The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world was the saying which we used, and still use to empower ourselves as women. As mentioned in the previous article, gone are the days when a woman was supposed to stay at home, look after the house and family, and almost be a slave for the rest of her life. Being a traditional housewife, she could not take a decision of her own, either the society or her family decided for her.
We see this concept in most rural districts and also in the Asian region, where countries like India are well known for its underage marriages. In the modern context, a woman can decide whatever she wants to do and it is the same with getting married having children as well. Though the cultural belief insists that a woman needs to have a child after getting married’’, it is mostly an insane and a worthless belief that the society itself has implemented.
A woman has her bodily rights and this includes her choice of having a child as well. The decision is up to her. And there is no law saying that an unmarried woman could not have a child either. She has the right to decide her lifestyle, what she does with her body.
Breaking the barriers
The main problem of today’s woman is that she is very self-conscious, lacks confidence and scared to break the barriers. As popular pop diva Rihanna said, ‘You have to accept your body. You may not love it all the way, but you have to be comfortable with it, comfortable knowing that that’s your body. A woman’s right to accept her body can be put in another manner, such as, ‘When it comes to our bodies and relationships, our freest conversations tend to happen in our heads and we keep these thoughts secret’, why? it’s because what we feel often what we can say openly is defined by the society we live in.
These social norms are controlled by our governments, our communities, even our families. When we challenge those norms, we feel guilty, embarrassed. We fear being stigmatised, even jailed. And because of this, we keep silent.
Women’s Rights Movements
Through ‘My body-my rights’, we want to help break this silence because right now, there are a lot of us who don’t know we have rights, and are therefore unable to claim them. Not only the local women’s rights organisations, even in the international arena we see popular celebrities, professionals and intellectuals expressing their views on this particular subject and speaking on women’s rights. International human rights Lawyer and activist Amal Clooney has stated that ‘Holding back women is holding back half of every country in the world’, which is absolutely true since half of the world population consists of women.
Body shaming and verbal abuse are also two different aspects under bodily rights, where women are not allowed to be confident and accept her body, where she is either ridiculed for what she looks like, or verbally abused. There are many examples where she is personally and publicly humiliated from the opposite sex such as ‘you can’t do anything, you are hopeless, there’s something wrong with you’ or ‘you look so plain’ etc. when they are unable to fulfill their ’desires’.
The modern woman can be taken as more independent and liberal who values her freedom and privacy. But the concept which had rooted itself is such that most women, whatever position they might be in society is looked upon as an only a sex object and a worthless creature. It is obviously difficult to change this mindset of people in a traditional, male dominated Asian society, where people just stick to their traditional beliefs and don’t want to accept a change.
On a frequent basis, we see women getting ridiculed, body shamed, bullied in all types of places, even in public, and yet everybody remains silent. Apparently breaking the patterns have become even more difficult, and society remains silent over burning questions faced by women when it comes to her bodily rights.
Once again, we have Ms. Raveendra Sumathipala on today’s interview, and to discuss on a different subject, which goes in par with the last week’s interview.
Q: In today’s interview, how would you identify with women’s ‘bodily rights?’
Women’s bodily rights are also part of women’s rights which include equality, right to autonomy, dignity, information and bodily integrity and respect for private life. This also adjoins the areas of right to access then highest attainable standards of health, including sexual and reproductive health, without discrimination and freedom from torture and degrading and inhumane treatment.
Q: So that means ‘body shaming’ is also a form of violation of women’s human rights?
Yes, body shaming is invariably a violation of a woman’s fundamental right in respect of her bodily integrity. This can even reach further levels such as ‘cyber bullying, ‘sexting’, which are also modes of harassment and abuse. At the same time publication of body shaming articles targeted towards women can lead to violation of the rights such as freedom from torture and inhumane degrading treatment as well.
Q: Does this go parallel with verbal harassment? There have been many incidents of body shaming against female individuals in society. Can this also be a part of verbal abuse?
