In the early days of the pandemic in India, a group of women activists from Delhi sent a letter to the Chief Minister. They shared their co...
In the early days of the pandemic in India, a group of women activists from Delhi sent a letter to the Chief Minister. They shared their concerns about how the pandemic and lockdown could impact women, suggested what the State needed to do to ensure women’s rights were not abrogated, and asked that the State take note of their experiences in previous disasters and draw on these to put in place a concrete and actionable policy, budget, and other steps.
The rise in cases of domestic violence was evident even at this early stage of the lockdown – since then, the situation has become far worse. As time went by, it became clear that being locked into an often smallspace 24/7 with one’s family created its owntensions. When compounded with the loss of jobs and incomes and the absence of a public space, this resulted in violence against the most vulnerable, usually women, children, the elderly, and those with disabilities. Child abuse too went up exponentially as did the trafficon porn sites
Women facing domestic violence had nowhere to turn to: response services and helplines were not functioning; community interactions, where concerns could perhaps be shared with other women, no longer existed; cellphones...
