Insult After Assault: The two-finger test is not only unscientific but also degrading for the victim. The demand to ban it mounts
February 1, 2013
Two days after she was raped, the 18-year-old lay spread-eagled on a white sheet at a public hospital in Delhi. Her salwar was removed by a nurse and the kameez bunched up above her navel. Two male doctors arrived. She went stiff as, without a word, they started examining her pelvic region. All of a sudden, two gloved fingers went deep inside her vagina. She cried out in pain. Silent and aloof, they merely wiped their fingers on glass slides and left. They had neither asked her permission nor explained to her why they did what they did: The two finger test (TFT).
Widely performed across India, TFT checks the elasticity of a victim's vagina. Going by the number of fingers admitted, a doctor gives his opinion on whether a woman is "habituated to sex" or not. There is no law in India that says doctors need to do it. The Indian Evidence Act, amended in 2002, forbids reference to past sexual history in rape. In 2003, the Supreme Court called TFT "hypothetical" and "opinionative". Most countries have scrapped it as archaic, unscientific and invasive of privacy and dignity. Sharp criticism has come from the Justice J.S. Verma Committee, which submitted its report on criminal laws to protect women on January 23. The report says, "Sexual assault is a legal issue and not a medical diagnosis." The size of the vaginal opening has no bearing on a case of sexual assault, it emphasises. "The two-finger test must not be conducted," it concludes. The report also proposes barring doctors from giving observations on whether a victim is "habituated" to sexual intercourse or not.
There is protest in the air. 'Prohibit the two-finger test' is a slogan a thousand angry voices chanted on the streets of Delhi hours after the Republic Day parade on January 26. Signature campaigns are doing the rounds. "The Government needs to prohibit the degrading practice," urges Kavita Krishnan, national secretary of the All India Progressive Women's Association.
"There is no scientific basis to this test," says forensic expert and lawyer Dr Indrajit Khandekar of Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences, Sevagram, in Wardha, Maharashtra. Results change according to the size of fingers, he explains. "There is also no defined scale for measuring vaginal laxity." Old tears on the hymen and vagina also do not prove that a girl or woman is "habituated to sex". According to Dr N. Jagadeesh, forensic expert and jurist at Vydehi Institute of Medical Sciences, Bangalore, these can be caused by exercise, physical activity, injury, tampons or fingers, apart from sex. "Some women also have very elastic hymens that do not easily rupture during sex," he says.
At the root of the problem is a colonial legal relic that defies logic in the new millennium. Pratiksha Baxi, who teaches at the Centre for Law and Governance in JNU, says, "The French medical jurist, L. Thoinot devised the test around 1898 to tell 'true virgins' from 'false virgins', a term for women with elastic hymens that allow penetration without tear." In India, almost every textbook on medical jurisprudence has blindly promoted TFT, including A Text Book of Medical Jurisprudence and Toxicology by Jaising P. Modi, one of the most-read forensic primers.
Tool for character assassination
While medical evidence is crucial in rape trials, defence lawyers use such textbooks and doctor's comments to make a case that the victim is of dubious character. "They ask in what position she was raped, for how long, if there was penetration, raise hundreds of irrelevant questions about her character," says Baxi, who sat through rape trials across district courts for her research. Section 155(4) of the Indian Evidence Act of 1872 held till 2002 that "when a man is prosecuted for rape or an attempt to ravish, it may be shown that the prosecutrix was of generally immoral character". The section was repealed but that psyche continues.
A 2010 report, Dignity on Trial, by international NGO Human Rights Watch, shows how judges link 'character' with the finger test. In 2009, in the case of Musauddin Ahmed, the Supreme Court found the 13-year-old Mira Begum "a woman of easy virtue", because her TFT stated that she was used to sexual intercourse. The High Court of Himachal Pradesh in 2007 convicted Yatin Kumar as medical reports showed the victim was not "habituated to sex". The doctor had inserted two fingers "with difficulty" which had led to bleeding. In a 2006 case in Patna High Court, Hare Krishna Das was acquitted of gang rape as the doctor testified that the victim's hymen had an old tear and she was "habituated" to sex. The judge claimed she had "loose" morals.
