{"id":30759,"date":"2018-10-26T18:06:05","date_gmt":"2018-10-26T12:36:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=30759"},"modified":"2018-10-26T18:06:05","modified_gmt":"2018-10-26T12:36:05","slug":"the-power-of-numbers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/the-power-of-numbers\/","title":{"rendered":"The power of numbers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thehindu.com\/todays-paper\/tp-opinion\/the-power-of-numbers\/article22972486.ece\"><b>The power of numbers<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n<p><b>Context:<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Collecting data about sexual violence is a crucial step towards breaking the culture of silence<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Statistics<\/b><\/p>\n<p><b>Difference in perceptions about the prevalence of sexual harassment<\/b><b>:<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> When the <\/span><b>India Human Development Survey (IHDS<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">) asked men and women in over 40,000 households about how often young women in their neighbourhoods were harassed, 20% of women and 14% of men said this occurred \u2018at least sometimes\u2019 in 2005.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In 2012, when the same households were interviewed again, 31% of women and 21% of men reported that harassment was prevalent in the same neighbourhoods.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>What does this imply?<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This suggests that women are far more likely to feel harassment is pervasive in their neighbourhoods than men.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> moreover, for both men and women, perceptions of sexual harassment increased by almost 10 percentage points between 2005 and 2012 in the same neighbourhoods.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Actual Experiences:<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><b>Lok surveys<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, asked women about their actual experiences of sexual harassment to nearly 78,000 women.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When asked, how often you have experienced unwanted groping\/touching by men, nearly 10% said often and an additional 7.5% said very often.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Since personal experiences of this nature is generally expected to be underreported, over 17% women claiming they experience unwanted groping often or very often is striking.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Of the 15.67% of women who reported experiencing groping\/touching only \u2018rarely,\u2019 a fair number might have been under-reporting.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When both men and women were asked whether \u201cwomen should tolerate eve-teasing as a normal part of life\u201d only about 50% disagreed with this statement<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Others either agreed to some extent or had no opinion. The acceptance of sexual harassment is striking<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>National Family Health Survey (NFHS) \u2013 IV<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> NFHS asked questions about women\u2019s experiences of sexual violence.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> About 5.5% of the women surveyed say they have experienced sexual violence;<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Over 80% of these instances of violence are perpetrated by husbands.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>What is the problem with NHFS results?<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">These results direct attention to the home as the primary site for violence, away from public spaces and workplaces.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This is misleading and largely reflects problems in survey design and execution.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">NFHS-IV is: \u201cHas anyone ever forced you in any way to have sexual intercourse or perform any other sexual acts when you did not want to?\u201d<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It then goes on to ask the identity of the perpetrator.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The question which is most likely asked in semi-public settings, in the absence of lead-up and sensitivity, elicits largely negative responses.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It, moreover, asks about non-consensual sexual acts; it does not account for sexual coercion tactics <\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>What is missing in all the data mentioned above?<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There is no mention of sexual harassment and violence against women in the workplace.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There is minimal data on workplace harassment in India.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Why is data collection on sexual harassment extremely challenging?<\/b><\/p>\n<ol>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It is difficult to define sexual harassment<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> It is even more difficult to collect information about painful and stigmatising experiences.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p><b>Way ahead:<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There should be privacy, safety and guard against further stigmatising survivors of sexual harassment and violence.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Data must be collected and interpreted with sensitivity in order to do justice to the struggles women encounter in the face of gendered and sexual violence.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> However, collecting and disseminating data about sexual violence is the first step towards breaking the culture of silence and finding ways of combating violence against women.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The power of numbers Context: Collecting data about sexual violence is a crucial step towards breaking the culture of silence Statistics Difference in perceptions about the prevalence of sexual harassment: When the India Human Development Survey (IHDS) asked men and women in over 40,000 households about how often young women in their neighbourhoods were harassed,&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/the-power-of-numbers\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">The power of numbers<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[555],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30759","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-test-1","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":{"total":0,"cached_at":"","cached_date":1704638984},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30759","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/61"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30759"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30759\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}