The COVID-19 pandemic saw a sharp increase in the number of domestic violence cases around the world. What is the co-relation between COVID-19 and domestic violence? What did and could have the government done to facilitate greater access to justice for survivors during this time? How did civil society respond to this sudden rise while grappling with a pandemic themselves? In this episode, Ruchika and Uttanshi tackle these questions as they’re joined by Shreyasi Tripathi, a final year law student from National Law University Delhi and Mounica Sreesai, who is a sociologist and a researcher.
Content Warning: This conversation includes mentions of assault, rape, and mental, emotional, physical and institutional violence. It also contains discussions around COVID-related distress and death.
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Ruchika
Hello everyone, Welcome to another episode of the In Search of Justice podcast. I’m Ruchika.
Uttanshi
I’m Uttanshi.
Ruchika
And we are your co-hosts on this journey to navigate what justice is. We’ve taken a small break from the podcast to cope with the second wave for the pandemic, but we’re back and in today’s episode we’ll be reflecting on how gender-based violence has taken shape during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Uttanshi
Content Warning: Before we begin though, I’d like to give a quick trigger warning and content warning about the mention of rape, sexual physical mental assault and other forms of gender-based violence as well. There will also be a mention of COVID related distress and death. Please be mindful before listening ahead.
Ruchika
So, it’s been over a year that the world has been stuck in this major health crisis and we’ve seen our lives come to a halt. We’ve seen the loss of innumerable valuable lives and I’ve just seen everything that we’ve built and worked towards in our lives individually and a society just change and alter our perception of everything. But alongside this pandemic that we’re seeing, we’ve also seen an increase in something very specific to what we’ve always discussed in this podcast and that is an increase in gender-based violence.
Uttanshi
Yeah, definitely. Ruchika, I hear you completely. There has been an increase in different forms of gender-based violence that has caught our attention in the last year, especially domestic violence. But reports have also shown us a simultaneous increase in other forms of gendered violence, which include digital violence, stranger sexual violence and other forms of gendered violence as well. And despite it making it to the news, at least the last year when we were just starting to deal with the pandemic, it has been an outcome that has largely gone unnoticed. It has largely gone without any attention by the government agencies and it has of course affected countless communities and lives negatively and it is definitely something that we need to address. But somehow our government and other decision-making authorities have just not stepped in to even acknowledge the fact that this issue exists, let alone responding to it in a way that survivors continue to have access to justice and support during such a time.
Ruchika
Yeah, I think I definitely really hear you when you say that, forget addressing the issue, there’s like a complete silence and lack of acknowledgement. And I think that alone is really frustrating. But I’m really glad that we’re here today talking about this, and I’m really glad that we’re going to be joined by two incredible people to talk about this with us. Our guests today are Shreyasi and Mounica, who were both research assistants for the ‘Study on Civil Society Response to Domestic Violence Survivors during COVID-19 building Better Support for survivors’ conducted by OFC and funded by Azim Premji COVID Research Funding Program of 2020. Shreyasi is a final year law student at National Law University, Delhi and Monica is a sociologist and a researcher, she’s currently working in the Committee for Managing Gender Issues at the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad. Hi, Shreyasi. Hi, Mounica.
Hi, how are you doing today?
Shreyasi
We’re good. Thank you.
Ruchika
So glad to have you join us and so, so glad that you all did the research you did. I had a chance to go through it before we are speaking today. And I definitely learned a lot and I definitely understood a lot of what’s missing in this conversation entirely. And Uttanshi and I are super excited to ask you questions so we can learn more from you and understand where we go from here.
Uttanshi
Yeah. Thank you so much, Ruchika. Shreyasi and Mounica, very excited to be joined by you and to discuss the research study that we had worked on previously together. You know, just to set context for our listeners and to get started on the dialogue. Would you like to share with us, Mounica, How do you think the pandemic, for example, like the COVID-19 pandemic, right? How do you think it affects or accentuates the prevalence of gender-based violence and if it even changes the nature of gender-based violence by itself?
Mounica
Yes, thank you Uttanshi. I think that’s a very important start on this discourse. And countries have always reported an increase in gender-based violence like during emergencies and pandemics like with Ebola, right? And even with Covid, I think we’ve been seeing a lot of news articles and news reports and reports from various organizations as well as advertisements and help lines from various organizations and the NCW (National Commission for Women) and police departments, etc. Also highlighting the increase and the number of complaints related to gender-based violence and especially intimate partner violence and domestic violence. Right. So many of the reports were like, during the last year, but I’m sure like the situation is continuing and it’s hitting much more and we are not prepared even for the second wave, right. And I think, the nature of a pandemic or an emergency- and here the pandemic is such that the measures that are necessary to control the spread of the disease or the measures that are necessary to prevent the disease are the very measures or the situations that are induced because of that are the very reasons why the prevalence of GBV is increasing, right? Like say for example, there’s a restriction of movement, those survivors cannot go out and reach help. Also here, it’s important to note that the strategies they might have been using earlier, like say they know the patterns of the perpetrators, so they try to avoid them during those times, or go to a neighbor’s place or to somebody else’s place and things like that, always have a child with them and such strategies that like women have been adapting in their domestic life, for example, those strategies have also been failing because they’re forced to live and share the same space with the perpetrator.
