Pink Sari Revolution: Fighting Sexual and Domestic Violence in India

Pink Sari Revolution: A Tale of Women and Power in the Badlands of India

by Amana Fontanella-Khan

One World Publications (2013)

Book Review

According to author Amanda Fontanella-Khan, the “economic liberalization”* of Indian in the 1990s was accompanied by a massive increase in violence towards women. Although reported rapes shot up by 792%, while conviction rates steadily dropped. Domestic violence increased by 30% during the same period.

In the Pink Sari Revolution, Fontanella-Kahn traces the life history of Sampat Pal Devi. In 2006 Sampat founded the Pink Gang in Bundelkhahnd on the southwest border of Utta Pradesh. With a population of 200 million, Utta Pradesh is the poorest state in India, with poverty levels worse than sub-Saharan Africa. Reaching a membership of 20,000 by 2008, the group wore pink saris and carried pink bamboo sticks to administer vigilante justice where the police failed to prosecute men guilty of domestic and sexual violence against women.

According to Fontanella-Kahn, the police force of Utta Pradesh is one of the largest criminal gangs on the planet. Illegal detentions without formal charges are common, as are incidents in which police sexually assault women arrestees.

The book follows the specific case in which the Pink Gang, with the support of anti-corruption journalists, forced the Utta Pradesh police to release an 18 year Dalit** woman illegally jailed after a corrupt legislator had her arrested on fraudulent theft charge. She had run away after the legislator detained her in his home against her will, where he raped and physically assaulted her.

After the Pink Sari Gang staged massive protests in front of the jail, the Supreme Court ordered the girl released and the legislator held on rape charges. They also ordered the rape case transferred to the Central Bureau of Investigation, due to low confidence local police would do a thorough investigation.

At the time of publication, the legislator (Pushottam Naresh Dwivedi) was still in jail awaiting his trial. He died of kidney disease in April 2021 while serving his sentence.

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*This is the euphemistic term for “reforms” India adopted in the 1990s to increase foreign investment by reducing import tariffs and taxes and reducing corporation regulation. The result was a rapid increase in wealth for India’s elite. along with massively increased political corruption, as India’s legislators, bureaucrats, police and prosecutors began demanding bribes to perform their assigned duties.

**Dalit is a name for people belonging to the lowest caste in India, previously characterised as “untouchables”.

Whatever Happened to Women’s Liberation?

She’s Beautiful when She’s Angry

Directed by Mary Dore (2014)

Film Review

This documentary examines the 1960s women’s liberation movement. I found it quite sad in a way, given our total failure to reduce violence against women. Most countries are witnessing an increase, rather than decrease, in rape and domestic violence.

The film traces the beginning of so-called “second wave” feminism to the publication of Betty Friedan’s Feminist Mystique in 1964. The book was highly critical of society’s insistence on defining women via their sexual relationships with men and refusal to recognize them as individuals. In 1966, seeking to end job discrimination against women, Friedan and Pauli Murray founded National Organization for Women.

The formation of local consciousness raising groups in the US and Europe were an early feature of 1960s feminism. In sharing their feelings and experiences with like minded women, tens of thousands experienced immediate empowerment in discovering they weren’t alone in feeling depressed and angry about their relationships with men.

After NOW leaders refused to allow the organization to take on the distinct problems of African American, lesbian and working class women, many broke away to form their own groups.

In 1968, New York Radical Women (which was more militant than NOW ) first brought the women’s movement to mainstream media attention through a mass protest (against women’s sexual objectification) at the 1968 Miss America pageant.

The Chicago Women’s Liberation Network went on to organize 24-hour free child care for all Chicago women, as well as classes on auto repair, women’s history and sexuality (after Kinsey and others revealed how few American women experienced orgasm) and contraception. In addition, volunteers with medical training offered a free clandestine service providing safe abortions.*

One of the enduring legacies of 1960s feminism is the Our Bodies Ourselves series. The first edition of Our Bodies Ourselves was  published in 1970 by the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective. It came out of a health seminar designed to educate women about their anatomy, sexuality and women’s health issues. The latest edition was published in 2011, and it has been translated into 33 languages.

The end of the film offers a brief fast forward to the efforts by millenial feminists to campaign for free childcare and an end to the current rape culture (see Rape Culture: The UK Failure to Prosecute Rape) and global epidemic of domestic violence.

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*Abortion didn’t become legal in the US until 1973.

The Link Between Globalization and Violence Against Women

Witches, Witch-hunting and Women

by Sylvia Federici

PM Press (2018)

Book Review

This book is a collection of essays that continue the theme feminist historian Sylvia Federici introduced in her 2004 book Caliban and the Witch: Women, The Body and Primitive Accumulation (see Witch Burning and Women’s Oppression). In addition to re-exploring historical links between witchcraft trials, enclosures, land privatization, and systematized oppression of women, Witches, Witch-hunting and Women extends her analysis to the present day. Federici sees strong links between increasing violence against women and “globalization,” a euphemism for an elitist campaign to dispossess third world peoples of their lands and livelihoods. This dispossession, in turn, has led to the largest mass refugee migration in history.

In tracing its historical origins, the book makes the case that capitalism was actually a “counterrevolution” against the widespread 14th century rebellions that improved both the working and living conditions of both peasants and early urban workers. In constant fear of new rebellions by landless peasants (expelled from common lands under enclosure laws), the landed and merchant classes introduced a totally new form of production that imposed even harsher labor discipline than feudalism.

The witchcraft trials of the 16th and 17th century were essential to this transformation. They were primarily directed against women who resisted enclosure, widows, women who had children out of wedlock, landless women who were driven into the streets (either as market vendors or prostitutes), midwives and women who practiced folk healing.

