Bill Gates' Wife Melinda Calls India's Rape Epidemic “'Horrific”
3 days ago - MEXICO – One of the world's most powerful women – Melinda Gates has for the first time spoken out against the recent spate of rapes and ...
Bill Gates’ Wife Melinda Calls India’s Rape Epidemic “’Horrific”
MEXICO
– One of the world’s most powerful women – Melinda Gates has for the
first time spoken out against the recent spate of rapes and sexual
attacks on women in India and has revealed that initial results coming
out from surveys conducted by her foundation confirm that the menace of
domestic violence in India is much higher than estimated by the
government.
In
an exclusive interview to the Times of India, Gates who was recently
announced as the third most powerful woman in the Forbes list said,
“what is happening in India is horrific,” pointing to increasing reports
of rape of even toddlers.
Gates,
who donated $3.9 billion in 2014 to philanthropy and donated to the
tune of more than $33 billion in grant payments since she founded the
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation with her husband in 2000, said that
India immediately needs to conduct a national-level survey to gauge the
actual burden of violence on women, even in their households.
READ ALSO: I’m seeing the most progress in Bihar, says Melinda Gates
According
to her, recent surveys conducted in northern Indian states by her
foundation has found that the prevalence of violence on women is very
high, even inside their homes.
Speaking
to TOI on the sidelines of the Global Maternal New born Health
conference, Melinda said, “we need to empower women. And, it’s finally
happening in India. The press now-a-days is talking about women
empowerment vociferously. The international community is talking about
it and it’s being exposed. The first way to get change is to shed light
on an issue.”
She
added, “To see not just cases held up in courts but some of the more
prominent ones coming through with results, that’s exactly what India
has to do. I think civil society needs to keep putting pressure on these
issues and bring them to light.”
“I
was just talking to the former minister of health in Mexico because one
of the things they looked at around women’s health is the violence
aspect, because in Mexico, there is a machismo kind of attitude among
men. They knew there was violence but they did not know how much. So
they set about doing an entire survey in the country on domestic
violence and the rate was so much higher than they expected. The
government then said they want a policy against such violence and they
then brought cases to light, followed up, created shelters where women
could go with their children, so that they could leave the situation and
prepare themselves to go back to jobs.
Those are exactly the kind of things we got to do in India as well.”
Melinda added, “India needs to start collecting real time data about how much violence is going on in the household.
In some of the states in northern India, we are just starting to measure the prevalence of domestic violence and
it is extremely common.”
Melinda’s comments come days after Hollywood star Meryl Streep backed a documentary which is
banned by Indian authorities about the high-profile rape of a young woman on a moving bus in New Delhi.
Violence against women is rampant in India. The National Family Health Survey-III, which interviewed
1.25 lakh women in 28 states during 2005-06, reported over 40% of women being beaten by their husbands at some point of time.
Over 51% of the 75,000 men interviewed didn’t find anything wrong in assaulting their wives.
More shockingly, around 54% of the women surveyed thought that such violence was justified on one
ground or the other. An earlier study done by Harvard on domestic violence in India had made another major finding —
children of women beaten up or abused by husbands were 21% more likely to die before turning 5.
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