So the restricted access to support and closure of services. Not many organizations have been able to keep open because they were not considered essential by the government. And also there’s a reduction in the community interaction because you need to isolate yourselves, maintain some distance, etc. So, I think all of this has actually accentuated the prevalence of gender-based violence and the related risks. And it’s not just against women and girls, but the caste-based violence has also been amplified. And queer communities have been at the receiving ends, have been victims to violence and discrimination, even transgender people and people who are differently abled. A lot of communities that are really vulnerable have been really vulnerable during this time. And there’s some things that I want to highlight, I mean, coming to the nature of the violence and things like that, so I mean apart from the situations that are induced by the pandemic and the measures that are used to control it. The other things are also about a lot of families spending a lot of time in the same space together, which probably they did not prior to the pandemic. See, I know a lot of my friends, my fellow colleagues and students who have had to live back with their families, who are very toxic. And have been subject to violence of different kinds in their family, in their family structures and some of them have been forcibly asked to marry and things like that- they have been asked to discontinue their education. And all of this has induced a lot of trauma. So, I think spending a lot of time in the same space with people who are abusive or have been toxic, which prior to the pandemic people could avoid, has led to a lot of fights in households, which has also then led to violence. Right?
Then there’s also this increased uncertainty resulting from very high job insecurity. This was also cited as a leading cause by many studies for the increase in gender-based violence and this has also amplified the aggression- the kind of aggression that perpetrators have taken recourse to. There’s also the alcohol and drug withdrawal which is one of the key factors again contributing to gender-based violence and in almost all stratas of the society. And also, we need to note here that the government has diminished the supply of alcohol, which also then played a significant role in the persistence of gender-based violence.
So, and apart from this, again, the infrastructure and the state apparatuses, especially like say police or the shelter, homes and legal aid and everything, all of these infrastructures were already limited, plus they had extra duties and responsibilities due to the pandemic, which then reduced and limited their ability to help, like if they could at all, and whatever ways they were capable of. So that access was also sort of limited and apart from this, reproductive healthcare and the women’s rights regarding reproductive health has also been largely affected. There are a lot of reported unwanted pregnancies and with no means of abortion or access to abortion, the rights over their bodies have been largely compromised. In connection with this we can notice then that the sexual violence is also increased a lot.
I think last year I was a part of this tenants’ union, a student’s tenants union that we formed because a lot of students have been harassed and assaulted by the land owners because they were asked to pay rent and things like that. So, what we noticed was that people from certain sections, women especially like say women from the Northeast and a lot of women were having to live alone with nowhere to go during the pandemic. They couldn’t go back home in time and things like that, so they were living in PGS all alone or with very few people around, they had nowhere to go, or even in flats and apartments where they were living alone with no flatmates and friends who were then subjected to the landlords, because they would just like come and enter the house and then in the pretense of fixing something or checking something, harass the women, students and my colleagues. So, these are instances that we have also heard a lot through our helpline of the Tenants Union and like I already talked about the forced managers. There are also other non-physical forms of violence like restrictions on socializing with people which might be a large support for all of these women and those who are subject to gender-based violence. A lot of them are still not continuing with their work and education. They were controlled on multiple levels and I think it’s also important to notice that there was also an increase in cyber bullying and cyber harassment, especially around dating apps where a lot of women have reported receiving unsolicited graphic pictures, unconsented attempts at cyber-sex, even by their own partners, etc. So I think this is also not something that we usually think of when we talk about or visualize gender-based violence, and I think our understanding of gender-based violence has to conceivably change. If the pandemic has taught us anything in this regard. It’s not just the physical violence, but there’s so many kinds and types of violence. And every time we talk about these things, something new definitely comes up, and even for me, right, like, you know, with my own conversations with friends and other organizations that I’ve worked with- especially in the study that OFC has done with CSOs (Civil Society Organisations), a lot of times you might have taken something for granted and then you realized, oh, this is also actually violence. So, I think that is one thing that I would really like to highlight about how a conception of gender-based violence itself has to change so that then we direct our efforts and responses in different directions as well.
