Violence against Women

Right from the time when the ghastly crime against the young ‘Nirbhaya’ occurred in Delhi in December 2012, there seems to be no end to the violence against women. Various questions emerge: (1) Is violence against women on the rise? (2) Is the rate of growth of the crimes committed rising over the years? (3) Is the increasing media attention and heightened sensitivity of citizens leading to greater reporting and publicity of the crime? (4) Along with heightened sensitivity of citizens, is there simultaneously an increase in misogyny as well?

Some of the incidents of rape and other violence have been so horrific that the mind boggles at the thought a woman being subjected to such gruesome assaults. Equally, there is widespread callous and cynical attitude towards violence against women which is starkly visible in the attitude of the police, politicians and so-called god-men. The medieval attitude of the likes of Mulayam Singh (“Boys make mistakes”) and Babulal Gaur (“Sometimes it [rape] is right, sometimes it is wrong”) beggars belief. Even worse, it probably is representative of the views of a large number of males.

In the wake of the Badaun rape case where two young girls were raped and then killed, a conjecture has emerged that rapes are caused by lack of toilets at home which forces women to go into the fields at night to relieve themselves (http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-22460871 (See BBC report or Hindu Newspaper). The suggestion coming out of this is that if toilets were available inside homes, the number of rapes would reduce significantly. A similar argument is made about cities where there have been cases of rapes in or near public toilets (See here).

The chart below brings together the number of rapes in Indian states and the absence of toilets inside the household (abbreviations used for the states are listed in Appendix 1).

The significant point to note in the above chart is the many instances where the blue line (representing absence of toilets) rises and falls along with the red line (representing number of rapes). This suggests that as the percentage of households without toilets rises in a state, the number of rapes in that state rise as well. The reverse is also true. It appears that there is likely to be some connection between the number of rapes and absence of toilets at home.

Using data available from the National Crime Bureau and from the NSS 65^th Round Report 535 (Housing Condition and Amenities in India), I estimated a regression equation seeking to explain the total number of rapes that take place in a state with the causative factor of interest being lack of toilets inside the homes of households. Of course, one must also allow for other causative factors that might have effect on the number of rapes. For example:

•   Law and order situation in the state: the worse the law and order situation, the higher is likely to be the number of rapes.
• Average income in the state: it is possible that higher income would reduce the number of rapes in a state.
•   Level of policing in the state: higher number of police in the state could act as a deterrent to rapes.

What is being ignored in the above list – “the elephant in the room regression equation” – is a variable that measure the attitudes of men towards women. The reason is that data on attitudes are not (regularly) collected. But more on the attitudes of males later.

The estimated regression equation (reported in Appendix 2) revealed that, after controlling for the three factors just listed, absence of toilets at home continues to remain a significant determinant of the number of rapes. The results show that improving the availability of toilets at home will help: a 1 percentage point decrease in the number of homes without toilets will, on average, reduce the number of rapes by 15.

Having obtained the above results, I tried to discern whether similar factors are at work in rural and urban areas of the states of India. Interested readers are referred to Appendix 3 for a brief note on separating the data for rural and urban areas. The results for rural areas were similar to those at the level of the entire state discussed above. However, the results for urban areas were different.  For urban areas, it was not the absence of toilets at home that was important. What was important was the percentage of households that used public toilets: reduction of 1 percentage point in the number of households using public toilets (in favour of toilets at home or shared toilets) could decrease the number of rapes by 13.

Let me now revert to the discussion of the missing variable – attitude of males – introduced earlier in this post. The results reported above do suggest that making toilets available at home might safeguard women from rape to some extent. If such provision does make girls and women safe, by all means, we should do so but let us not lose sight of the primary cause behind rapes, namely, the terrible attitude towards women that pervades Indian society. This is why I am extremely uncomfortable with the link between lack of toilets and rapes that is being played up in the media. My reason is that this shifts the blame from the main culprit – the predatory male – to the victim who needed to go to the field at night. Since the “outside world” seems so dangerous, all kinds of restrictions have traditionally been placed on women: “do not go out alone” or “do not go out after dark”. This is, of course, the familiar Little Red Riding Hood story: “don’t go out of the house or else the big bad wolf will get you”. If going out for mundane things – and what can be more mundane than a toilet visit – might cost a woman her life, the problem cannot be explained away as inadequacy of toilets at home. The problems are far more deep-rooted, lying in the mental make-up of males and the extreme misogyny that wreaks wanton violence on women. It also lies with the so-called leaders, whether political or social or religious, who view rape as a minor problem and make excuses for those who rape.

APPENDIX 1

Abbreviation	State Name	Abbreviation	State Name
36GARH	Chhattisgarh	MAN	Manipur
AP	Andhra Pradesh	MEG	Meghalaya
ARP	Arunachal Pradesh	MIZ	Mizoram
ASS	Assam	MP	Madhya Pradesh
BIH	Bihar	NAG	Nagaland
GOA	Goa	ORI	Orissa
GUJ	Gujarat	PUN	Punjab
HAR	Haryana	RAJ	Rajasthan
HP	Himachal Pradesh	SIK	Sikkim
JHR	Jharkhand	TN	Tamil Nadu
JK	Jammu & Kashmir	TRI	Tripura
KAR	Karnataka	UP	Uttar Pradesh
KER	Kerala	UTK	Uttarakhand
MAH	Maharashtra	WB	West Bengal

APPENDIX 2

Estimated Equation (with p-values in brackets):

NOS-RAPES =	77.57 +	15.02*NOLATRINES +	3.65*RATEOFCOG -	0.01*PCSDP
	(0.87)	(0.01)	(0.03)	(0.12)

Adjusted R-squared = 0.40

F = 7.00 (0.00)

White’s test for homoscedasticity = 11.59 (0.23)

Abbreviations used:

NOS-RAPES = Number of rape cases

NOLATRINES = Percentage of households without toilets inside the home

RATEOFCOG = Number of cognisable crimes committed per 100,000 population

PCSDP = Per capita state domestic product (measure of average income levels)

APPENDIX 3

As stated above, data on rape cases are not separately available for rural and urban areas. What is available is the number of rape cases in 53 cities in India. I use this information to create data for rural and urban areas.