The problem is, hospitals across India ask doctors to state in the medical exam form whether the hymenal orifice admitted one or two fingers, the vaginal opening was narrow or roomy, injuries were fresh or old. If a doctor writes "no rape" or "attempt to rape", the accused gets undue advantage in court. If a doctor inscribes, "She is habituated to sexual intercourse", it is used as evidence to demolish a woman's character and disqualify her testimony.
Dr Jagadeesh blames the absence of a uniform and modern protocol for examining rape in India. "Progressive countries investigate what leads to the loss of evidence," he says. Only about a third of victims globally show physical injuries. Obvious signs of injury are not always present in a rape. A woman may have been unconscious. Delayed medical exam can also give negative results, semen may get washed or rapists may use condoms. Courts do not usually consider these.
Doctors deepen the misery
It came as a shock when, in the wake of the Delhi gang rape case, "survivors" appeared in silhouette on TV and talked about their trauma at the hands of doctors. "Inexperienced doctors are a huge problem as victims get traumatised further and vital evidence is lost," says Dr Khandekar. "There is little focus on forensic science at the MBBS level."
Legal changes may have played an insidious role. From 1997, the law stipulated that only female doctors could handle medical exam of rape victims. "Most of them were in obstetrics," says Dr Jagadeesh. In fact, TFT may have come into general practice from gynaecology, where it is used to check labour progress. "This left 50 per cent of MBBS students, the males, without any practical exposure to such procedures." But with shortage of female staff, the laws were amended again in 2005. Now a 'registered medical practitioner' of any gender and from any field can take up such cases, subject to the victim's consent. Such changes have introduced more physicians to these sensitive exams. But many do not have the skill.
A rape victim is brutalised twice in India: First by the rapist and then by the state. In between, various agencies step in, each looking at the victim through their own prisms of preconceptions and prejudices. But the way doctors manage a sexual assault case is crucial to the way India can resolve its emerging rape crisis.
Deadly dresses Khaps have banned western wear for women. Photo: Sudeep Chaudhuri
The caste councils in Haryana, known as ‘khaps’, believe that women are to blame for honour killings. They have issuedTaliban-style diktats on what women should wear and even the kind of food they should eat.
Following the gruesome murders on 18 September of a couple in Garnavati village of Rohtak district, 130 km west of New Delhi, several khap meetings were organised in the region where the mood was overwhelmingly in favour of the killings. Narendar Barak alias Billu Pehalwan had killed his daughter Nidhi Barak and beheaded Dharmendra Barak for defying the Jat norm proscribing marriage within the same gotra (clan). As a chilling warning to other youngsters, the bodies of the murdered couple were put on a tractor and paraded across the village.
The Jats consider people from the same gotra to be siblings, so sexual relations between a man and a woman of the same gotra is seen as incestuous.
While Nidhi’s parents, brother and uncle are behind bars and investigations are underway, the khaps have refused to condemn the heinous murders. Instead, they have tried to pin the blame on “westernisation”. Khap leaders argue that if women wear western clothes, young men get attracted towards them, leading to either sexual assault or consensual sexual relations in disregard to social norms, which leads to killings that are “necessary to protect the community’s honour”. So, women should only wear loose-fitting salwar kameezes with dupattas.
It is shocking how a heinous honour killing has given the khaps another ruse to impose a dress code on women. Through word of mouth, their diktat has spread across villages in Rohtak district.
Besides the dress code, the khaps have also decided that women should have saada khana (a simple diet). And use cell phones only under the supervision of male elders from the family.
While khap leaders initially denied that any such diktat was issued, they don’t mince words in defending the warped logic behind it. Take the case of Hardeep Singh Ahrawat, the chief of the Rohtak Chaurasi Khap, an umbrella body of 84 khaps across the district. “Western wear, especially in colleges, leads to sexual attraction,” he says. “And this leads to rape in some cases. In other cases, it leads to incestuous relationships and marriages between boys and girls belonging to the same gotra or the same village, both of which are forbidden in our community.”