Ruchika
Yeah, absolutely. Mounica, I think what you said at the end, like, really nailed it on the head. Just like a couple of days ago I saw a meme on social media circulating with a mother who I’m presuming was covid positive, was hooked onto like an oxygen cylinder, but she was cooking in the kitchen and people were praising mother’s unconditional care. And I just found that so troublesome that that image even existed and that people were praising it. The fact that someone who’s ill with COVID is still having to cook for their family while they’re on oxygen was just, yeah, so we’ve definitely learned. Something even I have personally understood that there’s so many forms of violence and so many every day, I don’t want to say like casual activities that go on around us, but just like everyday occurrences that we didn’t register as violent previously that we’re now recognizing as violent because of how our lives have changed because of the pandemic. I think that’s definitely something that we need to highlight and address in our future responses to gender-based violence. Even once things go back to a non-pandemic world, which I hope they do at some point. Uttanshi, do you have something to add to this?
Uttanshi
Yeah, Ruchika. Thanks, Mounica, for that extremely informative answer. Especially not just about what gender-based violence has, what the status of gender-based violence has been, I think in terms of numbers, but also how our very understanding of what constitutes gender-based violence has to have transformed after the way we’ve seen the COVID-19 pandemic play out. But something that’s interesting is, like you said, right, the 30 odd CSO that we’d interviewed as part of the study gave us a few reasons why they think this sort of violence happened. And most of these reasons like you mentioned were related to alcohol withdrawal, drug withdrawal, lack of certainty about employment or lack of certainty about finances. And what’s interesting is, you know when we say that these are the causes of violence, we often also say that that violence is all right to have taken place to begin with and its justified. But I think something that really came out for us while we were doing the study was also the fact that the people who- the queer people, women were also going through a pandemic, which means we were also having the same uncertainties. We were also having the same fear that, you know, say probably men were going through. But the fact that that was okay for some sections of the society to engage in violence, while not okay for some other sections to engage in violence by itself, speaks a lot to the already existing unfair power dynamic which exists about how even though we are looking at these causes to be the primary triggers for the violence to take place, the fact that they think it’s okay for them to process their triggers and process their anxiety in a way like this by itself, I think is a very great testament to how much of a skew there is when we talk about power dynamics, when we talk about how ingrained patriarchal power structures are within our individual families. Yeah. Shreyasi, do you have anything to say about that?
Shreyasi
Yeah, thank you for that, Ruchika, Uttanshi and Mounica. I was just thinking about what Richika said, right about caregiving and how she saw a meme and an image of a woman being hooked onto an oxygen cylinder and still cooking and why that is a very violent form of it- and I’m surprised that people were praising that. This also ties into what Mounica said about students moving back home. Because a lot of students who had finally escaped their households now have moved back home to realize that that power dynamic that Uttanshi speaks of exists in their house wherein, say, their father or their brother will not have that many caregiving responsibilities despite having the same jobs and the same education as, say, their father or their brother. They will still have to do the caregiving work with their mom and and the men go Scot free just because they’re men and that is a form of violence that we don’t talk about or something because of gender stereotypes and gender roles, that’s form of violence that we don’t even think of as violence, even though that is putting pressure on someone else’s body and mind and pushing them to their brink. It’s so normalized that we don’t even think of it as something that’s violent and harmful.
Ruchika
Yeah, absolutely. So, I’m actually gonna move on to the next question. So far we’ve addressed how violence has kind of showed up in our homes, in our families, with students, with queer communities, with people with disabilities. But I want to specifically address now how gender-based violence has affected frontline workers and COVID responders, first responders during this pandemic. Are there any specific instances or have we seen a specific kind of gender violence that we’ve seen them face?
Mounika
Yeah. Thank you Ruchika and thank you Uttanshi and Shreyasi and Ruchika for adding on to the previous discussion. And I think that really adds up to the conversation we are heading to right now. Because the conceptualization of gender-based violence and the way we look at it now in terms of power structures, in terms of the ingrained patriarchy at very basic levels and like how Shreyasi has said, how normalized it is and apart from being normalized, I think it’s also the glorification of the care work and the emotional labour that women have to put through. And that is especially with women in healthcare and frontline workers, right? A lot of newspaper articles and even on social media, a lot of posts that are talking about women, healthcare and frontline workers and there’s a lot of glorification that we see in terms of the care, work and emotional labour that they put, which is not a part of their job. And these are especially seen in professions which are a lot feminized like say nursing, teaching and things like that, right? And professions like that which are already gendered and are a lot skewed in terms of numbers. So, I think that glorification sort of also is a violent approach to take towards these workers because then that absconds the responsibility or accountability to make them feel safe and protected at work, to have like equal rights even during a pandemic, because all the care work is supposed to be taken by women, so they work extra during the during an emergency and especially during the pandemic.
