Gender violence should also be treated as Covid

Women's Initiative for Networking Growth and Success (WINGS) program of Altimetrik a U.S.-based, digital business enablement company recently hosted a webinar "Your Voice Matters"- an initiative to raise awareness on gender violence and to re-emphasis that no person should be victim of any kind of abuse.

The event was a commemoration to the 'International Day for Elimination of Violence against Women falling'. The virtual discussion was centered around a very valid topic in today's times, "Pandemic effects on gender violence - wax or wane"

A distinguished panel of speakers comprised members from various walks of life Rashmi Thattil from Novartis & Mastercard, Abhina Aher, transgender & activist, Priyanka Rane Patil, High Court lawyer and Shishir Saxena, APAC head, client strategy & transformation, Altimetrik.

"Violence against non-binary gender is not considered even today in India. The census on transgender is as old as 2011 showing the total nos. at 5 lacs. They are victims of not only physical but equally of mental and emotional violence all the time. There needs to be a drastic shift in the minds of people regarding this community", shared Abhina Aher.

"Violence is not only sexual in nature, but no one talks of the emotional and mental violence. As a family court lawyer, I come across many cases on a day-to-day basis where victims from a long-standing marriage finally muster courage to ask for help only after their children are settled or when the children, family etc. motivate them. Mental violence is a long prong violence which needs to be addressed; mara to nahi hai na (you were not beaten right?)- this is a big issue", said Priyanka

"Having said that, violence against men is also very common if not equal to women. Laws protecting women are many a times misused to harm and inflict violence on men on all fronts, this needs to be addressed too.We also see that children are often used to settle scores between families, which is definitely a cause of concern and needs to be considered while addressing issue of violence against children," Priyanka further added.

She said, "Covid created a very morose environment across the world. Loss of life, jobs, health issues, forced isolation and lack of interactions with people changed people a lot. The already vulnerable women community was forced to live with their perpetrators for days and months together, which increased rate of violence at an alarming pace. This grave scenario also needs to be considered as a Pandemic- healthcare community needs to be educated and trained to tackle it just as COVID has and is being handled."

We need to have a more permanent vaccine for such a phenomenon which is not going away anytime soon. Men and women need to be vaccinated on gender equality," shared Rashmi.

Bringing in a man's perspective into the discussion, Shishir said "Pandemic changed a lot of things for the men community. A lot of them lost jobs, incomes got totally wiped out or was reduced substantially. While this was a huge stress point for them, being cooped up in houses all the time just made things worse on all grounds. We have heard of cases where men have run away leaving their families as they couldn't cope with it. Increase in child labour has been one outcome during this pandemic era. All the above factors plus lack of a social security network from government has created an epidemic of depression among men of all age groups."

The seminar was one of many initiatives of WINGS which aims to deliver growth through diversity, overcome unconscious bias and create a truly gender-neutral culture that supports growth and leadership for all.

To make the whole issue around gender violence more relevant and impactful, WINGS along with impACT, the CSR division of Altimetrik collaborated with Praise Foundation and organized a 3-day self-defense workshop for adolescents and women at Government shelters for girls in the cities of Chennai and Hyderabad. Around 100 girls and young women were trained on various martial art techniques for self-defense by professional martial arts coaches.