Ahrawat insists that while western wear might be okay for school-going girls, it should be banned for women in colleges. “Women must adhere to the Haryanvi way of dressing in salwar kameez to avoid any form of sexual attraction. Women should cover themselves properly. They should not wear jeans and tight clothes. Revealing and figure-hugging dresses incite sexual thoughts in men,” he says.
As for the diktat on cell phones, the khap leaders argue that youngsters use mobiles to carry on forbidden relationships surreptitiously. As these relationships sometimes end up in honour killings, the khaps justify the curbs on the use of cell phones as a preventive measure to ensure that such killings don’t become necessary to protect social norms!
Even more hilarious is the rationalisation of why women must have a “simple diet”. “The simple diet is best because it keeps your mind clear of any vices or evil thoughts,” says a politician from Haryana, who did not wish to be named. “This is our way of life. There is so much violence against women today because we have allowed westernisation to creep in and change our lifestyle.” Last year, too, a khap panchayathad blamed fast food for sexual crimes against women.
So, even as Ahrawat says that khaps should not support honour killings, the onus to prevent them has been put squarely on the shoulders of young women, who must conform to the khaps’ diktats, or else, be prepared to face the consequences. Welcome to the medieval world of khaps, still alive and kicking in the 21st century.
A lower caste community in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, where young girls, often in their teens, engage in prostitution with the consent of the community.
By Asit Jolly | India Today
Baithega kya?" Two kilometres along the four-lane Jaipur Highway outside Bharatpur, these two innocuous words denote an unambiguous, almost lilting, come-on to have sex. Batting eyelashes, imperceptibly meaningful nods help things along for the uninitiated.
"Sex hamara khandaani dhanda hai (Sex is our family business)," says Manju Thakur, 30, who's zealously protective of what to her is a lucrative livelihood. Diminutive but feisty, the sex worker is a Bedia, a lower caste community in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, where young girls, often in their teens, engage in prostitution with the consent of the community.
Plying the only trade she knows from the profusely littered roadside near Bharatpur's Malaha village, Manju is a veteran. "I was just about 10 or 11 years old when my father, who is dead now, sent me to a well-off businessman in Dhaulpur," she says, appearing almost nostalgic recalling the Rs 10,000 her family received in exchange for her loss of virginity. "Twenty years ago, it was the maximum any girl was paid for here," she says also proudly informing you how "rich customers from Jaipur" still come by asking for her.
Present day Malaha (also known locally as Pachhi ka Nagla or 'bird village'), has more than a hundred Bedia women engaged in sex work. Often revealingly attired, with heavily made-up faces, accentuated by bright crimson or purple lipstick, they stand about beckoning potential clients. The imposing concrete flyover that bifurcated the Bedia basti in 2005 hasn't affected the trade. This is perhaps the only place in Rajasthan where more motorists forsake the convenience of the flyover, taking the potholed side-roads instead to stop by or simply get a closer look at the daily spectacle.
"Dhanda chokha hai (Business is good)," Manju smiles reapplying her lipstick in anticipation of another temporary suitor. Manju and her sisters Nisha, 25, and Reshma, 24, as well as their 20-year-old bua (aunt) Chandani support a family of 40 including five brothers, their wives, their children and a brood of offspring from the trade. "I tried hard to get them to marry," says Saroj, Manju's 50-year-old mother. But none of the girls would even consider what each one of them saw as a lifetime of domestic drudgery.
The men vehemently protest allegations that their bound-by-tradition women are forced to accept sex work as their only vocation. "Zabardasti ka nahi, raazi ka sauda hai ye (There is no force, this is by consent)," insists Vijender, 37, who thrives on the earnings of six sisters and two aunts. The pot-bellied brother claims that in keeping with the community's tradition, each of his sisters were asked to choose: "Har ek se poochha gaya tha, dhanda karogi ya shaadi (Each one was asked if she wanted marriage or to enter the sex trade)," he says.
