Many Soroptimist clubs around the world are working to raise awareness of violence against women and girls in their communities, as well as taking practical action to prevent it. In this week’s SoroptiVoice blog, Soma Dasgupta of Soroptimist International Calcutta (India) writes about the inauguration of the Club’s Project Dignity, which helps to safeguard women and girls from violence by building school toilets, at a Seminar to help promote understanding of the wider issues of gender-violence.

Two years ago, some members of SI
Calcutta wondered what they could do to improve the well being of illiterate,
poor women of villages who suffered violence, much of which continues to be
undocumented.This was the genesis of our seminar on violence against women and the launch of Project Dignity.

Women in India are just as much victims
of the epidemic of violence against women
& girls (VAWG), as their sisters around the world. Women in rural India use
open fields as the place to relieve themselves. Health and hygiene problems
notwithstanding, it is common knowledge that many crimes against women are
planned and executed due to this vulnerability.

Project Dignity

 Current school open-air toilet, which will be replaced by Project Dignity.

It is estimated that 65% population in Bengal, the state where SI Calcutta is located,
require toilets.  SI Calcutta feels that by providing basic security to a section of
women from the rural community by building toilets for them, we give them
dignity. We hope to reduce their vulnerability to violence. We
called this initiative Project Dignity, set up a fund and sent out requests for help. We appealed to the
generosity of people within the country and outside.  And contributions came in for the purpose
from kind donors all over.

Simultaneously, we worked to seek out
recipients in villages. One important deterrent was the lack of willingness of
men to ‘waste space and money’ for a toilet. It was clear the motivation to
change attitudes towards using toilets was also required among the villagers.

We have located a
reputed organization formed of a group of volunteer women from Kolkata, which
runs schools in a remote tribal area. Project Dignity’s initial focus
will be to build two toilets, one each in two villages.

The villages called Agra and Bhobla
(located in the subdivision of Ghatal in West Midnapore district) have schools
that either have an open space or very rudimentary open-air toilets. We will
help them rebuild robust structures on their present open-air set-up. The schools are aimed at pre-school aged children and
have 25 children each. Mothers and wives of farm labourers leave their children
here from 9am until 5pm. Children from a few months of age until the age of 6
years are included. The children play, study and are given meals too. These
children and their mothers will benefit from the toilets we will build.                                                      

The idea of selecting schools for our
first project comes from the hope that toilet using practices in rural areas
can and should be inculcated early. We feel that starting young will help
develop lifelong healthy sanitary practices.

Thus school premises are the best places
to build them in. Also we had to be certain about the ownership of land where
the toilet would was being built. We are partners in
building so will be involved with the work. We will keenly monitor the building
process and the school authorities will employ local builders.

Seminar

SI Calcultta seminar to promote understanding of violence against women and girls

Project Dignity was launched at a SI Calcultta seminar on 21st March, on the theme “Empowering Women against every
form of Violence”. The seminar brought together
experienced women from the fields of academia, psychology, performance art, and
the law, with a variety of topics that stretched over four non-overlapping
areas. The audience comprised, apart from Soroptimist members from SI clubs in
Kolkata and Dhaka (Bangladesh), young people from the colleges of the city and many friends
and well-wishers. We were delighted to welcome our  Soroptimist guests from  Bangladesh, Arifa Rahman and Hasina Zaman.

The speakers articulated the challenges
of eliminating violence against women and affirming the society’s total
resistance to rape, honour killing, dowry burning, objectification, harassment
and much more. The seminar was very ably moderated by Soroptimist Koely Roy, who is also our founder member.

Bangladeshi scholars and faculty members
of Dhaka University, Nazmunnessa Mahrab and Arifa Rahman gave a PowerPoint
presentation on the “Scourge of Violence against women in Society”. With
substantial statistical data they showed how women throughout history have
suffered violence from men, over their lifetime, ‘from womb to tomb’.

A hideous but common form of violence in
Bangladesh is throwing acid on the face of a woman for rebuffing a man’s
advances, they said.  Bangladeshi women
are regularly trafficked across the border, totally lost to their families.

Mental Health Activist Ratnabali Roy
posed some pertinent and loaded questions, when she spoke on “ Responsible
Parenting & Inculcation of values”. Is parenting alone accountable, she
asked, when teachers, peers, and society all influence the youngsters. And how
do we define values? Values mean morality, codes, ethics, and all have
different meanings in different cultural and economic settings. But truly in
households where the father respects the mother, children learn to respect
women.

Theatre personality Ramanjit Kaur, spoke
on “Women’s Image in the Media". She began by quoting Virginia Woolf: "for most of
history, Anonymous was a woman", referring to the time when women authors could
not publish in their own names.  Things
are only slightly better today, as women still suffer suppression and
oppression. Theatre can and does question these accepted norms. And women
directors can and do play a powerful role in gender sensitizing.

Justice Indira Banerjee took up the
important and highly relevant topic “How promising are the laws and their
enforcement”.  She said that the Indian
constitution is very gender friendly. Laws have also been enacted which give
redress to women when crime is committed against them.  And then she detailed some acts that have special provisions to
safeguard women and their interests. Referring to the important
women-related Indian laws, articles, and sections thereof, she explained the
significance of each.  This knowledge
should considerably empower a woman to seek justice even though other factors
like the family circumstances, police inaction, and their own ignorance pose
problems.

Justice Banerjee stressed that one has to
inculcate the ideas of gender equality in the mindset of men and women alike,
very early in life.

At the end of the event, our partner in the Project
Dignity project took to the stages so we could flag off the rural toilet-building scheme, presenting a cheque for the building work.