Violence against rural women
Understanding violence against women is as complex as the concept itself that manifests in many ways that may be physical or psychological. The first kind is easy to acknowledge as it can be seen and therefore remedied; the second however is a variety that not many would consider an offence in traditional societies like Bangladesh. Gender discrimination and hegemonic trends in relationships and institutions are sometimes still very rigid and unbending as in olden times. The question arises as to why hasnt society risen from an ignorant state of existence to an exalted one where women are looked at as fellow human beings that can experience an equal degree of happiness, pain, humiliation, anger, etc, instead of gender-specific entities to be categorised as humans of an inferior variety.
More often than not, in rural areas, domestic violence is considered a private matter, as it occurs in the family, and therefore not an appropriate focus for assessment or intervention. Spousal abuse is frequently not considered a crime socially unless it takes an extreme form of murder or attempted murder, which could range from driving a woman to suicide or engineering an accident.
Violence against women is an enormous public health and social problem in Bangladesh, which has never been appropriately dealt by the government. According to experts, the reason why violence against women is still on the high is that the behaviour of an individual human being is shaped by the social environment. Development is a result of interaction at various levels of social organisation that include personal factors, societal factors where the person lives and cultural factors.
Intrinsic factors that give rise to violence include personal characteristics like age, education, income, personality influences and acceptance of interpersonal violence. The effects of factors like witnessing marital violence as a child, being abused as a child, absentee or rejecting father on the personality of a person are also considered intrinsic factors.
Rural women will not be able to break out of the vicious cycle of poverty, dependence, exploitation and helplessness unless they attain economic empowerment, their right to inherit parental property, equality in marital relationship and family matters, and their right to basic freedoms of movement, expression and association. An emphasis on what is doable must not obscure the ideal of rural womens empowerment nor the need for their partnership with urban women and the support of whatever is left of like-minded men.