At a time when thousands of women were killed for accusations of witchcraft, all women were banned from guild membership and prohibited from engaging in crafts other than brewing or spinning and bringing legal cases to court. Under capitalism, they were generally confined to the home to perform unpaid domestic labor in total submission to their husbands.

In looking at modern equivalents, Federici sees a direct link between the massive dispossession occurring under globalization and escalating violence against women. She points to a big increase in domestic violence and rape (especially “handbook” rape*), in sex traffcking, in unprosecuted murders of women (especially women of color), in witchcraft accusations against tribal women in Africa and India, and in dowry and honor killings in India and Pakistan.

She also sees strong links between the current mass incarceration of people of color and the 17th century Great Confinement, in which droves of peasants were incarcerated in prisons and workhouses after being driven off their land.

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*”Handbook rape” rape by trained military and paramilitary forces is deliberately designed to terrorize targeted populations. Examples include inserting knives or guns into a woman’s vagina or slitting open her pregnant belly.

That F Word: Growing Up Feminist in Aotearoa

That F Word: Growing Up Feminist in Aotearoa*

By Lizzie Marvelly

Book Review

The goal of That F Word is to dispel common confusion about the meaning of the word “feminist.” To singer journalist Lizzie Marvelly, the word simply refers to someone who advocates for full women’s equality. She illustrates by demonstrating all the ways in which women aren’t fully equal to men in New Zealand (or the rest of the industrial world).

If women were fully equal, they would enjoy equal pay for equal work, decriminalization of abortion* and equal representation in government, the boardroom and the media and entertainment industry. Domestic violence and rape culture would end because sexual abuse, sexual harassment and domestic violence would be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, as would the routine exposure of 14-year-old boys to misogynist Internet pornography; the widespread use of soft porn to sell commercial products; the continual media pressure on women to hate their appearance; and the constant verbal abuse and rape and death threats against women who openly express opinions in the public arena.

Marvelly views the advent of social media as a two-edged sword for women. Despite the ubiquitous use of social media by insecure men to verbally abuse, degrade and threaten women, it also offers women a unique opportunity to openly share personal experiences of abusive treatment by men. Even more importantly, social media has brought into the open the extreme level of misogyny women experience in contemporary society.

Presented as an expanded memoir, That F Word is a remarkable achievement for a 29-year-old author. In my view, it should be required reading for all men with a genuine desire to understand the condition of women in the 21st century.

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*Aotearoa is the original Maori name for New Zealand

**In New Zealand, abortion is still a crime under the Crimes Act – unless a woman obtains independent certification from two health professionals that proceeding with the pregnancy will seriously endanger her mental health.

Miss Representation

Miss Represention

Jennifer Siebel Newsom (2011)

Film Review

Miss Representation takes an in-depth look at sexualization of women and girls by the corporate media. In addition to examining the psychological damage this inflicts, the film explores the largely commercial factors behind it, as well as potential solutions.

The primary role of American media (TV programming and ads, movies, music videos, billboards, etc) is to convince women that their personal appearance and the approval of men should be their number one priority.

Even more pernicious, the media project a totally unattainable standard of beauty. What makes this messaging particularly harmful is that girls and women incorporate it subconsciously without realizing it. It’s especially dangerous for the developing brains of teenagers, who lack the critical judgment skills to weigh what they see and hear. By age 17, 78% of girls are unhappy with their bodies. Even more ominous, 68% of American women and girls develop an eating disorder in their determination to be skinnier.

The effect of this messaging on men and boys is to condition them to value a woman’s appearance above intelligence, integrity and other personal characteristics.

TV’s Fixation with Youth

Although women forty and over represent 44% of the population, they only play 26% of TV roles. Being youthful isn’t enough for female TV celebrities – who are frequently pressured to lose weight or undergo breast enhancement and/or botox and collagen injections.

The film outlines three principle reasons for the entertainment industry’s one dimensional portrayal of women. The pressure to live up to an impossible ideal is incredibly effective in selling beauty products. American women spend millions of dollars yearly on cosmetics and plastic surgery, far more than they spend on education.

The media’s constant parade of stunning, sexually provocative bodies is also essential in luring men aged 18-34 (the demographic targeted by advertisers) into watching TV. Men this age tend not to watch TV, except for sports.

Finally nearly all the decision makers in the entertainment industry are men. At Walt Disney, only 4 out of 13 board members are women. At GE (which runs NBC), the ration is 4/17. At Time Warner, it’s 2/13, Viacom 2/11, CBS 2/14 and Fox 1/16. Only 16% of movie and TV directors, producers and editors are women and only 7% of screenwriters

Low Representation in Government

The objectification of women by the mass media discourages them from playing leadership roles in business, community affairs, academia and politics. The US is rapidly falling behind developing countries in this regard. Unlike the US, 67 other countries have elected female presidents and prime ministers, and the US is 90th in female representation in government. China, Cuba, Afghanistan and Iraq all have more female representatives in their national legislatures.

Two direct outcomes of this low representation are unequal pay (American women still only earn 77% of what men earn for comparable work) and the failure of the US to mandate parental leave (like all other industrialized countries) following childbirth.

Even more ominously, numerous studies link the media’s objectification of women with growing rates of domestic violence and sexual assault.

The Negative Effect on Men

Miss Representation also speaks briefly to the negative effect of this systematic gender distortion on men. Bombarded by constant media pressure to be smarter, more powerful and more respected than women – as well as making more money – men can find it difficult to cope when this fails to pan out real life. This psychological conditioning also causes young men to be “emotionally constipated.” Lacking realistic no role models, men can have a hard time learning to express emotions in a healthy way.

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