Yes, definitely this can amount to verbal abuse and harassment. Apparently, there have been many incidents where articles and words have been used targeting females in public as well as in cyber space where body shaming has been a common mode of harassment against women. Some recent incidents such as the incident where a billboard featuring a barrel “this is no shape for a woman” with the text put up by a gym in Colombo caused a huge outrage at the blatant sexism and body shaming.
Also, a recently one of Sri Lanka’s young female artists who is now a world-famous vocalist, found herself the target of body shaming and was blatantly victimised for her looks.
The typical objectification of sexist usage of women by certain industries usually go without scrutiny. The real issue here is that these things have become too common and highly ‘in the society, resulting in non-recognition of such acts as wrong.
Q: Do you believe that there are enough laws to cover these areas?.
Well, while Sri Lanka’s Penal Code as well as Computer Crimes Act and few other enactments contain several sections that can be used to address different aspects of technology-based violence, and although we are signatory to a number of International Covenants, I believe we need more coverage in areas such as ‘cyber bullying’ and related abuse such as cyber stalking, addictive use, trolling, online witch hunts, fake news, and privacy abuse.
Since most of these are newly recognised areas and there are so many ways to get away from the available legal procedure. Especially when it comes to the definitions as well as the available penalties. We see that in the US as well as UK the existing statues have been amended and modified to the extent of prohibiting harassment, stalking, especially by adding language specificity. I believe we need more reform and more clarity.
The Women’s and Child Bureau of Sri Lanka and the Cyber Crimes Division are available in this regard. But the biggest drawback is that these facilities are more accessible to the urban victims and the suburban victims still find it difficult to reach these facilities through their local Police. Also blocking and reporting these bullies is not enough as remedial measures since they still find ways to reach their victims using anonymity.
Q: The Asian culture, especially in Sri Lanka, people still have primitive mindsets and cling to an age-old concept like a ‘mantra’, the same old story. Getting married, have children and look after the house. Surely there are other things which women are capable of than this?
Of course, there are many other things a woman can be, apart of being a wife and a mother. Women in our culture has hailed themselves in other areas in lives like art, culture, sports, business, administration and politics. We should never forget that our country had the world’s first female Premier and also many strong and liberal female politicians. We also have strong female entrepreneurs too. We need to understand that getting married and having children are choices a woman can make, but not mandatory.
The cultural dilemma is, that most of her achievements could be devalued, if, the former choices have not been made by a woman. Or, if a woman fails in a marriage or cannot bear children for that matter. This is why most women sacrifice all their dreams and achievements due to social pressure.
Q: So, do you think that in our society a woman is equally treated, recognised as an important member of the society? or as a necessary party only to make a family?
This is an interesting question, especially since we are one of the countries that have recognised equal rights of a woman comparatively earlier than many other countries in the region, and have since been creating so much dialogue over the topic on equality in different levels in our society. And yet, we still see inadequate recognition of women as individuals having an equal footing and being something more than a ‘home maker’ or the ‘partner who is necessary to re-generate the species’.
It was shocking to see at a recent media event, a popular artiste who passed away recently, referring to the female spouse including his own wife as the ‘baby machine’ throughout the program and that everyone else in that program did not recognise how cynical that term was nor did anyone condemn this. Later this was shared in social media after the death of the said artist, and the message it gives is highly detrimental. The society should not see nor teach the younger generation a wrong perspective about a woman as a ‘baby making machine’.
Q: What do you mean by women’s bodily rights when it comes to sexual and reproductive health rights? How are they violated?
Women’s sexual and reproductive health is related to multiple human rights, including the right to life, the right to be free from torture, the right to health, the right to privacy, the right to education, and the prohibition of discrimination.
This means that States have obligations to respect, protect and fulfil rights related to women’s sexual and reproductive health, especially when it comes to availability and accessibility of good quality without discrimination.
Despite these obligations, violations of women’s sexual and reproductive health and rights are frequent. These take many forms, including, denial of access to services that only women require, poor quality services forced sterilisation, forced virginity examinations, and forced abortion, without women’s prior consent subjecting women’s access to services to third party authorisation female genital mutilation early marriage.