Violence Against Women: Wife Battering in Chennai

DEVELOPMENT is about protection of human rights of the concerned populations. It pre-supposes active participation of the populace in the decision-making processes while social justice remains one of the most important and cherished goals of development. However, contradictions do remain as a result of various processes not only among nations at a global level, but also significantly within sections of population within a country. People continue to be marginalised on the basis of class, religion, ethnicity, colour, sex and in India specially, on the basis of caste. Discrimination and exploitation on the basis of gender constitutes a serious issue which effectively means that half the human race is unable to realise its potential and condemned to sub-optimal standards of existence. This problem has received worldwide attention and several efforts have been made to, bridge the seemingly ever-widening gap. Yet even after years of efforts to integrate women into the mainstream development process the effectively of the same remains to be questioned owing to a multitude of factors which aid the continued marginalisation of women. Women's access to education, health, employment and political spaces still remain distant goals in many nations of the world. One of the most serious impediments to women's development is the phenomenon of continuing and increasing violence against them. Needless to say, this constitutes a serious violation of women's human rights. Violence against, women is one of the most significant, yet little understood and acknowledged factor instrumental in the phenomenon of marginalisation of women in the development processes. Gender violence manifests itself in various forms female foeticide and infanticide, sexual abuse, incest, molestation, sexual harassment at work and on the streets, marital rape, domestic violence in the form of wife assault and woman battering. In some places, there exist culture-specific forms of violence against women like female genital mutilation in some African countries and harassment/murder/beating for dowry in India. Of all the forms of violence that women face, domestic violence remains the least reported and largely suppressed.