Open Access
What’s Law Got to Do With It?
Susan H. Whiting
- Iss: 25, pp 1-22
TLDR
The brutal gang rape of a physiotherapy student in India in December 2012 drew the world's attention to the problem of sexual violence against women in that country as discussed by the authors, and mass public reaction towards the case pressurized the government to respond to the crisis by changing the laws on sexual violence.Abstract:
The brutal gang rape of a physiotherapy student in India in December 2012 drew the world’s attention to the problem of sexual violence against women in that country. Protests and mass public reaction towards the case pressurized the government to respond to the crisis by changing the laws on sexual violence. However, these new laws have not led to a decrease in violence against women (VAW). Is this the result of the failure of the rule of law? Or does it highlight the limitations of law in absence of social change? This paper addresses the need for using law as a key tool in addressing violence against women in India. It recognizes that unless we address the structural and root causes of violence against women, our analysis will be limited. It is important to bridge the creation of new laws, with an analysis that speaks to the role of hypermasculinity, neoliberalism and culture in VAW. If unaddressed, what may result instead are quick fixes, symbolized by the passing of new laws that act as token gestures rather than ones leading to transformative action.read more
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References
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Journal ArticleDOI
Human Rights and Gender Violence: Translating International Law into Local Justice:
TL;DR: The survey data show that global inequality first increased between 1988 and 1993 and then decreased from 1993 to 1998, reflecting the stagnation ofpoor rural areas of China and India in the first period, and the slight catching up of poor rural areas in the second period.
Journal ArticleDOI
The Civic Origins of Progressive Policy Change: Combating Violence against Women in Global Perspective, 1975–2005
Mala Htun,S. Laurel Weldon +1 more
TL;DR: In this paper, a dataset of social movements and violence against women policies in 70 countries over four decades was used to investigate the role of women's mobilization in civil society in the development of social policy.
Journal ArticleDOI
Varieties of Patriarchy and Violence Against Women: Resurrecting "Patriarchy" as a Theoretical Tool
TL;DR: The author addresses some of the criticisms of the theory of patriarchy, uncovers the explanatory strengths of this concept, and lays some foundations for a more fully developed theory of violence against women.
Journal ArticleDOI
Vernacularization on the ground: local uses of global women's rights in Peru, China, India and the United States
Peggy Levitt,Sally Engle Merry +1 more
TL;DR: The authors examine how global ideas about women's rights actually get used in four contexts - China, India, Peru and the United States, and find that vernacularization is a widespread practice that takes different forms in different kinds of organizations and in different cultural and historical contexts.
Book
Gender Violence: A Cultural Perspective
TL;DR: In this article, the authors discuss gender violence as a Human Rights Violation and violence against women as a cultural practice in the family and women and armed conflict in the home, as well as women's participation in domestic violence.