Manju and Nisha's 39-year-old brother Lakhan concurs. It's been more than a good living for him: A shining new motorcycle and a Scorpio SUV that he plies as a cab, but only when he chooses to. "Let the government give me a decent job, I'll forbid my sisters from sex work," Lakhan promises. In the background both sisters smirk at the notion.
"Shaadi toh barbadi hai (Marriage leads to ruin)," Nisha quotes a distinctly patriarchal proverb. Bedia wives are usually not part of the dhanda (sex work) and spend their lives cooking, cleaning, washing and serving the needs of the men, the children and their 'working' sisters-in-laws. "Being a housewife is like being a mule," says Nisha who grew up aware of both the independence and seemingly infinite spending power her 'working' aunts enjoyed and the toilsome routine her own mother was condemned to.
Nisha admits, hesitantly, that she started out as a full-time sex worker when she was just 14. Ten years on, she earns between Rs 1,200 and Rs 2,000 from a single day's work-10 to 20 times the government approved wage of Rs 149. This entails sex with six to 10 men. On good days, such as during the festival season or closer to workers' monthly paydays, the take-home could easily double, she adds.
The 'tricks of the trade' are hardly a secret for teenage girls who have watched sisters and aunts engage in furtive, 10-minute sexual encounters behind cursorily strung bedsheets on the roadside. "Squawking loudly to call my brothers when a customer became unruly was my only real sex education. The rest of the stuff came naturally," Manju says.
But not every Bedia sex worker has the going so good. Fifty feet from Manju and Nisha's house washed in terracotta hues, Kaali (name changed) struggles to make ends meet. Diagnosed with hiv two years ago, she continues to solicit customers. "I know no other work and my brothers are too young to support me," explains the 30-year-old, hastily adding that now she "never has sex without a condom."
"The notion of choice in relation to the work of women who are poor is problematic. The distinction between 'forced' and 'voluntarily' sex work where the gamut of choices is non-existent is the reality of most marginalised women," says Jyoti Sanghera, 57, founding member of the Bangkok-based Global Alliance Against Trafficking in Women (GAATW).
Into his second tenure in the district, better known as the location of one of the world's best-kept bird sanctuaries, Bharatpur's 34-year-old Collector Niraj Kumar Pawan has become something of a Robin Hood among the Bedia villagers. The hands-on civil servant is the first government representative to have gained the community's confidence in recognising that "brute police force cannot turn people away from centuries old tradition".
Eight years ago, just months after his predecessors in the district administration tried literally to drive the Bedi's into the ground by setting their basti at Malaha on fire, Pawan got the government to sanction the first and only school for Bedia children. Still only a difficult-to-decipher foundation amidst the dense undergrowth fringing the Bharatpur bird sanctuary, the promise of the school has evidently inspired residents.
"My girl's future will be different," says Riya, a 35-year-old sex worker whose diligent daily duty is to get 11-year-old Archana, her only daughter, to school. The doting mom however has no qualms about her own life: "I must always do the dhanda but my girl will have a real choice," she says.
Pawan believes education will equip Bedia girls with the never-before alternative of "being able to make an informed choice". Amidst objections against pucca constructions within 500 m of the bird sanctuary, the open-air Bedia school is set to enter a Rs 4.5-lakh prefabricated premises that stops short of contravening environmental safeguards. "They will soon have proper schoolrooms," he promises.
The collector's repeated interventions in Malaha and neighbouring Bagdari village, where some Bedias moved following the expansion of the Jaipur Highway in 2005, have persuaded key changes within the community. "Girls below 18 no longer engage in sex work," Pawan claims, amid rumours about fresh bidding for the initiation of two teenagers. Compared to the Rs 10,000 that Manju's family got 20 years ago, the current going price for 'teenage virgins', insiders say, could range between Rs 1.5 lakh and Rs 2 lakh, which is half the bride price a Bedia girl commands if she chooses to marry instead.
In their 15-bigha settlement outside Bagdari, Bedias face their worst fate: Forced to survive without electricity or water, their children remain segregated in the village school and the upper caste sarpanch refuses to endorse applications for voters' identity or Adhaar cards. "We have been rendered outcasts in our own country," says Ravi Kumar, 29, who struggles on the meagre earnings from a corrugated steel sheet shop at the entrance of the settlement.
