relations
parents blame their daughters for any imbalance in conjugal relations
cautioned indifference to avoid upsetting the daughter’s in-laws
Her conjugal home is her home and she should not leave it.

Breaking out of violence
Even if a woman returns to her parental home, it is she who loses.
A man married another woman or at least started living with her as a wife even when divorce proceedings were on.
Though most OBCs accept divorce as part of their marriage system, only 3 to 7% of the respondents stated so report and emulate higher caste customs.
Lower castes, attempts at Sanskritisation affect women more adversely than the men their freedom to challenge violence against them is seen .
Acknowledgement
The study was supported by OXFAM-LUCKNOW.
Thank you!

印度德里大学社会学系主任杜西教授在家庭杂志主办国际家庭问题研讨会上的发言。

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