Do we need gender biased laws

Domestic violence is behaviour that is learned through observation and reinforcement in both the family and society. It is not caused by genetics or illness. Domestic violence is repeated because it works. The pattern of domestic violence allows the perpetrator to gain control of the victim through fear and intimidation. Gaining the victim’s compliance, even temporarily, reinforces the perpetrator’s use of these tactics of control. More importantly, however, the perpetrator is able to reinforce his abusive behaviour because of the socially sanctioned belief that men have the right to control women in relationships and the right to use force to ensure that control.

The protection of women from Domestic violence act 2005 came into effect from October 2006 (Indian President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam gave assent to domestic violence bill, 2005 which aims at protecting women from verbal, economic, emotional and sexual abuses) when the ministry of women and child development issued notification for enactment of the act by laying down the rules framed for implement of the act. The act aims to protect the women against physically, mentally, verbal abuse by husband and live-in partners. The ministry of women and child development says violation face up to a year in prison, and heavy fines.

The definition includes threats of abuse and dowry demands too,” said Renuka Chowdhury, Minister for Women and Child Development. Chowdhury said around 70 per cent of women in India were victims of domestic violence in some form. “The enactment of the law is a historic step towards ending gender discrimination,” she said. Any man found guilty under the Domestic Violence Act 2005 would be sent to jail and/or fined up to Rs. 20,000. They can also be charged under other sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), if applicable.”

“According to official crime statistics in India, 6,822 women were killed in 2002 as a result of such violence.” “According to the Indian government’s National Crime Records, in 2004 more than 7,000 women were killed in dowry dispute, 18,124 were raped, more than 175,200 women suffered other crimes and least, and 58,400 women complained of cruelty their husband.

These rules which are set out in the Indian Domestic Violence are totally biased, and work, not to protect the institution of marriage and families, but to break marriages and families, giving ample opportunities for misuse, with no remedial measures provided for.

Together with the so-called “Section 498 (A)” of the Indian Penal Code and the associated amendment to the Evidence Act, these legislations have resulted in widespread misuse and social malaise. Additionally, under these legislations, the indirect sufferers will be women in majority of the cases, as daughters-in-law file case against husbands, mothers-in-law and sisters-in-law.

Homes and relationships cannot be run by State terrorism and force. Money can’t make any one happy, otherwise, no one would have yearned for family and friends and children.

Women cannot both obtain “relief” and also retain relationships by taking recourse to these legislations, a fact that should be fully understood by one and all. The relationship between men and women is by heart and voluntary, otherwise, it results in prostitution.

One of the most important feature of the act is the women’s right to secure housing. The provides for women’s right to reside in the matrimonial or share household, whether or not she has any titled or right in the household. This right is secured by a residence order which is passed by court. These residence orders cannot be passed against anyone who is a woman.

The other relief envisaged under the act is that of the power of the court to pass protection order that prevent the abuse from aiding or committing act of domestic violation or any other specified act entering a workplace any other place frequented by the abuse, attempting to communicate with the abused, her relatives and others who provided her assistance from the domestic violation.

The act provided for appointment of protection and NGO’s to provide assistance to the women written medical examination legal aid, safe Sheller, etc.

The act provides for breach of protection order to interim protection order by the respondent as a cognizable and non-bail-able offence punishment with imprisonment for a term which may extent to one year or fine which may extent twenty thousand rupees or with both. Similarly, non-compliance or discharge of duties by the protection officer is also sought to be made an offence under the act with similar punishment.

The Word Count Of The Essay

Domestic violence act was first act in India, who protect to women. Domestic violence has many forms like physical abuse, emotional abuse, intimidation, economic deprivation, and threats of violence. Men’s traditional behaviour is also liable for domestic violation. In world 85% domestic violation happens in women and 15% in men. The form and characteristics of domestic violence and abuse may vary in other ways. Domestic violence is now being viewed as a public health problem. India has taken decisive steps to prevent domestic abuse against women in recent times through section 498(a) and the new domestic violence act of 2005. That the term 'domestic violence' has been made brought.

Now Domestic violence is a serious problem. The new act contains five chapters and 37 sections. Its main features are one.

The Act allows magistrates to impose monetary relief and monthly payments of maintenance. The respondent can also be made to meet the expenses incurred and losses suffered by the aggrieved person and any child of the aggrieved person as a result of domestic violence and can also cover loss of earnings, medical expenses, loss or damage to property and can also cover the maintenance of the victim and her children (Ch.IV, S.20). S.22 allows the magistrate to make the respondent pay compensation and damages for injuries including mental torture and emotional distress caused by acts of domestic violence.

Ch. V. S.31 gives a penalty up to one year imprisonment and/or a fine up to Rs. 20,000/- for and offence. The offence is also considered cognisable and non-boilable (Ch.V, S.32 (i) while S. 32 (2) goes even further and says that under the sole testimony of the aggrieved person, the court may conclude that an offence has been committed by the accused.