Both Kumar and his 60-year-old mother Leelawati acknowledge that the community wouldn't be able to survive but for the lucrative incomes their young women make from sex work. "The (upper caste) villagers wilfully discriminate against our children and yet line up to sleep with our girls and even demand discounts," says the shopkeeper.
One concrete wall of the 20 ft underpass below the Malaha flyover bears a telling advert: "Pyar ka ek anmol taufa'-Freedom 5. Paanch saal tak pregnancy se tension free." The Bedia women are amused. "Children are good," they say. "Girls will earn more money and boys will be their protectors." http://in.news.yahoo.com/sex-as-trade-and-tradition-073445979.html
Instead of focusing on the educational infrastructure and cultivating the right educational atmosphere in the state, the Gujarat government, absurdly, is trying to enforce a dress code for women teachers. The move is an attempt to control women’s sexuality, while at the same time it impinges upon the personal freedom to dress according to one’s faith.
Nandini Manjrekar (nandini@tiss.edu) teaches at the School of Education, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai
A training session held for teachers of municipal corporation schools in Baroda on 11 October, 2013, once again brought to the fore the contentious issue of the dress code for women teachers in Gujarat. Since last year, education administrators in Gujarat's districts have been seeking to outdo each other in attempts to enforce a dress code for teachers, particularly women teachers for whom wearing sarees has been made compulsory. In the tribal district of Dahod, for example, teachers were told to wear white (men could wear trousers and women were expected to wear sarees). Education authorities have threatened to take punitive measures if the teachers do not comply, generating ‒ if one goes by Facebook (yes, government school teachers in most states have pages) ‒ an intense debate on the “pros and cons” of a dress code. It appears that actions on the part of district level officers were based on the government's code of conduct for teachers, issued in August 2012, that explicitly stated that women teachers must wear sarees.
Communal Overtones
At the training session in Baroda last week, ten teachers were pulled up by the newly appointed administrative officer of the school board for not coming to the session in sarees. One of the women chastised by the officer was a salwar-kameez clad Muslim teacher who claimed that she did not possess a saree and was unable to wear one on account of her religious background. The officer then subjected her to a lecture on how just as she believed in Allah for her students too she was like Allah in the classroom. When told that her family would not permit her to wear a saree, the official apparently suggested that a burqa could be worn over it and taken off in school. Apparently all the “errant” teachers were told to go home and return in sarees, which this Muslim teacher could not do and was therefore marked absent for the training session. Anyone familiar with the punitive regulations and surveillance under which government school teachers work, will appreciate the seriousness of this. Since this incident, Muslim teachers have been understandably upset with what they see as humiliation of their community and an infringement of their rights to dress in accordance with their faith. Given the communalised environment of Gujarat, it is not surprising that this particular incident has sparked anger in the Muslim community, which feels that the move to enforce sarees is directed towards Muslim women who usually wear salwar-kameezes. During the course of my interactions with teachers in some of these schools, I saw staffrooms in corporation schools abuzz with discussions on the issue of dress code.
In the Muslim dominated areas of the old city where I have been working over the past week, I have been witness to the ways in which the dress code issue has polarised the teachers. While many Muslim teachers, especially the men who are more vocal, see the incident as yet another attempt by the Sangh Parivar to target and subjugate their community, Hindu teachers are keeping a strategic distance from the debate, at least publicly. Muslim women teachers find themselves torn between the workplace rules and community beliefs. On the one hand as government employees they can be punished for defying the rules and on the other they have to face the ire of their family and community for following these very rules. The day after the incident, women teachers frantically called Muslim leaders with some influence in the school board to check whether the threats of punishment were real. One Muslim male teacher wrote a memorandum which appeared in a Gujarati paper decrying the incident as an assault on Muslims led by the officer who had links with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).
