Violence against women has become ‘institutionalised’

Violence against women gets overlooked or not perceived as electoral violence because of the normalisation of gender-based violence and ignorance among electoral stakeholders, speakers at a roundtable said yesterday.

Bangla daily Prothom Alo organised the roundtable at its office in association with Institute of Informatics and Development (IID).

Falguni Reza, senior associate researcher of IID, presented the summery of its study on violence against women in elections. Around 800 women involved in various electoral processes were surveyed as part of it.

According to the IID study, some 71 percent women reported violence through intimidation, 57 percent reported physical violence, and 43 percent reported violation of ballot secrecy during the last national election and several local elections.

One of every six women candidate who faced character assassination said it was done by member of the same party.

Speaking on the occasion, former parliamentarian Mahjabeen Khaled said political violence against women can end if the political parties’ high-commands have the intention.

She also opined to form a “women’s parliamentary caucus” which would look after women’s stake in the parliament.

Sheepa Hafiza, executive director of Ain o Salish Kendra said, “Now the problems [violence against women] have become institutionalised; the state or other authorities are not taking action. There is no charge sheet in the Subornachar rape case.”

“When a directive from the prime minster is required to ensure justice, we have to understand the system is not working,” referring to the incident of madrasa student Nusrat Jahan Rafi’s murder.

“Our observation is that local political leaders internally resolve incidents of violence against women,” said Farida Yasmin, deputy commissioner of victim support centre of Dhaka Metropolitan Police, adding that many women do not reveal such incidents.

It is high time to discuss a zero tolerance policy for violence against women within political parties, said Humaira Aziz, director of women and girls’ empowerment programme of CARE Bangladesh.

The gender issue should be thought from equity perspective, not from equal rights perspective, Shabbir Sawkat, senior programme officer of Asia Foundation opined.

Maleka Banu, general secretary of Bangladesh Mahila Parishad, said political parties are often seen to collude with fundamentalist quarters, attributing it to one of the factors for political violence against women.

Conducted by Prothom Alo Associate Editor Sohrab Hossain, the programme was also addressed by human rights lawyer Salma Ali, IID policy analyst Aurin Huq and Associate Professor of Dhaka University Saber Ahmed Chowdhury.