“Promoting Women’s Rights to Life and Gender Equality by Combating Domestic Violence through Gender Sensitive Men”
The Indian Constitution promotes and protects women’s rights and guarantees fundamental rights such as equality, freedom of speech and association, right to information, right to life and liberty but realization of these rights has always been a challenge. If a woman is facing domestic violence or gender discrimination it is not only violation of her rights to safety but against her dignity too. In terms of domestic violence, how vulnerable life of a woman could be in a disaster/crisis situation, was clearly visible during the pandemic lockdown. Sometimes, men break out their frustration on their wife, children, or other women of family, which is completely illegal and inhumane. Considering the masculine mind-set of men this issue gets further provoked and seldom have we seen any effort has been done to sensitize men against gender stereotypes and law against domestic violence.
Although around the world most of the cities were in lockdown to stop the spread of COVID-19. Owing to which the vulnerable groups such as women and children faced increased cases of domestic violence at an unexpected rate. But, In India, women were facing a double burden of pandemic – The fear of COVID-19 contagion and the imminent danger of being a victim of domestic violence. India, a country with huge population lacks in the proper institution or the system to curb the problem of domestic violence against the women. Prior to the pandemic, there were counselling centers to reach, guide and help the victims of domestic violence. But during the lockdown which was imposed all over the nation to control the spread of covid-19 most of the services were not available, which included the counselling centers supporting the victims, which in turn lead to the grave and fatal consequences for the survivors of domestic injustice.
To fill in the gap of absence of counselling centers, German project was initiated to address women’s rights, issue, and gender-based violence. This project aimed at promoting the idea that men can be a partner of change to combat it and making society a just place for women and children. The project had developed a pool of trained Samta Nyayo Sahabhagi, an equality justice worker who was explained that it is the need of the hour to work on the mindset of men apart from women sensitization which would ultimately lead to women empowerment.
MARG (Multiple Action Research Group) via this project also developed IEC materials demystifying the gender sensitization awareness workshops and kits in English as well in Hindi, which were available in Odia and Malayalam. This enabled the Samta Nyaya Sahabhagi to constructively take their work forward in their own districts, at the state level as well as nationally and at the larger policy change level.
Samta Nyaya Sahabhagi i.e., equality justice partner, the Gender Sensitive Men, were trained to work on gender equality and to combat domestic violence against women. They were vital actors who ensured that the States met its commitments to promote and protect women rights. They also ensured access to justice and sustainable development for all. Promotion of women’s right to life and gender equality also contributed to the broader goals of upholding human rights, promoting democracy, good governance, sustainable development and respect for the rule of law.
Samta Nyaya Sahabhagi: the equality justice partner had collectively worked to foster gender equality and to combat domestic violence in four states: Haryana, Odisha, Bihar and Kerala which helped in assessing the grass root level status of gender equality across the country in terms of socio-economic diversity in India. In this project, out of these four states, one district was identified for the purpose of spreading sensitization through Samta Nyaya sahabhagi. Those districts were Karnal (in Haryana), Cuttack (Odisha), Begusarai (Bihar) and Wayanad (Kerala) respectively and the surrounded rural areas. The whole purpose of this project was to intervene in the abovementioned identified target group to analyse the social diversities and the situation of women across the country in terms of socio-economic diversity in India.
MARG with this project have created 100 Samta nyaya sahabhagis, the equality justice partners, in four identified states, who advocated gender equality in the society to combat domestic violence and promoted women’s right to life, dignity, gender equality and social justice in the society. It was estimated that the research study had benefited around 5000 direct beneficiaries who were termed as Community justice volunteers (CSVS) and more than 10,000 indirect beneficiaries, which ultimately resulted in creating a network of gender sensitive male in the identified states and civil society.