Controlling Vidyasahayaks
However, the problem is a little complex, and is more than just an assault by the Hindutva forces on Gujarat's much-threatened secular public education. At the core of the debate is anxiety over a large number of young, qualified para/teaching assistants or vidyasahayaks ‒working under contract‒ who come to school attired in western clothes, meaning jeans (anathema in most quarters) and short tops (even, to everyone’s horror, sleeveless tops). Many women teachers in Baroda, both Hindu and Muslim, say that the government’s move towards a dress code is directed towards these young vidyasahayaks working in schools wearing indecent clothes. On August 2013, 6,500 vidyasahayaks were handed their appointment letters to which a dress code was appended. This code mandates that women have to wear sarees, and male teachers have to avoid T-shirts or jeans. Along with their other “duties”, the dress code has been included as an enforceable rule. As contract employees of the state, vidyasahayaks in Gujarat, like those in other parts of the country, are subject to greater control and surveillance by authorities. In Gujarat they have been fighting a case in the Supreme Court over their fixed pay of Rs 2,500 per month and temporary status up to five years after which they are supposed to get absorbed as regular teachers. The dress code is one of the many ways to control and threaten these contract teachers. Under the latest rules, the District Education Officer (DEO) and District Primary Education Officer (DPEO) have been authorised to terminate the services of a vidyasahayak who does not comply with any of these rules.
Coercion and control over young contract teachers is a dominant strand in the larger story but one that can be easily manipulated by state authorities to target Muslim women in particular. After all the debate over decent attire is inspired by the image of the ideal saree-clad Bharatiya naari (Indian woman) who is supposed to be a role model for children of the imagined nation and a familiar icon of many RSS moral texts. Two years back, even before the state-wide rule was enforced, a Muslim vidyasahayak in Anand who had requested that she be exempted from wearing sarees to work was refused permission on the ground that the service rules required her to wear a saree. Across the communal divide, however, is a story of a Hindu teacher who has bravely stood up to this government rule. Last week, the Indian Express (10 October, 2013) reported that a teacher in Anand district, Chhaya Upadhyaya, had repeatedly raised objections to the imposition of a dress code for female vidyasahayaks. Upadhyaya, in an open letter to the chief minister, wrote that she had been fighting against this rule for thirteen years, and as far back as 2004, her school was given an adverse report stating that “no teaching was taking place in the school” because some teachers were not in sarees at the time of inspection.
An Unconstitutional Code
The fact is that the salwar-kameez has become the preferred attire of choice for many working women across India. It is especially convenient for teachers working in mofussil and village schools, since they often have to travel distances in the face of inadequate or non-existent public transport facilities, take multiple forms of transport ‒ which are often extremely crowded‒ and cover considerable distances on foot. Additionally, their work with young children also demands mobility and ease of movement. In January 2013, a Baroda-based autonomous women's organisation Sahiyar Stree Sanghathan presented a charter of demands to the state government (following the release of the Justice Verma Commission report) and demanded that the dress code for teachers be scrapped since it was unconstitutional. The whole issue of imposition of a dress code, as one Muslim woman teacher in Baroda pointed out even as the debate was assuming communal colours, was principally a violation of the constitutional freedoms granted to women.
Control over what women teachers wear exists in both public and private schools. Many elite private schools have written and unwritten dress codes; some new international schools even insist on western wear that is fashionable butdecent. In some new private schools one often sees young women teachers in uniform‒ corporate style dress, black trousers and white shirts, or regulation sarees in urban/semi-urban schools. Not much is known about how these regimes operate in private schools, but over the last few years the dress code issue for government school teachers has raised its head in state after state. “Decency” of attire finds a mention in National Council of Teacher Education’s (NCTE) code of professional ethics for teachers. In fact, proponents of a dress code constantly refer to NCTE guidelines and the Right to Education Act (RTE). For instance, after Upadhyaya's spirited letter to Chief Minister Narendra Modi last week threatening legal recourse, Anand district officials after meeting both her as well as the Muslim teacher who opposed the saree code, stated that while amendments may be necessary, these would have to comply with the official position that teachers' attire should be in keeping with “the decorum of the teaching profession”. It is interesting that these new policy frameworks, often associated with a progressive, equitable and social justice-oriented thinking in the education sector, are routinely being cited to justify the dress code as part of some mandated compliance to national policy norms. In Orissa, for example, the government issued a rule enforcing a dress code for teachers ostensibly to curb teacher absenteeism!