The Act also ensures speedy justice as the court has to start proceedings and have the first hearing within 3 days of the complaint being filed in court and every case must be disposed of within a period of sixty days of the first hearing (Ch.IV, S.12 (a) (4) and (5)). It makes provisions for the state to provide for Protection Officers and the whole machinery by which to implement the Act.

The main beneficiaries of the Act will, of course, be women of the propertied upper classes. But there is no doubt that with this Act a whole Pandora's Box of litigation will be thrown open and all the degradation, brutality and cruelty to women that has been carefully swept under the carpet for centuries in our 'old, rich heritage and civilisation' is all going to be exposed and about time! For those feminist groups that see the family or the male as the main cause for women's oppression, this Act will open up all sorts of possibilities in their struggles.

But for the revolutionary left organisations that see the present system as the cause for women's oppression, these Acts are no solution to the basic problems that women face and are, at best, mere stop-gap measures. The underlying reasons for the violence against women which are her enslavement under the present system; the double-standards and hypocrisy of monogamy; the fact that she has been effectively 'privatised' for centuries, removed from public production, public decision-making and interaction; has no economic independence, is relegated to domestic drudgery and is virtually the personal property of her husband/in-laws is not remotely understood or tackled. It is like giving a prisoner certain rights to resist torture and abuse but doing nothing for releasing him from his shackles.

The capitalist system whereby women, especially poor working women are doubly enslaved, cannot offer any long term solution for the emancipation of women or their freedom from violence. It is only socialism that can truly emancipate women by not only making her equal under law and giving her every legal protection but, far more important, reversing the injustices of the past thousands of years by socialising the means of production, bringing the woman back into social production and decision-making, freeing her of her domestic enslavement by the state taking responsibility through crèches, community kitchens, old-peoples' homes etc. It is only a new socialist system that will free both the man and the woman, make them truly equal partners - economically, socially and politically - so that they can enter into a genuine partnership and thus evolve the new type of family where neither will be victim nor villain.

Am I against the Act? No, not at all. But its limitations must be kept in mind. Within the existing unjust and unequal bourgeois system here is an act of legislature that gives oppressed women some respite, but a very temporary one as it will not end the hypocrisy of bourgeois monogamy. Hopefully, the contradictions will be so heightened that society will have to go in for more long-lasting solutions. However, this Act does ensure that women are not totally at the receiving end but have some weapon to fight back with. As Marx so concisely put it: "You cannot give equal laws to unequal people"

Do We Need Gender Biased Laws: Domestic Violence Act

Definition Of Domestic Violation

Domestic violence is a pattern of abusive and threatening behaviours that may include physical, emotional, economic and sexual violence as well as intimidation, isolation and coercion. The purpose of domestic violence is to establish and exert power and control over another; men most often use it against their intimate partners, which can include current or former spouses, girlfriends, or dating partners. While other forms of violence within the family are also serious, this site will address the unique characteristics of violence against women in their intimate relationships.

“Kerala, the most literate state too is high on the graph of women abuse. Amartya Sen calculated that more than 100 million females and follow up studies showed that between 60 million and 107 million women are missing worldwide.”

“Only in one country (Japan) did less than 20 percent of women report incidents of domestic violence.”

Although international human rights instruments and institutions have only recently acknowledged domestic violence as a human rights violation, the right to life and to bodily integrity are core fundamental rights that are protected under international law. One of the most significant obstacles to the recognition of domestic violence as a human rights violation was the belief that international human rights law did not apply to “private” harm. This belief was directly tied to prevailing theories of both domestic violence and international law.

“An earlier WHO study puts the number of women physically abused by their partners or ex-partners at 30 percent in the United Kingdom, and 22 percent in the United States.”

“According to a UNIFEM report on violence against women in Afghanistan, out of 1,327 incidents of violence against women collected between January 2003 and June 2005, 36 women had been killed in 16 cases (44.4 percent) by their intimate partners.”

“The new law provides an all encompassing definition of domestic violence including not only physical violence by the husband, such as beating or physically hurting his wife, or sexual violence like forced intercourse, but also verbal or emotional violence such as insulting the wife or preventing her from taking up a job, and even economic violence such as not allowing the wife to use her salary.

The U.S. Office on Violence Against Women (OVW) defines domestic violence as a "pattern of abusive behaviour in any relationship that is used by one partner to gain or maintain power and control over another intimate partner". The definition adds that domestic violence "can happen to anyone regardless of race, age, sexual orientation, religion, or gender", and that it can take many forms, including physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional, economic, and psychological abuse.

