Even as we celebrate women and see them climb up the global pedestal, the statistics on the number of instances of violence against women is always scary at any given hour or day. Violence is manifold and abuse is verbal as it is physical. We stumble upon cases of heinous crimes meted out to women on a daily basis and recent reports on violence against women from the burgeoning city of Benguluru has given more fodder to the never-ending debate on women’s safety.
On this International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, we got in touch with a few city-based youngsters who spoke their mind on what effective measures can be taken in a bid to curb the violence for once and all. “A collective change can be made possible through films and social media which can reach out to a wider audience. If media and movies can create a theme that ‘a man who beats his wife, trash talks or abuse other women is less of a man’ , it can influence a lot of young men and shake their ego,’’ said Goutham Rajan who is working as an ergonomics engineer in a two-wheeler manufacturing firm.
According to Psychologist Shailaja Shastri, the increasing instances of violence against women should be looked at through psychosocial and cultural perspective. “In the last 30-40 years, women have gradually taken the centre stage while the stature of men remains the same. This discrepancy is the reason for regression among majority of men,’’ said Dr Shailaja. Budding filmmaker Samarth Madhusudhan Rao feels that both empowerment and exploitation of women lies in the hands of women itself because no one better than a mother can influence her son to grow up into a well-behaved and dignified man.
“I have seen parents who take pride seeing their son hit neighbor’s child. Some others laugh away seeing such incidents. Such acts should be stopped then and there. It all depends whether the child has been taught to respect all individuals irrespective of gender. I believe that the power of change lies in the hands of a mother, on how a mother brings up his son,’’ said Samarth.
For Anurag Pradeep, who works as an operation executive, believes that instilling good values in children is the first and basic step that should be taken in order to bring about bigger changes. “It is very important that parents should educate kids about abusive language, wrong touch and respecting women from a younger age. Also, sex education should be made compulsory in schools,’’ said Anurag Pradeep, who works as an operation executive at a cloud computing company.
