Women's Justice
Historically, women’s courts emerged to fill the gaps that the law and social perceptions failed to cover: a remedial measure to counter the domestic violence that validates day-to-day experiences of women. The Courts were thus the outcome of a whole series of changes that were happening across India and developed to the current from after several other ways of remedial actions.
The Education for Women’s Equality or Mahila Samakhya (MS) program was planned for five districts of Gujarat. Padra, located in the city of Baroda, was one amongst the blocks covered under this program. MS was initiated in 1989 and focused on women’s education.
However, the opening of this space fostered discourse and action in related issues of women’s rights, especially that of domestic violence and the control over women’s mobility. The involvement of activists from the contemporary women’s movement and the increase in women seeking redress saw the articulation of problems ranging from child custody, domestic battering, harassment, rape, and property rights. The articulation of these issues across regional and identity lines illuminated its pervasive structural nature, undoing the notion of individual aberration. Women in these districts began to organize collectively, and discuss these issues from a political rather than a personal perspective.
As women’s participation deepened, the need for legal training and understanding of socio-cultural practices paved the way for the emergence of Nari Adalats or Women’s Courts (NA) in 1995. In 2005, NA in Padra sought support from Vikalp, due to personal knowledge of the work being done by Vikalp, as well as its cooperation with MS. This year marked the beginning of the formal collaboration between Vikalp and NA. The NA is composed of and run by the working class as well as oppressed caste (Dalit) of women in Padra. The NA team comes from Padra and the thirty surrounding villages; they draw from the local women’s collectives formed in these villages.
- IMPACT
- PROCEDURE
- ISSUES ADDRESSED
1.IMPACT
Subverting gender norms: In conceptualizing women’s court these organizations built upon already existing traditions, both adhering and departing from tradition. New to the tradition of caste panchayat is the unique effort of the Women’s Court to integrate a women’s perspective to alter the existing power praxis. The courts evolved over time, breaking through the silence on domestic violence and the divide of the private and the public to center women’s experiences of a blurred reality and the need to address issues in ways that recognized their intersections.Ownership of justice mechanisms by marginalized community: Women from diverse villages serve as representatives of their communities when they converge for the women’s courts. As ‘insiders,’ their language, idiom, and culture have a familiarity that links the mechanisms and concept of law to the community. Both influencing and being influenced by these characteristics, the women’s courts are dynamic, evolving and growing.
Restorative instead of retributive justice: The women’s courts work by combining state entitlements with various practices available in their cultural history. The effort here is to overcome the often-rigid logic of law, and the concept of justice and entitlements defined within it. The Nari Adalats do not concern themselves with providing a verdict and punitive action. Instead, they are concerned with being ‘just’- making the man compensate the woman in a manner that protects her rights, but more importantly, facilitates a change in her situation towards a more violence-free life.
Public pressure: While cases are being heard, the large public, including other complainants witness the proceedings and speak their mind on the cases in progress. This is another way of protecting the human rights of women. The public opinion acts as social pressure to desist from repeating the offense or paying the price for the offense. Furthermore, the diverse public audience also includes those who do not see women as bearers of rights and wife battering as an offense.
Trauma healing: These courts provide a safe space for women to speak up, and a validation for their experiences. The existence of these courts acts as prevention measure against violence. Women are encouraged to talk of their issues themselves. Holding the courts in a public space has helped in breaking the silence around violence and in involving others in taking responsibility for the violence that women face within their homes.
Transformative potential: Nari Adalat and Mahila Panch enable transference of knowledge and decision making among the women both within the court and those seeking its assistance, empowering all women involved. As Amrtya Sen describes in Development is Freedom, “No longer the passive recipients of welfare-enhancing help, women are increasingly seen, by men as well as women, as active agents of change: the dynamic promoters of social transformations that can alter the lives of both men and women.”
2. PROCEDURE
At the helm of the NA court are fifteen female judges. The courts meet on fixed days in a visible public space. In each of these meetings, the complainants put forward a range of problems including domestic violence, child custody, maintenance/compensation, desertion, land and labour rights discrimination, and retrieval of dowry disputes. The process goes as follows:- Registration: The court registers the names and addresses of the complainants, fixes a day and time for hearings, and invites other relatives and family members who are party to the dispute. After listening to the problem, the judges probe for more details, information and accuracy.
- Hearings: After listening to the problem, the judges probe for more details, information and accuracy. The advocates ensure that the women speak and it encourages them to express what they think would be the best out come of the conflict. Hearings have the benefit of the couple and the family expressing their grievances openly. The nature of public hearing alters the situations of power and helps in coming to terms with the situation.
- Fact finding / follow–up visits: In case the other side does not present itself at court teams of advocates undertake fact-finding visits to ensure objectivity, and to understand the contradictory viewpoints inevitable in the disputes. They visit the person/family in the village, encouraging a settlement bearing in mind the woman’s perspective. The process saves long drawn ordeal that formal courts entail.
- Reaching resolutions: After the hearings and fact finding visits the agreement reached is documented on a stamp paper and signed by the village elders, the panchayat head, as well as all the parties concerned. This in itself is a major activity as the agreements are read out aloud before everyone and then written out as per the participation of the concerned parties, giving the agreement a crucial social validity in the community.
- Legal norms: The women courts always cite state laws in oral and written form to assert legality of women’s rights. The courts also utilize state-based mechanisms such as such as filing a First Information Report (FIR) at the police station, medical examination in case of injury, seeking security from the protection officer in the Domestic Violence Act, as well as writing letters to the Human Rights Commission, the State Women’s Commission, and the National Women’s Commission to appeal for protection and justice.