They’ve been working extra with no increase in wages or they’re not paid for their overtime. There’s a lot of workload and even health wise, there’s no occupation like this. The safety and protection is not guaranteed. It’s compromised on multiple levels. They also closely work with affected populations, which then puts them in very vulnerable positions. But it’s not like they can also isolate themselves and keep working because they have families to come back to and take care of again, their children to take care of. And this again is like owing to the patriarchal social structures that we live in, right? And these are also amplified with women in marginalized communities who are frontline workers because they cannot afford to hire extra help. So, they have to manage both at the same times. So, I think apart from putting themselves at risk, they are also having to put their families at risk, especially children and the elderly. So, I think even in our study when we were interviewing the CSOs and the people who have been working there, like I already mentioned before, these organizations have not been classified as essential. But in the pretense of distributing ration kits and things like that, these women have been going out to communities and looking out for survivors and women who might be vulnerable to gender-based violence in their household. Right. So, and these workers are also stigmatized in these communities. There’s a lot of discrimination because these workers are on the ground helping other people and things like that. So, when they come back to their own communities, they are sort of discriminated against. There’s a lot of stigmas. They are socially ostracized in a way- I don’t know if ostracized is the right word, but it sort of like seems like that- And apart from this, these workers are also vulnerable to a lot of aggression from the police, from hospital authorities, from the perpetrators of gender-based violence on survivors, right. Like the husbands, the father in laws, etc.
Because according to them, these are the women that are sort of manipulating their wives and the women in their households and police because they have to repeatedly go to the police and seek help. There’s a lot of aggression from the police’s side because they’re already, I mean whatever causes it might be frustration because if amplified workload on their end as well or whatever it might be there is, they are vulnerable to a lot of aggression from such authorities and with no protection, care and exposing themselves to the virus itself. And all of these combined issues I think the kind of violence that we look at and because women are largely in these occupations and professions which in terms like relates to healthcare and care work, right. So, I think disproportionately women are the ones who face this then which is what makes it gender-based violence. Yeah, I think that’s
Ruchika
Yeah, absolutely. When you were speaking Mounica, I kept on thinking of Asha workers who have been on the frontline in villages. Contact tracing, providing assistance to anyone during the pandemic, especially in parts of the country that don’t really have access to healthcare or minimal access to healthcare. And not only have they not been treated as official government employees, they’ve kind of been rendered a volunteer status where they don’t really have access to benefits or anything like that from the government. They’re paid really small amounts and their salaries have also been withheld. I saw the other day that the kind of protective gear they’re being provided is also really minimal and basic, not something a frontline worker who is going door to door to assist people during a pandemic should be provided. And definitely I think that counts as gendered violence that the frontline workers are facing, again, because Asha workers are all women and I think it’s like really important to highlight that and address that as well. Shreyashi, Uttanshi, would you like to add anything?
Uttanshi
Thanks, Ruchika. I just want to step in here to just draw the correlation between how a lot of the service providing sector by itself, but especially also within the healthcare sector, a large section of the service providers are women themselves, which also means that the pandemic is affecting women disproportionately, not just within the household but also externally in their professional roles, which means that even when I am working as a health provider externally, not only am I at an increased risk of being subjected to sort of being increased risk of being exposed to the COVID-19 virus, but also the fact that the lack of an accompanying labor rights framework or a lack of an focus on the well-being of frontline workers by itself is often so problematic and inadvertently by design affects certain populations, certain sections of the population, more negatively than others. Which actually takes me to the next question that I have for Shreyasi here, you know, we’ve been going through this for over a year now and when we started off, we heard the news, not only are we somehow more unprepared to deal with the second wave of COVID-19, we’re also still not talking about increased forms of gender-based violence, increased domestic violence for example, Shreyasi. So, what do you think about what the response has been, if any, to begin with by government agencies? And of course, because of their response, how would you state has the response been of non-governmental organizations or civil society organizations as well? Through the increase in gender-based violence.
Shreyasi
Thank you for that Uttanshi. I think it’s very important to talk about the role of the government in the current crisis, not just in terms of how COVID is out of control in the country right now, but also its consequences, right? And before I go into what their response has been like, I would like to, on the outside, clarify that the state response to gender-based violence was inadequate. Both in and of itself and also when compared to international standards. When we talk about the government here, we’re talking about people who had an idea that in crisis situations gender-based violence is always on the rise. We also know that they knew that there would be uncertainty, job uncertainty, even food uncertainty created because of the way in which they imposed the lockdown and also in the way that, there is an increased anxiety about health and people just dying everywhere. OK, So, yeah, let’s keep this backdrop in our mind and then and then think about how they responded first. So Govern started over 50 telephonic helplines when there is data with them to show that more than 50% of women in India do not have access to phones. Then there was a concern internationally and within the country and this was all over social media when people were saying that a woman who is living in close quarters with her abuser, especially in cases of intimate partner violence, right, would not be able to pick up the phone and talk to someone to say that they’re in danger.