Causes and facts

“This has been confirmed by a study published by the WHO in 2005: on the basis of data collected from 24,000 women in 10 countries, between 55 percent and 95 percent of women who had been physically abused by their partners had never contacted NGOs, shelters or the police for help.”

Domestic violence occurs across the world, in various cultures, and affects people across society, irrespective of economic status. In the United States, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics women are about six times as likely as men to experience intimate partner violence. Percent of women surveyed (national surveys) who were ever physically assaulted by an intimate partner: Barbados (30%), Canada (29%), Egypt (34%), new Zealand (35%), Switzerland (21%), United States (22%). Some surveys in specific places report figures as high as 50-70% of women surveyed who were ever physically assaulted by an intimate partner. Others, including surveys in the Philippines and Paraguay, report figures as low as 10%. South Africa is said to have the highest statistics of gender-based violence in the world and this includes rape and domestic violence (Foster 1999; The Integrated Regional Network [IRIN], Johannesburg, South Africa, 25 May 2002). 80% of women surveyed in rural Egypt said that beatings were common and often justified, particularly if the woman refused to have sex with her husband. In India, around 70% of women are victims of domestic violence. The Human Rights Watch found that up to 90% of women in Pakistan were subject to verbal, sexual, emotional or physical abuse, within their own homes. Up to two-thirds of women in certain communities in Nigeria's Lagos State say they are victims to domestic violence. Statistics published in 2004; show that the rate of domestic violence victimisation for Indigenous women in Australia may be 40 times the rate for non-Indigenous women. The rate of intimate partner violence in the U.S. has declined since 1993. Results will vary, depending on specific wording of survey questions, how the survey is conducted, the definition of abuse or domestic violence used, the willingness or unwillingness of victims to admit that they have been abused and other factors.

“According to the 2005 multi-country study on domestic violence undertaken by the WHO, between 10 and 12 percent of women in Peru, Samoa and Tanzania have suffered sexual violence by non-partners after the age of 15. Other population-based studies reveal that 11.6 percent of women in Canada reported sexual violence by a non-partner in their lifetime, and between 10 and 20 percent of women in New Zealand and Australia have experienced various forms of sexual violence from non-partners, including unwanted sexual touching, attempted rape and rape.”

“According to official crime statistics in India, 6,822 women were killed in 2002 as a result of such violence.”

“According to the Indian government’s National Crime Records, in 2004 more than 7,000 women were killed in dowry dispute, 18,124 were raped, more than 175,200 women suffered other crimes and least, and 58,400 women complained of cruelty their husband.”

“Women commit 50% of spousal murders. Around the world, at least 1 in 3 women will either be physically or sexually abused during her lifetime. In 2001, 85 percent Violence between intimate of domestic violence victims were women and 15 percent were men. Eighty-two per cent of all people have their first experience of violence at the hands of a woman.”

"According to these estimates, approximately 1.5 million women and 834,732 men are raped and/or physically assaulted by an intimate partner annually in the United States. According to UNFPA 70% married women are beaten by her husband.”

“In to a survey done by UNICEF in India, 6902 men were surveyed in the state of Uttar Pradesh during 1996. It was seen that 45% of the married men acknowledged beating up their wives.”

“According to Women’s Feature Service, every 6 hours in India, a young married woman is burnt alive, beaten to death, or forced to commit suicide. Former additional commissioner of police, Sewa Doss, said that nearly 7,000 complaints of domestic violence are reported annually in Delhi.”

“Proportion of women suffering domestic violence in India varies between 20-45%. Country reports 2004 cited data from the Indian Ministry of Home Affairs, which claimed 130 reported cases of dowry deaths, 490 instances of rape and 1211 cases of cruelty by the husband or in-laws in Delhi alone.”

“According to the Hindu, a study cited ‘unequal citizens: a study of Muslim women in India’ and published by Oxford Press, greater proportion of women suffered from violence than Muslim women. Research conducted in Kerala; found that approx. 49% of women who didn’t own property were victims of violence at home against 7% of those who did. However, this result could be due to underreporting among the more privileged women.”

“According to the Tribune of Chandigarh, domestic violence is increasing in Punjab since link between alcoholism and violence could be seen and Punjab had the highest per capita consumption of alcohol.”

Salient Feature Of The Act

The act seeks to cover those women who are or have been in a relationship with the abuse where both parties have lived together in a share household and are related by consanguinity, marriage and relationship in the natural of marriage, or adoption, in addition relationship with family members living together as a joint family are also included. Even those women are sisters, widows, mothers, single women, or living with abuser is entitled to get legal protection under the proposed act. Domestic violation includes actual abuse or the threat of abuse that is physical, sexual, verbal, emotional and economic. Harassment by way of unlawful dowry demands to the women or her relatives would also cover under this definition.

