Chitrangi to bring groups together to fight sexual assaults on women
GOANEWS DESK, PANAJI | 08 March 2013 13:48 IST
Ratnamala Diukar speaking at Chitrangi seminar
Chitrangi has decided to bring all the women’s groups as well as other like-minded people and organisations together to fight the issue of sexual exploitation of women.
Chitrangi is a group of women writers, artists and activists, belonging to Konkani Bhasha Mandal.
In a seminar held on the eve of Women’s Day, the group also decided to immediately take up the issue of sex education and formation of Grievances Cell in each educational institution immediately.
Ratnamala Diukar, one of the co-coordinators of Chitrangi, listed out the programme after discussing “Sexual Exploitation of Women and Need to Change the Mindset” at Sanskruti Bhavan yesterday evening.
Diukar said the movement to change the mindset should start on three fronts – home, school and the society.
Dr Rupesh Patkar, a psychiatrist, said the root cause of increasing incidents of sexual exploitation as well as sexual violence against women was the conditioning of mind in the patriarchal male-dominant society.
This is the reason, he said, even women get involved in bride-burning and assault on daughter-in-laws.
He also said the society needs to come out of the concept of social stigma when a woman is sexually exploited.
Kajal Kerkar, a social activist, narrated several cases of sexual assaults that had improvised legal provisions in the existing acts.
She said the society today need to debate upon the proposals like reducing the age for consensual sexual relation to 16, marital rape as well as exempting Armed Forces from the criminal act of sexual assaults.
Sawani Shetye spoke on various myths behind sexual assaults, stating that the reality was completely different.
The myths, she said, included girls provoking men by wearing short and provocative clothes, moving alone late evening, women assaulted only by strangers, only young and pretty exploited sexually as well as wrong grooming of women.
She also said women are told to forget the incident of sexual assault rather than countering it, which affects the mindset of women.
The talks were followed by discussions in which participated Sabina Martins, Anwesha Singbal, Naman Dhawaskar, Ankita Nagarsekar, Siddhi Raikar, Prashanti Talpankar, Tanvi Bambolkar, Askhada Puranik Bhat and several others.
Sandesh Prabhudesai, Editor of goanews.com, moderated the session.