And when this was on the rise, they started one WhatsApp number that people could reach out to when over 1/3 of women in the country do not have access to the Internet. The shelters that we have from the state were inadequate to care for survivors safely in the middle of the Pandemic and Despite that they were running at capacity. There was a notable lack of protection officers, and even when they were available there was no information on how to reach out to them. And so the police became the only motives of state support for survivors, and the police was already overburdened, doing over duty everywhere. And even when they weren’t overburdened and were willing to listen to people, they would often, and this is something that we noticed a lot in our interviews with CSO, right? They would often wash their hands of cases after saying things like this is a domestic matter and we do not want to get involved in this. So, the only way to access state support was also unavailable. The judiciary wasn’t working. And even if people say a woman was able to reach out to the National Commission of Women helpline, they would only direct them towards the local police for support, which again did not help survivors much. After all of this, the High Court stepped in to provide guidelines to the state, but then again there is no information on what happened to these guidelines.
One remarkable thing that the state of Odisha did was that in April 2020 they started this program where local police would go to women that had already registered a complaint against their partner to ensure that their well-being was maintained and that they were safe. But such instances of support and care from the State of authorities is one off, even though this one is laudable and this was all during the first wave of COVID. We have so little information about what’s happening right now. When this whole range of lockdowns started, I googled to find out news articles and information that survivors could reach right now and there is very little available. If you know the name of a CSO that’s providing support or you follow them on social media, you can get access to that information but that’s it. People are sharing a COVID support oxygen support on their social medias but no one is thinking about gender-based violence at this moment and so in the backdrop of this CSOs had to step in to do the job that the state is support supposed to do and non-governmental organizations did rise to the occasion and did a very very difficult task to the best of their abilities in my opinion. They tried to create safe spaces where survivors could go to. They were managing the safe spaces for instance and one of the CSOs that we interviewed was the house of their frontline volunteer, so there were women working on the ground that would open their houses up to women and children who were in danger, despite the risk that was present everywhere of COVID. Then CSOs were also checking in on survivors that had already accessed their services. They were collaborating with one another to support cases in regions that they could not access because of physical mobility issues. They also set up community groups such as Mahila Mandal groups or local communities and they used unconventional people such as guards and vegetable vendors to reach out to people because it was so difficult to even reach out to survivors and they were not like Mounica already said, given an essential services status.
So, this was all happening online in very difficult situations, yeah. So, the state response has been very inadequate, but our CSOs and our non-government agencies tried to do the best they could, I think.
Uttanshi
Thanks, Shreyasi, for sharing those extremely insightful points about what the government response has really been like for a situation that is so grave and requires the attention of the government. Something that I’d also like to point out here is, you know, when I was listening to you, I was also thinking about how even the solutions that we do have in place, right. We’ll get to shortly about how these solutions are already designed to meet with the needs of a very, very small section of people to begin with. But irrespective, I would like to say that you know there are such small design flaws, right? For example, the entire world shifted online and we started using tech heavily, which is great. But then what happens? What does that mean for a country like you said, where only one third women have access to technology to begin with? Why did we not think of the travel opportunities that survivors will need access to if they’re being subjected to domestic violence? Why did we not think of making housing facilities more accessible for survivors? I know some countries abroad opened up their hotels for survivors to come and converted them into shelters because the existing shelter homes were not accessible by survivors. And even when we are thinking of shelter homes, it’s important to think that already in India, we don’t have enough shelter homes which are adequately funded and staffed, which also means that if there is an overcrowding there, then there is an equal exposure to COVID-19, which by itself is also another source of vulnerability for survivors to begin with. So, these are all solutions that anybody who has the kind of policy backing and the kind of resources that government agencies do should have seen forthcoming and should have in some way, at least, prepared for it.
But moving forward from there, there’s also this additional issue about how even the data that we have is representing the concerns of a very, very small and niche population of the entire country, right? At least for women, at least for cis women. We have data from the National Commission of Women from different state commissions of women saying that these many complaints came in or these are the kind of support responses we have. Across the country, from our government to our judiciary, there is a constant devaluation of queer persons, persons with disabilities, persons from lower or marginalized caste backgrounds who are not even given the same amount of protection on paper, right? We are also talking about how the fact that when we interviewed 30 odd organizations, when we looked at individual people who provided support. We didn’t have data on the number of queer people who are being affected negatively in terms of gendered violence because of the pandemic. And I feel like all of these measures, with the really horrible, horrible unequal laws that we have currently, which only provide protection to cis women against domestic violence, for example, are very indicative of the government viewing certain sections of populations as lesser than other sections of the population which are more deserving of their attention or more deserving of their care.