The “decorum of the teaching profession” is a convenient ruse to control women who seek employment in the academic domain. While college students have been the focus of dress code regimes for long, the imposition of these codes for teachers is relatively new and linked to anxieties around “loss of decorum” of the teaching profession with the entry of younger women. While the recent imposition of a dress code for teachers in Hindu College in Delhi University met with legitimate outrage, dress code regimes are being enforced in schools all over the country and also, fortunately, been resisted by women. Last year, a woman teaching in a Muslim trust school in Mallapuram, Kerala approached the State Human Rights Commission after she was suspended for wearing a white overcoat over her clothes and not the lime green one mandated by the management (which later clarified that the colour of the coat was not lime green but “asparagus” !)
In 2010, the Calcutta High Court delivered a landmark judgment barring any state-run or state-funded institution from imposing a dress code for teachers. The petition was filed by women teachers of a Singur school, which had enforced a white saree code. The judge rightly pointed out that attention should be paid to developing proper infrastructure and cultivating the right educational atmosphere rather than issuing fatwas on what kind of attire a teacher should wear while attending school.
A Way to Curb Women’s Sexuality
Within educational spaces, issues related to young people’s and especially young women’s sexuality are being debated since the tragic gang-rape of 16 December. Even though conservative and far removed from the Justice Verma report which highlights the need for sexuality education, one hopes against hope that these debates signal the beginning of the end of silence over the subject of women’s sexuality.
Unfortunately within the fractured social spaces of the mohalla, school and administration in Gujarat, the resurgent conservatism regarding issues concerning women's sexuality has taken the debate to another level of absurdity, frustrating attempts at genuine discussion. While interacting with school teachers and officials, I have heard various justifications for the saree rule ‒ that children (especially young male students) are easily distracted in classrooms when the dupatta flutters under the fan or because of the predilection of young women to wear fashionably tight kurtas; and the contrary view from Muslim male teachers who claim that if anything the saree, in which the midriff is exposed, is not a decent garment for a teacher. Members of Gandhian institutions, which typically follow a strict dress code, suggest that a dress code referring to sarees should include a way of draping them as Christian missionaries do, with no exposure of the midriff. This in a state which has seen horrific cases of sexual abuse against students training to be teachers (as in the infamous PTC college, Patan, where successive batches of students were sexually abused by the male faculty), not to mention the horrors perpetrated against women in the 2002 riots carried out under the state's gaze. However tragic and farcical, it is most likely that the younger women holding contract jobs and women belonging to the Muslim faith who will face the brunt of the punitive measures if they fail to comply with the dress code. http://www.epw.in/web-exclusives/gujarat-patriarchy-revisited-dress-code-teachers.html?ip_login_no_cache=ed9a99a433a133cabad1ba2bc1d41058
The women of Barbacaos, Colombia, have crossed their legs and plan to keep them that way until the roads to their remote region are not repaved. This is their second sex strike in the last two years.
Called the "Crossed Legs movement", the women have refused to have sex with their husbands until the road to their small, isolated town of Barbacaos is not repaired.
Interestingly enough, according to reports, the ploy has worked and construction has begun on the single road. The road is reported to be in such a condition that it takes up to 14 hours to get to the nearest hospital.{mosimage}
The first time the women went on a "sex strike" was in 2011 to demand the building of a better road to their town. The movement was sparked after a young woman died along with her unborn child enroute to the hospital because the ambulance got stuck on the road and couldn't reach the hospital in time to save the girl and the baby.
The government had relented after three months and 19 days and promised to pay $21million to pave at least half of the 35-mile road. However, two years later with no change in the situation, the women have resumed their strike.
Maybe the women of some towns here in India can learn something from the women all the way across the world in Barbacaos, Colombia.
