Reasons for rise in crime against women in India

  • Gender roles and relations
    • Men’s agreement with sexist, patriarchal, and sexually hostile attitudes
    • Violence-supportive social norms regarding gender and sexuality
    • Male-dominated power relations in relationships and families
    • Sexist and violence-supportive contexts and cultures
  • Social norms and practices related to violence
    • Lack of domestic violence resources
    • Violence in the community
    • Childhood experience of intimate partner violence (especially among boys)
  • Access to resources and systems of support
    • Low socioeconomic status, poverty, and unemployment
    • Lack of social connections and social capital
    • Personality characteristics
    • Alcohol and substance abuse
    • Separation and other situational factors
  • No fear of law: Various laws like Sexual harassment at workplace, Vishakha guidelines are in place. Unfortunately, these laws have failed to protect women and punish the culprits. Even law has a lot of loopholes. For example, under Sexual harassment at workplace act, the law states that there has to be an annual report that needs to be filed by companies, but there is no clarity with the format or filing procedure.
  • Lack of accountability and conviction:  Lack of accountability of the law and order institutions and lack of conviction of culprit lead to increase in crimes against women. A lack of centralised mechanism to collect data on women harassment, makes it difficult to analyse patterns on harassment that women face leading to poor law implementation.
  • Patriarchy: Despite the increased education levels and various government efforts like Beto Bachao Beti Padao, women status has not improved much. People are not shedding their patriarchal mind-set. Honour killing, domestic violence are on rise due to increasing women’s voices that is challenging patriarchal mind-set.
  • Police failure: Indifferent attitude of Police leads people to take law in their own hands. Police delays and inability to catch the criminals lead to more crime against women. The state police attitude is not good in implementing laws against sexual crime. Many cases of misbehave with women by police have been reported.
  • A lack of public safety: Women generally aren’t protected outside their homes. Many streets are poorly lit, and there’s lack of women’s toilets. Women who drink, smoke or go to pubs are widely seen in Indian society as morally loose, and village clan councils have blamed a rise in women talking on cell phones and going to the bazaar for an increase in the incidence of rape.
  • More reporting:  A recent report reveals that there is a 12% increase in sexual offences. With women shedding their shyness and more women being educated, reporting of crimes has increased. More women are raising their voice as was seen in #MeToo movement. This has led to increased reported cases as reflected in NCRB report.
  • A sluggish judicial system: India’s court system is painfully slow, because of a shortage of judges. The country has about 15 judges for every 1 million people. This leads to delay in justice. The Indian justice system has failed to investigate, prosecute, and punish the perpetrators and failed to provide effective redressal for victims.
  • Traditional and cultural practices:
    • Female genital mutilation: Can lead to death, infertility, and long-term psychological trauma combined with increased physical suffering.
    • Acid attacks: Acid attacks have emerged as a cheap and readily accessible weapon to disfigure and sometimes kill women and girls for reasons as varied as family feuds, inability to meet dowry demands, and rejection of marriage proposals.
    • Killing in the name of family honour: In several countries of the world including Bangladesh, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Pakistan, Turkey, and India, women are killed to uphold the honour of the family due to varied reasons such as-alleged adultery, premarital relationship (with or without sexual relations), rape, falling in love with a person the family disapproves, which justify a male member of the family to kill the woman concerned.
    • Early marriages: Early marriage with or without the consent of the girl, constitutes a form of violence as it undermines the health and autonomy of millions of girls.
  • Judiciary and law enforcement machinery: An insensitive, inefficient, corrupt and unaccountable judicial system and law enforcement machinery fails to deter against various forms of crimes.
  • Sociocultural factors disfavouring women: Stereotypes of gender roleshave continued over the ages.
    • The primary roles for women have been marriage and motherhood.
    • Women must marry because an unmarried, separated or divorced status is a stigma.
    • The custom of dowry is still prevalent in Indian marriages.