And by itself, I think, you know, those are forms of violence which have really come up in terms of government responses and COVID-19 pandemic. Because if we are not being inclusive in our policies, if we’re not being inclusive in how we’re looking to support survivors, if we’re not even willing to recognize some people as survivors, how are we even going to start thinking about them as people who are active stakeholders and beneficiaries entitled to support mechanisms that the state has to offer? I feel like it’s a very important nuance that the government often seems to miss. And I think I really want to bring that out here while we’re speaking about gender-based violence, how even though our work is expensive, there is so much limitation in terms of how much protection the government is even willing to extend to certain sections of the population. And how that by itself is a form of violence that we should not oversee and how we look to solutions moving forward as well.
Ruchika
Yeah, absolutely. I think, and I also want to specifically talk about one thing that both of you all have mentioned, the whole point of only 1/3 of women being online. I mean there was a certain time period in the second wave where we saw everyone sort of coming together online to get access to basic medical and healthcare needs that the government had failed to provide. We we’ve seen it in general even with gender-based violence, saw the pandemic where people online have kind of come together not just with a non-governmental organizations but also online communities have come together to provide aid to survivors of domestic violence and that again has been supremely limited to a largely urban population, there’s absolutely no kind of online support mechanism for people who do not have access to the Internet or smartphones or social media at all. And that again is something that is a huge failure, not only in the sense of how the government has failed to respond, but also in how society our support systems are currently structured predominantly online because of the pandemic. I mean, I guess we don’t have a choice. We can’t go offline at this point. I think that’s something we need to keep in mind too.
Mounica
That reminds me, Ruchika, like when Uttanshi was speaking and about the study also, I think we’ve come across a lot of instances where they were talking about how women in certain households, like from the marginalized sections especially, the space is so restricted like the houses are small and like with so many people living and things like that, they could not even access the phone to call leave about online or filing a complaint online. Right. Just even accessing a helpline number, accessing a phone to just call police or call anybody for that matter, even a neighbor was not available. And whenever they would call or reach out to organizations and in case the organization has missed out on such a call, they could not call back because the husband or the perpetrator might pick up, which will then leave the women more vulnerable and subject to more violence, like intensified patterns of violence, right. So, I think that’s one thing that we need to think about. You know, it’s not just about the digital divide that is a huge thing, but apart from that as well, how many sections are even able to access the safe space to reach out for help, even if not a complaint, just basic help from a neighbor or like a vegetable vendor and anybody, right. So, I think that’s one thing that needs to be rethought about in terms of how we are providing or how we are providing a space for the survivors to reach out. And I think in one of the interviews it was also pointed out how with the NCW, right, like even though the NCW had a helpline and it also has a Postal Service, which obviously people could not access to during a pandemic when the entire country was locked down. The other thing was how when they would call and calls wouldn’t be picked up, but when they did pick up, they would get caught up in so much bureaucratic procedures and asking about incidents and details and things like that, that the limited time those survivors had to reach out to help or like for support would already be over before they could actually get any help. So, I think this red tapery and you know, these bureaucratic procedures, all of these structurally then diminish the kind of help that women, especially from all sections of the society can reach out to.
And the other thing is like this I think we’ve talked about but the other interesting thing, at least for me during this interviews, was also about how women belonging to say, a social location in which the social status matters a lot, let’s say a richer household, they would reach out to shelter homes, but then they would also ask about the facilities in these shelter homes and things like that and then would choose not to go to the shelter homes because the facilities there do not match what they would want. So like a lot of things like the strata, the structures, everything I think has to be kept in mind.
Ruchika
So yeah, I also want to add that even if the governments had sort of had a plan to address gender-based violence or domestic violence or any kind of violence that frontline workers have faced that are gendered in nature, I think that even then, as we’ve seen throughout this podcast and all of the conversations we’ve had with all of our guests so far, that the government response would still have biases, inherent biases that do not favor those from marginalized communities.
So again, it goes back to the point of how cis women from majority religions and upper-class backgrounds and dominant caste backgrounds would have an easier time accessing support and care from governments, government responses or state responses. So, I think that even if we do talk about a government response being present, if there was absolutely none here, but even if there was one, it would still have all these biases. And that kind of brings me to the next question actually. How can we involve survivors in the decision-making process and use their experiences and thoughts and recommendations while designing solutions to gender-based violence during a pandemic? And how could we have used them to create a plan to respond better? Do you have any recommendations?