Dubai (AFP) - Saudi female activists are gearing up to test a long-standing driving ban, with more defiant women already getting behind the wheel as the authorities seem to be taking a more lenient approach.
Under the slogan "women's driving is a choice," they have called on social networks for a turn-out on Saturday in a campaign in the world's only country that bans women from driving.
"October 26 is a day on which women in Saudi Arabia will say they are serious about driving and that this matter must be resolved," said Manal al-Sharif, who was arrested and held for nine days in May 2011 for posting online a video of herself behind the wheel.
In a protest she led the following month, a number of women were stopped by police and forced to sign a pledge not to drive again.
The 34-year-old computer engineer who now lives in Dubai told AFP women have already begun responding to the call, and "more than 50 videos showing women currently driving" have been posted online during the past two weeks.
With the exception of two women who were briefly stopped by police, authorities have so far not intervened to halt any of the female motorists.
This, combined with what seems to be more social acceptance to the new phenomenon is encouraging more women to get behind the wheel along major roads across the kingdom.
A video posted on social networks this month shows a fully veiled woman driving in Riyadh as male motorists and families give her the "thumbs up" in support.
"There will be a November 26, December 26, a January 26, until authorities issue the first driving permit to a Saudi woman," said Sharif.
To reduce the risk of accidents, only women who have driving licences issued abroad are being invited to participate in the campaign. Obviously, none are issued in Saudi Arabia.
But conservative religious figures are still opposed to women driving.
A Saudi cleric's warning last month that driving was dangerous to the health of women and of their children sparked an online wave of mockery.
"Physiological science" has found that driving "automatically affects the ovaries and pushes up the pelvis," Sheikh Saleh al-Luhaydan warned in remarks to news website Sabq.org.
"This is why we find that children born to most women who continuously drive suffer from clinical disorders of varying degrees," he said.
One female tweeter retorted: "When idiocy marries dogma in the chapel of medieval traditions, this is their prodigal child."
"What a mentality we have. People went to space and you still ban women from driving. Idiots," said another comment.
Women who have been calling for three decades for the right to drive in the ultra-conservative kingdom have learned that public gatherings can get them in trouble in the absolute monarchy where any protests are officially banned.
In 1990, 47 women were arrested and punished after demonstrating in cars. The minister of interior subsequently banned women from driving but no law was ever promulgated.
This time, "there will be no demonstrations or rallying points," activist Aziza al-Youssef told AFP.
Youssef spoke of "positive indications" from authorities. In particular, she cited the chief of the notorious religious police, Sheikh Abdullatif al-Sheikh, and Justice Minister Mohammed al-Issa affirming this year that no religious text bans women from driving.
Even so, Saudi Arabia's appointed advisory Shura Consultative Council rejected on October 10 a move by three female members to put the ban up for discussion.
Activists argue that driving does not violate Islamic law (sharia) as claimed by conservatives who support the ban.
"Just as wives of the (Muslim) Prophet (Mohammed's) companions travelled on camel and horseback, it is our right to drive using the transportation means available during our modern era," activists said in an online petition linked to Saturday's campaign.
The petition has amassed more than 16,000 signatures since September, despite being blocked only two weeks after its launch.
In another argument, activists point to the kingdom's underdeveloped public transport system and say many families cannot afford to hire drivers.
"My salary is 3,500 riyals (around $941/682 euros) and a driver costs me 1,200 riyals," a divorced mother wrote on the campaign website.
Women's rights have always sparked controversy in the kingdom.
King Abdullah's appointment of 30 women to the 150-member Shura Council in January drew protests from radical clerics in the kingdom.
His predecessor, king Saud, had to dispatch troops to protect the first girls' school in the 1960s.
For Sharif the campaign aims to push women in the kingdom to demand "rights which are even more significant than the right to drive."
Diplomats at a UN review of Saudi Arabia's human rights record on Monday condemned the kingdom's failure to abolish a system requiring women to seek permission from male relatives to do basic things such as leave the country, and criticised the ban on driving.
Saudi women, forced to cover from head to toe, still need permission from a male guardian to travel, work and marry
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