” Forgetting is difficult, remembering is worse “

These wordings may look like conventional proverbs or saying but honestly speaking these words are the one-liner of lives of the harassment victims. The victim suffers a lot more than culpable persons. There are different perspective on the reason and effects of the harassment. here we will see the effect it has on the victim and some reasons for the harassment in detail.

Article Contents

What is Sexual harassment:

The World Health Organization (WHO) describes it as “any sexual act or a trial to attain a sexual act, undesirable sexual opinions, acts to traffic or otherwise directed, against an individual’s sexuality using force, irrespective of the personal bond to the victim, at any situation.

Sexual harassment effect on the victim:

The girl children between the ages of 15-20 years old are more vulnerable to sexual abuse. But nowadays the vulnerable ages are unpredictable because starting from the newborn baby to elder woman are getting affected. Most of the time people speak of the physical injury they undergone. But the most bothering devastation is the psychological and sociological damage they encounter. Let’s have a view on the psychological and sociological effects.

Psychological effect:

The feeling of defenceless, powerlessness will be at the peak as the result of harassment, which makes them have low self-esteem as well as self-image. Which further make them vulnerable to negative thoughts like catastrophic thinking and embarrassment. Speaking honestly they are completely broken. They think of the possibilities of further harassments and fear of travelling independently. This affects the mental health of the victims and in some cases, it may result in mental disorders too.

Sociological effect:

Even they haven’t committed any mistakes, they fear to face society being a victim of harassment. This is partially the result of a psychological effect but not completely. This depends on the surrounding culture of the victim. When their culture respect humanity, they have the supports of society to come out of the trauma. But this is not possible in case society prioritises the dignity and respect of the family. That is because in that kind of society they likely to blame the victim for the abuse. They blame the victim for violating gender roles even they haven’t done anything. Which involves dressing, jobs, working in late hours, and so on. This forces the victims to restrict their circle of opportunities and their freedom after the incident happened.

What happens to the criminals?:

The culpable persons are only spoken out for a short period. They either get arrested or even sometimes they go unpunished. We have seen that criminals are sentenced to death for harassment cases. But the numbers are very few when compared to the persons who are let free. That may look weird but that is the bitter truth. That is because 60 to 70 per cent of the cases go unrecorded. For instance, When we take Asian countries, people tend to prioritise their family prestige and want the incident to be confidential. This tendency paves the way for the culprits to evade. This is not the scenarios in Arabian countries, where the punishments are instant, transparent, and severe. Now you may get a question, ” if the punishments get severe in Asian countries, will it reduce the number of rape cases? “. Some people confess that it will decrease but the fact is it won’t. I will let you know the reason for that opinion of mine. Firstly, think of the criminals who commit this harassment. At major times the person will come under the following two categories. First one, a person who has the authority or wealth to get relieved from the issue, in case he gets caught. The second one, a person who has nothing to lose and can bear with the punishments given to him. So, the problem here is not only about the punishments but it is about a male’s perspective on the fellow female’s.

Study on reasons for the rapid increase of sexual abuse:

1) Male and Female ratio:

There have been indications that the ratio of men and women may give rise to sexual abuse. That ratio of men to women in the population of India has been unfavourable ranging from 930 females per 1000 males in 1971 to 940 per 1000 males in 2011 reflecting a horrible circumstance. The ratio of 940 in 2011 represents a male population of about 623.7 million and a female population of 586.4 million that shows the difference between them as around 37.3 million. Similarly, the numbers of sexual abuse issues have also increased, but it is hard to prove that ratio is a reason. National Crime Records Bureau says that the number of registered rape cases in India risen by 873.3% from 2,487 in 1971 to 24,206 in 2011. The cases of sexual abuse on children in India have also increased by almost 336% from 2,113 cases documented in 2001 to 7,112 cases in 2011.

2) Gender roles in our society:

We the People want men to be brave, strong and conquering and women to be kind, gentle and supportive to men’s. This made women’s and girl children as defenceless and men’s as the aggressor. This shows why victims are unable to protect themselves at the moment of harassment. But society will blame the victim for her way of dressing, working at late night, trusting colleague or friend.

3) caste discrimination:

Recent studies show that the caste system plays a crucial role in the harassment. The so-called dominating caste or upper caste has involved in the harassment of so-called lower caste people. As the latter people are already striving to survive they are more defenceless and vulnerable to the former. It is easier for the former one to escape from the case.

I would like to stop the reasons with this. This does not mean that these three criteria are the only reason for harassment. There may be more reasons for it but these are predominant among those reasons. We need to start encouraging respect for women and also initiate teaching the pain and depression they undergo due to mensuration cycle to the male children right from the schools should happen. Without women, there are no men.