Shreyasi
Sure, see. Yeah, I think to start off, it’s very important to remember who our survivors are, right. As we’ve been discussing for so long, if we leave it up to the state to formulate a plan, it would serve only someone from a certain social location and they may not prepare a plan that’s for everyone. And so, we have to have a multi stakeholder approach where we have people from all communities. That gender minorities come together to devise a plan that works for everyone and so we ensure that we do not have oversight, such as having online complaint mechanisms where most of our country does not even have access to the Internet. And this is important because the solutions that the state is willing to offer to survivors are not usually ones that survivors want. Just a small example is that in a lot of interviews that we did with CSOs for our study, we found that most survivors that even reached out to them were not interested in leaving their partner or filing a formal complaint. The only thing they would say is that maybe they want the violence to stop and everything else to remain the same, because for a lot of marginalized communities there. And since, especially in cases of intimate partner violence, their relationship to the perpetrator is also a source of financial and societal security, and so the solution of safe, fully removing the perpetrator or fear of removal of the perpetrator may keep them from accessing even other help that they were willing to give them. While devising a solution, it’s very important to remember to give our survivors agency to opt out of the process at any point and for them to know what it looks like because currently even when people do call a helpline, the first question they ask is how do I go about this process because there is no information out there on it. If I’m facing some kind of violence, if I go to the state to get help for it, what will happen to me and what will happen to this person that I care about who’s causing harm to me? So, I think a good first step would be to give information and agency to survivors while preparing a preparedness plan. Do I have to go into other recommendations from the study here or are we doing that as a follow up question?
Mounica
So like Shreyasi has underlined, the kind of solutions that women look for are based on multiple social, economic and cultural factors, their social location and all of these factors combined and these needs and these factors do not always like fit with what the state is willing to offer, as has been told to us by a lot of CSOs that they usually sit down to counsel. Usually, they have memorandums written by the perpetrator that they will not do something like this again or they will not repeat something like this again because that is what the women have wanted. In some cases, the woman has wanted to like to learn, develop her skills and then, you know, eventually move out of the house and things like that. And there’s a lot of counseling where the CSOs also had to convince the parents of the survivors to take her back in because she’s not safe because the parents wouldn’t take her back, saying that her place is with the in-laws and with her husband and things like that, right. So, I think the kind of solutions that one might want to do, take or opt for is based on multiple social, economic and cultural factors and needs and these needs need to be kept in mind. So, I think like Shreyasi said, the first thing, the first step is to talk to these women about what they are looking for as an outcome, what do they want? And then suggesting multiple ways to go through it, which means involving them in the decision-making processes about these things, right, making them stakeholders in these decisions that the organizations or the states take. And the pandemic I feel has decreased this agency like the ability of these women to participate, saying focus group discussions organized by organizations and things like that. So, I think that is very important here in this way but I think it’s also like before we jump into the recommendations that Shreyasi will cover. I think it’s also noteworthy how the communities have come together in times of need. Like how the domestic help that goes to work in multiple households has become- would take information from one household where the woman is not safe to another household and reach out for help. What certain vendors or security guards were pulled in, how the WhatsApp groups in terms of peer support, how the children had formed groups with other students and tried to sort of navigate or mitigate this. So, I think these strong community networks that were solidified in terms of the times of need, especially during the pandemic, I think are also noteworthy and applaudable.
Ruchika
Yeah, keeping all of this in mind, all the points both you and Mounica have made, Shreyasi what recommendations do you have in terms of our responses and what we could have done?
Shreyasi
So there are quite a few, given how little we did, but I’ll keep this very short in the interest of time so we can start with preparedness right, when we have access to information that says that gender-based violence increases in crisis situations, we should codify protection measures for gender minorities in our disaster management plan and ensure, say, the judiciary takes up these matters on a priority basis, or we have more protection officers or police officers that are specifically available to provide these services. Besides state responses, we should bid for our community, such as RWAS, to be able to respond to gender-based violence in their areas more effectively, training them in bystander intervention or having influential men in communities circulate information and voice their opposition to GBV so that men are also a part of the solution. And this I say, because we noticed that one CSO that we had interviewed for the study relied on panchayat heads to circulate videos on WhatsApp saying domestic violence like just voicing their opposition to domestic violence and they said that this was really effective in changing community mindset And then we can talk about survivors specific support such as providing financial and infrastructural support in terms of Social Security measures like housing and emergency transport services, medical access, victim compensation to survivors and access to cooked food and or even direct cash transfers for that matter besides.