Physical abuse- Beating, punishment shoving
Sexual abuse- Forcing to have intercourse or look at pornography
Verbal abuse- Insulting
Economic abuse- Not providing for wife and children

Right to secure housing: One of the most important feature of the act is the women’s right to secure housing. The provides for women’s right to reside in the matrimonial or share household, whether or not she has any titled or right in the household. This right is secured by a residence order which is passed by court. These residence orders cannot be passed against anyone who is a woman.

Prevent order:

Non-bailed offence:

Covering Legal Loophole:

Presently, where a woman is subjected to cruelly by her husband or his relatives, it is an offence under section 498A of Indian Penal Code. The civil law does not, whoever addressed this phenomenon in its entirety. Therefore, it was necessary to enact a law keeping, in view the rights guarantee under articles 14, 15, and 21 of the constitution to provide a remedy under this civil law, which is intended to protect the women from being victims of domestic violence and prevent the occurrence of the domestic violence in the society. The new act is an importance step in that direction.

Together with the so called “Section 498 (A)” of the Indian Penal Code and the associated amendment to the Evidence Act, these legislations have resulted in widespread misuse and social malaise. Additionally, under these legislations, the indirect sufferers will be women in majority of the cases, as daughters-in-law file case against husbands, mothers-in-law and sisters-in-law.

Act in Details

Section 32 (2) says that under the sole testimony of the aggrieved person, the court may conclude that an offence has been committed by the accused.

This means with one word of women, it will empower her to punish men at her will. This is very dangerous for innocent men. As it is in the Divorce, alimony, rape, and dowry laws are already in favour of women. This law will not allow men to escape from the clutches of women who would lodge false complaint. All she has to do is, go to police station and shed some crocodile tears. That’s all, and husband will be full time member of jail at no cost; SORRY tax payers cost.

Ch.IV, S.17 makes the “right of residence” a powerful tool in the women’s hands whether or not she has any title in the household.

An adulterous woman can abuse her husband or in-laws and threaten them of false domestic violence but she cannot be thrown out of the house as per the Act. This is open license to women to harass innocent men. She could even bring her lover to the house and the husband or in-laws can’t do anything or stop her. Even husband has no right if she has sex in front of her husband, may file case for stopping her from enjoying, its harassment for her.

(Ch.II, S.3) of the Domestic violence Act includes actual abuse or threat of abuse — physical, verbal, emotional or economic.

it means whatever husband do to his wife is wrong, but same if she do, that’s ok, Even with hold sex, shout at him, slap, insult, Humiliate

Section 18 allows the magistrate to protect the woman from acts of violence or even “acts that are likely to take place” in the future and can prohibit the respondent from dispossessing the aggrieved person or in any other manner disturbing her possessions, entering the aggrieved person’s place of work or any other place that the abused woman frequents….

If a woman says her husband and in laws stopping her from bringing her lover home, judge will order husband and his old parents not enter their own home.

The Act also says that husbands can’t pressure wives to watch porn or to have sexual relationship.

Some Indian women say Kissing is PORN, so soon all Indian men who watch movies, Watch these movies together in jail.

Ch.III, S4 of the Act says that the information regarding an act or acts of domestic violence does not necessarily have to be lodged by the aggrieved party but by “any person who has reason to believe that” such an act has been or is being committed. Which means that neighbours, social workers, relatives etc. can all take initiative on behalf of the victim
when husband Stop wife’s lover entering his home, he can file complaint in behalf of his lover.
Preventing one’s wife from taking up a job or forcing her to leave job are also under the purview of the Act.

Only solution is to save Institute of Marriage and Family of India, we should ask all organisations not to appoint women at any cost.

Another flaw in the Act is inclusion of live-in partners or any sexual partner (Ch.I, S.2(a))

This clause give men to make use of this law, if a lover of man come home , his legally wedded wife can’t do anything she can’t kick her out. Husbands now take advantage of this bill? Its law against women not in her favour

The Act will actually worsen the domestic problems leading to breakdown in marriages as women will be now encouraged to go to courts ,without giving any chance to settle their differences The Act discourages women to rectify their mistake. The Act not only gives powers without taking any responsibilities to women but also takes away all the rights of men. .

it is not only marriage breaker but also whole family splitter, women can file case against any male member of Family, it’s a chain reaction, one crack in a marriage can ruin husbands other brothers family too. Its massive bomb waiting to Explode.

There is ample chance to misuse coz there is no clause of punishment if misused, just like Dowry law.

Feminist want Domestic Violence not Domestic harmony, that why there is no word of spouse instead man.

With the help of this law now women can stop Father of her children to meet them, this is total breakdown of Social structure of Indian Society it is best tool for black clad corrupt lawyers and Money minting machinery for police, women organisations and politicians.
If there are abusive men, then there are Abusive women too. Laws should be gender balanced not Gender Biased.

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