Desperate housewives

A recent article published in the British medical journal Wired has brought out an alarming fact: that suicides have toppled the more conventional cause of death, maternal mortality (deaths due to pregnancy and child birth-related complications), to emerge as the leading cause of death among women aged 15-49 years in India. This startling revelation is supported by other studies which have also found that suicides by married women is a daunting problem in India.

In 2012, the reputed British medical journal, Lancet, reported that 40 per cent of suicides among men and 56 per cent among women in India occurred between the ages of 15 and 29. The rates were higher among well-educated young people, suggesting economic strife is not the overriding cause for suicide. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO) data, suicide rate for women in India is 16.4 per 100,000, which is sixth highest in the world.

As per a BBC report, more than 20,000 housewives committed suicide in India in 2014, while the figures for suicides by farmers in the same year was 5,650. So while the number of suicides by young women was over 250 per cent more than suicides by farmers, the homemakers killing themselves did not make front-page news in the way farmer suicides did. The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data also indicates that suicide by self-immolation was more than double in the case of women than men, while in other categories men topped the list, e.g. drowning, hanging, firearms, consuming poison, etc.

Peter Mayer, a professor at the University of Adelaide who has been studying the sociology of suicide in India, wonders why suicide rates of married women in India are so high. Research in Western societies suggests that marriage confers protection from suicide and hence married people are less likely to commit suicides. While suicide rates for married people in the US and Australia are lower than others in the same age group, the situation in India is contrary to the global trend. About 70 per cent of those who committed suicide in 2001 were married.

The 2012 Lancet study found that suicide rate in India for women aged 15 years or older is two-and-a-half times higher than that of women in the same age group in developed countries. The risk of suicide is highest during the first and second decades of marriage. What’s surprising is that the researchers found that female literacy, level of exposure to the media and smaller family size — indicators of female empowerment — were directly proportional to suicide rates for women in these age groups.

Mr Mayer comments that on relatively rare occasions, when the Indian media covers suicides by married women, it is almost always framed in terms of “mistreatment by in-laws and harassment for dowry”. But this is only a part of the story. The story of India’s “desperate housewives”, as Mr Mayer describes them, needs to be urgently researched and addressed.

An issue which international studies do not explore is the relationship of suicides with domestic violence which is not always dowry related. Often, these cases are addressed in psychological terms as “depression”. But why are a large number of young, married women in such acute depression that it drives them to suicide Is there a correlation between spousal abuse, i.e. domestic violence, which leads married women to suicides

The widespread social problem of domestic violence in India has been highlighted through various national and international studies. The most significant among them is the National Family Health Survey-III (NFHS-III) conducted in 2005-06. It revealed that 31 per cent of married women were physically abused, 10 per cent were subjected to “severe domestic violence” and 12 per cent of those who reported severe violence suffered at least one of the following injuries — bruises, wounds, sprains, dislocation, broken bones, broken teeth or severe burns — and 14 per cent experienced emotional abuse.

Despite various criminal and civil remedies to address dowry-related and other types of domestic violence faced by women, the statistics continue to be grim. Ironically, the NCRB data captures all cases of women dying unnatural deaths only as either dowry related deaths, dowry related murders or dowry suicides. This is no fourth category. Data is collected and collated thus by police teams across the country.

Thirty years after the campaign against domestic violence was initiated, women continue to die in utter despair. I am reminded of a particularly poignant incident that took place in the morning of March 8, 2011, when we were busy celebrating International Women’s Day. A young, highly qualified woman jumped from the terrace of her building along with her two young children in a Mumbai suburb, the pink school bag and the tiny pair of pink shoes of her three-year-old daughter left behind as a stark reminder.

Despite clinching evidence of the wide prevalence of domestic violence in the country, support services for battered women, such as emergency shelters, medical aid, halfway homes, skill training, job re-entry programmes, financial schemes, a specially trained and sensitive police machinery, timely and effective legal aid, etc., are sadly lacking. The existing shelter homes, which are meant for trafficked girls or destitute women, do not cater to the needs of a battered woman with children. The only one in Mumbai, for example, which was set up in 1952 and is run by the Maharashtra State Women’s Council, is named Bapnu Ghar (father’s home), where the underlying premise is reconciliation.

The state’s response to the problem has been to provide “counselling” — euphemism for resolving marital squabbles. Most counselling is based on a patriarchal premise and is laden with anti-women biases, where women are advised to return to their husband’s home on terms dictated by him. They are not only incriminatory, but at times deny the violated woman basic dignity and freedom. She is advised to “save the marriage” even at the risk of endangering her life.

However, it is not just the patriarchal premise that drives the counselling process, but also the fact that nothing else exists for women outside the institution of marriage if her natal family does not accept her or lacks the financial resources to support her. In a society where marriage is perceived to be the “be all and end all” of a woman’s life, a woman who wishes to change the equation and approach the court for an effective remedy is castigated by the very same agencies designated to help her.

It is far more economical for the state to provide salaries for social workers and counsellors in police stations to provide “joint counselling” and send the woman back to a life-threatening situation than explore innovative solutions of a lasting nature. So despite the lofty assurances in various statutes, the ground reality continues to be dismal for women trapped in violent marriages. No wonder many see suicide as the only way out.

Only when courts function as a viable and approachable institution, providing protection to violated women, and when women’s decision to leave the marriage are backed by social and economic support systems will women be able to explore options beyond “save the family” formula. Only innovative measures will bring down the rate of suicides by married women in the country.

The writer is a women’s rights lawyer