These immediate responses can also have long term change, things like changing perception of gender-based violence and undoing gender stereotypes and biases. Running long and effective awareness campaigns among communities where this is rampant. Most importantly, empowering gender minorities with education and financial independence to be able to have a sustainable out in harmful situations if the need arises for them.
Ruchika
I had this thought when you were talking about these recommendations and I think that a lot of the responses and recommended responses there are, they don’t even have to be gender specific. For example, just waiving rent for a month for everyone, not even in a gender specific format would alleviate gender-based violence during a pandemic. I don’t know if I’m wrong in saying this, but so correct me if I am, but I just had this thought. What do you think, Uttanshi and Mounica?
Mounica
No, definitely. I think like when I was talking about the Tenants Union, right? You don’t know if women have also said this, the scholarships were not coming in on time so they couldn’t pay their rent which was then again leaving them in vulnerable places, vulnerable positions in terms of the power structures with the landlord and police and things like that, right. So, I think certainly things like say a rent waiver would definitely help such women at least. So, like you said not all the responses have to be gender specific and gender particular. So, but yeah, things like these do definitely help.
But also, I think apart from this the awareness hasn’t just been enough on GBV during a pandemic, right, a lot of CSOs have also mentioned this and we’ve also in our own discussions with OFC also brainstormed a lot on this in terms of awareness. There was a lot of awareness and posters about the virus and how to be safe about it; keep washing hands and things like that but nothing about GBV during these times, about say children who are more vulnerable, who say they might have lost their parents due to the pandemic and things like that. So, I think that awareness part is also equally important; like posters, just how there’s posters are masking and safety and things like that and also safety in terms of gender-based violence and not just the violence. So, I think yeah, like caller tunes or posters and all of these awareness campaigns I think should have been taken more seriously so that at least the women know that OK, this is not right or I can reach out for help for something like this. So I think that’s also something to look into.
Uttanshi
I am going to quickly add to what Mounika said, just to say that you know, we just want to be mindful every time we move forward. Something that COVID really has done for us is to realize that we can’t make policies in our silos. We can’t make policies that are not reflective of the various social and, you know, cultural consequences of our identities. And if we don’t engage with these, you know, complex identities of the communities that we work with, we are going to inadvertently always leave out certain nuances, we’re always going to leave out certain sections of the population, which is very telling because that has really come out in the COVID-19 pandemic. Not just in terms of, you know, the response of the government in terms of vaccination, in terms of COVID care, in terms of COVID healthcare resources, but also in terms of gender-based violence, right. And I just think it’s very important to hold these various identities at the heart of each of our policies so that we’re able to account for the different needs and different sections of the society have.
Thank you, Shreyasi, and Mounika for taking the time out to come here and share with us your very integral insights into the nature of gender-based violence during the COVID-19 pandemic, and also for sharing your recommendations on how we can be better prepared moving forward and how we can be more inclusive in our responses to gender violence, especially during health emergencies.
Ruchika
Yes, thank you so much, Mounica and Shreyasi. Really learned a lot from our conversation today. Please, Shreyasi Monica, would you like to share your social media handles? Only if you’re comfortable, of course, with our listeners in case they want to follow you and follow your work.
Mounica
Yeah, sure. Thank you, Ruchika. It’s my name, Monika Srisai, on all social media platforms, and it’s a unique name, so it should be easy to find.
Ruchika
Thank you so much Mounica, Shreyasi for joining us. I’ll leave your social media handles in the description for our listeners to reach out to you in case they want to know more about your work and have any more questions for you. As always, please leave us your questions and comments and concerns on Anchor, in our Anchor or in our DMs. We look forward to hearing your thoughts. On justice for gender-based violence drivers during a pandemic or justice in general. I’ll also be linking to the study that we’ve heavily cited throughout this episode for everyone to refer to in the bio. Until next time, stay with us on our journey as we search for justice.
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About the In Search of Justice Podcast
As we strive to collectively build towards social justice, it becomes imperative to challenge and reorient the very conceptions of justice. Justice, in popular culture and the zeitgeist overall, has been synonymised with carcerality, which presents a very myopic perspective of justice and diminishes the significance of justice as an intrinsic human right. Further, in the case of survivors of abuse, pathways to justice are further limited and often don’t include the survivors themselves in the process. Justice thus, becomes a destination, an outcome, rather than a collaborative, collectively-built journey or process. Through this compilation of the transcripts of the In Search of Justice Podcast, we aim to explore this discourse surrounding justice, particularly in the context of gender-based violence, in bite-sized episodes. Co-hosted by Vandita and Ruchika, these conversations seek to navigate the multiple meanings of justice, especially when it is considered the penultimate goal by questioning carceral systems, introducing alternative justice systems and leading the conversation into how we can build justice systems that are receptive and responsive to the various needs and desires of survivors.