Judicial decisions against women's rights showcase the need for women in national governance

In the last couple of months, two observations by the judiciary weakened laws meant to prevent and respond to crimes against women. In the first, the Supreme Court ordered that under Section 498A, the police must verify the law preventing dowry-related abuse cases before charges are filed against a husband and his family. In the second, the apex court made observations that marital rape cannot be considered a crime in India. Both decisions reflect the state’s belief that such laws provide a tool for women to harass their husbands with false criminal charges.

These observations reflect a growing backlash against efforts to protect women’s rights and a perception that women are seeking too much power. This perception could not be further from the truth and reflects a deep need for greater women’s representation in national institutions to safeguard women’s rights and counter this backlash.

The root of this backlash is the perception that women are misusing their social rights to abuse men through false accusations and cases. Many groups of men feel threatened by the social rise of women and are creating a narrative of persecution based on a minority of false cases, while ignoring the true reality of women’s experience with violence and oppression.

Men are not being persecuted. And the fact that national institutions are supporting this narrative should be deeply disturbing to all.

Let’s examine the reality of women’s continued and pervasive experience with violence, compared with the reality of false reporting.

In India, every three minutes a woman experiences violence. For every male who claims to be a victim, there are thousands of women victimised and forgotten. Crime against women shows no signs of decreasing.

Furthermore, those who do seek justice have only a marginal chance of seeing justice delivered. Out of the 2016 figures, only 41,900 cases resulted in conviction. That’s a startling conviction rate of 19 per cent, among the lowest for any law on the books in India, demonstrating the apathy of our legal system in dealing with crimes against women.

With this dismal rate of judicial response, the claim that men are in danger of abuse through false accusations is overblown and being used as an excuse to dilute the national response to crime against women. Every year of the approximately 1,00,000 dowry and domestic violence complaints against women reported in India, only 10 per cent are determined to be false. Is a 10 per cent rate enough for our courts to drastically weaken the law that was enacted to deter dowry deaths? Misuse of law takes place in every society across caste, creed and religion, and yet in India we are using this as an excuse to dilute a law that is designed to counter women’s profound vulnerability within the institution of marriage.

This change to Section 498A is also unjustified given that mechanisms to identify and dismiss false reports already exist under the current structure of the law. In case of most other laws, false complaints are identified once the case reaches the investigation stage. Fake complaints are caught and culprits punished appropriately, but there is no barrier to filing complaints in the first place.

By limiting women’s ability to file complaints, we are only opening them up to further exploitation. The new dowry law will make it difficult for these women to stand up to their perpetrators. It also creates scope for men to bully and pressurise women to drop the cases. In a patriarchal culture where women are conditioned since childhood to tolerate and not speak up against atrocities, doubts raised on their complaints will only hamper their courage to seek justice in the majority of cases.

The same holds for the apex court’s decision that marital rape cannot be considered a crime in India. Women’s experience of sexual violence within marriage is dismissed in favour of protecting men from false accusations and persecution. The truth is that many women experience sexual violence within marriage and that this is an abuse of their human rights. And yet the law does not acknowledge any crime and instead provides protection to abusers.

Following these judgments, victims are losing the perception battle. A narrative that there is a “gender onslaught” and that women are abusing their rights is being built and incorporated into national decisions on governance.

The fact that this misconception has influenced judicial decisions should be alarming and is linked with women’s continued lack of voice in national institutions of governance. It is clear that our national institutions are failing to adequately reflect women’s interests and protect their rights.

In this context, I renew my call for passage of the Women’s Reservation Bill to help fill the gender-deficit in Parliament and counter the regressive decision-making we are now observing.

Increased women’s representation in Parliament will help counter the perception imbalance. Public perception tends to have an influence on our public institutions’ decisions. A larger number of women leaders will help offset the sentiments of “gender onslaught” that is completely unfounded and that has influenced our public institutions’ mindset.

Through more informed debates in Parliament broadcasted across the length and breadth of the country, reality of women issues will be highlighted to a greater extent. It will ensure that the narrative does not favour the exploiter over exploited.

Also, it will help steer the mindset of our public institutions towards enacting stricter laws. Greater impetus will be given to women’s issues that will reflect a more real and emphatic attitude for gender empowerment across party lines. This should help towards making the justice system more accountable and increase the conviction rate from the present 19 per cent. It will also help male politicians reflect reality of the situation and evolve from the bubble of misinformed narratives.

Men need to recognise that women are not attacking them. Women are simply acting on the social rights they are guaranteed as humans living in a modern democracy. If you see this as women “claiming too much power”, then you deeply misunderstand how unequal that status quo has been for a long, long time. Statistically, we are still a society that discriminates against women. Globally, India ranks 134th in economic participation, 126th in educational achievements and 141st in health and life expectancy. Gender-based discrimination is very rampant in today’s reality.

The fight to empower women is not about targeting men or generating any kind of aggression against men. It is about securing and protecting equal rights for women. Stricter laws and policies that deal with crime against women will be given more importance nationally with greater number of women in Parliament. Men backlash or not, we cannot lose sight of our continued focus to protect and empower women. The answer is to ensure women’s voice in the national institutions that secure their right and design policies that influence their lives in profound ways.

The writer is the director of Centre for Social Research