3. ISSUES ADDRESSED
There is a wide range of issues addressed by the NA, although primarily on women-specific issues, men have also begun to approach the court in order to get timely and affordable justice.Domestic violence: Among the cases that come to the Women’s Courts there is a growing presence of abuse. Wife battering, child sexual abuse, and female deaths in suspicious circumstances, custodial rape – none of these assaults on human rights dignify the sanctity of marriage. The 2006 National Family Health Survey found that 51% of Indian men admitted to beating their wives for any of the following reasons: going out without notification, neglecting the house or children, arguing, refusing sexual intercourse, bad cooking, suspecting infidelity, or disrespecting in – laws. Comparatively, 74% of Gujarati men have justified these as reasons for domestic violence towards a spouse. Often, domestic violence is justified through cultural norms, as seen in statements such as ‘she answers back,’ ‘She does not listen and does what she wants,’ She does not cook,’ she does not care about my parents’,’ without telling me she goes out and does what pleases her’ and ‘I wanted to show her, her place in this family’. An analysis of these statements shows that it is women’s assertion of a self that often warrants control and violence as a means to gain power.
Separation & maintenance: Maintenance and alimony cases brought by women appealing against husbands who desert or divorce them are quite common. Children are often the worst sufferers of divorce, and to provide their kids with a secure home, women continue to take the torment of their marriage. Even today, a prevailing social attitude looks down at women who are abandoned. Furthermore, the contentious issue of child custody is often linked with separation and maintenance. The institution of marriage in India is integrally linked with economical interests and the institution of property. The ownership of land and capital has tended to be very heavily biased in favor of the male members of the family. Few women hold property; although women predominate in agriculture, they own only 7 percent of farms, compared to 20 percent in most other regions of the world. In the majority of Indian homes, the bride will leave her natal home to live with and care for her husbands’ family in order to protect male interests. It is only in a few of the tribal communities where the reverse occurs; land is handed down through the women and men leave their families to stay with the family of his wife.
Livelihood: Issues of economic and financial stability are often interwoven with oppressive social structures. Women’s courts will often deal with land and property disputes and women’s claims to ownership after separation or widowhood. Issues of unemployment, alcoholism etc. also connect with this theme.
Sexuality
The HIV/AIDS pandemic broke the silence and facilitated the creation of spaces on sexuality in India. Hetero-patriarchal structures based on oppositional binaries that carried prescriptive gender roles and codes were no longer the only valid choice for men and women. People had different choices; we learned to notice them alongside the rich diversity that surrounds us all. Even though as a feminist organization Vikalp argued for validity of choices based on gender rather than sex, the biological determination of gender roles had not been sufficiently challenged.
Since its inception in 1996, the organization’s understanding of sexuality and gender emerged through multiple sources. One of which was the finding that a large number of rural tribal women were infected with STIs. Following this finding, Vikalp organized health camps for women in the deep interiors. The camps generated data that demonstrated in concrete terms a reality that until then was suspected but lacked documented evidence. As Vikalp’s interventions sprang out of its work experience with the community, it took a stand to oppose the local political leaders who denied these facts in the name of saving ‘community honour.’
For Vikalp, this contradiction showed once again how women remained at the bottom. Yet having worked long enough one could relate with the wish to save the community honour. The state neglect of the rural and tribal on the one hand and the vested interest of the powerful majorities advocating their way of life on the other hand created a hierarchal, oppositional society in which differences are suspect. In such a space, the marginalized lack the empowerment to reclaim a different way of life. Though changing fast, the tribal communities have a relatively more egalitarian way of life. For example, women are not so strictly controlled, as some community celebrations allow for men and women to come together and mix freely with one another. In some of the tribal communities fairs are held for the young where the men and women select one another for marriage. Separations between couples are easier to come by. Some of these customs are seen as ‘backward’ and judged as being ‘immoral’ by the mainstream society but they nonetheless allow women more freedom.
At large, Vikalp works with women’s issues, most notably domestic violence, by providing women with a holistic plan which includes accompaniment to police stations, advice, meetings with families and partners, and long-term planning by opening bank accounts, ensuring legal advice, and a host of other activities.
To learn more about our Vikalp’s work, trainings, and materials on sexuality, contact us at vikalpwomensgroup@gmail.com.
Economic Empowerment
Vikalp’s engagement with livelihood issues was born out of the organizational approach to work alongside community expressions of choice and their needs. As a community group, the range of issues Vikalp gets involved with spans a wide range. Women who live in and around areas that the organization works in often come to the office to benefit from the benefits and schemes due to them by the Government.
In 1999 to 2000, in Chhotaudepur, a large number of women came for widow compensation. The increasing numbers seeking state assistance for widowhood made the organization take note. Upon further research, it was found that men and women who migrated to Godhra to work at the stone crushing factories died soon after. This was due to the silica stone, the crushing of which caused silicosis, an occupational lung disease. Long awareness programs along with filing of PIL and door to door campaigns led to workers leaving their jobs, even from those factories that crushed harmless dolomite stone. Consequently, the factory owners became aware of Vikalp’s work. This in turn led to many problems when the organization began to work on HIV/AIDS as the employers would not allow Vikalp activists to interact with the workers. While the local politicians and employers was angered by the data and the bad publicity that befell them, the spread of the HIV led to the State identification of Vikalp as an organization working around issues of sexual health and known to the community.
In 2001 Vikalp began to work in partnership with the Gujarat State AIDS Control Society (GSACS) and the larger centrally organized society National AIDS Control Organization (NACO). The journey of self-awareness continues as the organization partners with communities in the larger queer and women’s movements.
Additionally, we provide short-term loans for marginalized people starting small businesses; the low interest rates are reinvested in more loans to additional members of the community, acting as revolving capital. The interest ensures an additional incentive for the people to repay their loans on time. We are currently asking for grants to increase the amount of loans , ensuring at least twelve loans a year to support diverse livelihood activities.