Profiting from rape
According to Rekha Pande, the women's studies course vice-president at Hyderabad in India, the country's Prime Minister had a special ugadi (new year) gift for women on March 19. In collaboration with insurance companies, the government has developed a scheme called Rajeswari Mahila Kalyan Bima, or policy for the welfare of women.
The scheme is an insurance policy covering girls and women aged between 10 and 75 years who are raped.
The premium is very low, 15 rupees for one to five years, and the scheme offers compensation based on the degree of disability caused by the sexual attack. For example, if the victim loses a limb or an eye, she is paid 12,500 rupees; if she becomes "incapable of performing her previous normal functions" or is permanently disabled she is paid 25,000 rupees.
Why the government and insurance companies presume that girls under 10 and women over 75 are not sexually assaulted remains a mystery. But that is not the only problem with this scheme.
Pande and other women are outraged by the move, saying, "instead of helping in the creation of a safe and free environment where women can live without fear and with dignity, this scheme absolves the government, the police and the society at large of its responsibilities by institutionalising rape.
"It is very sad that as we move towards the 21st century, the most traumatic incident in a women's life is now a business opportunity in the hands of insurance companies and the Prime Minister has agreed to collaborate in this venture."
While some might say this attitude towards women is not surprising in a country in which sati (the burning of women on their husband's funeral pyre) is still carried out, the attitude toward victims of rape is little different in more "developed" countries like Australia.
Despite some changes to the sexual assault laws in some states of Australia, women who have been raped are still forced to undergo further trauma when attempting to prosecute the rapist in an often hostile court. In South Australia in 1992, Justice Bollen claimed, "it has been the experience of judges that women are prone to lie in sexual assault cases". In a later judgement he declared that a man demanding sex from his wife could reasonably use "rougher than usual handling".
The number of rapes that go unreported for this reason may never be known, but the real incidence of rape must far exceed the official statistics.
In New South Wales, victims of rape look likely to lose out yet again with the proposed de-funding of Sydney's Rape Crisis Centre. Funding for the centre was won by earlier generations of the women's liberation movement who campaigned for such specialised services when there were none.
That the NSW government is attempting to wash its hands of any responsibility for assisting the victims of a social system which commodifies and distorts sexuality and is founded on and maintained by women's second class status is evidence enough that such campaigns must be resumed.
By Margaret Allum