My Body My Rights

Pushing you, shaking you or throwing something at you; slapping you, twisting your arm or pulling your hair, punching you with the fist or something; kicking you, dragging you, beating you; trying to choke you or burn you; threaten to attack you; physically force you to have sexual intercourse against your will;
force you to perform any sexual acts you did not want to all are the form of violence. Nepalese societies are well aware regarding entire forms of violence, basically done to women. After the girl is married, she becomes more ‘wife’ of her husband than ‘daughter’ of her father. This trend has therefore created wives as husband’s property rather than she standing on her own!

UN General Secretary explains violence against women must never be accepted, never excused, never tolerated.

Although, in towns and cities, both sons and daughters are sent to schools, but still daughter is married before her entire qualification is done. As a result, she gets married as soon as her SLC, or Plus Two. This makes her dominated in front of her husband, as she will not have her own leg to stand upon, and has to act as per her husband’s direction.

In Nepalese society, first sex occurs after the marriage, and generally the men are kept with higher age than compared to women. As a result, husband turn out more eager for sex, than wife. Let us see the table below showing the proportion of sexual activities carried out against the will of women.

Age	Percentage whose sexual intercourse was against their will	Number of women who have ever had sex
<15 p="">	46.5	539
15-19	28.6	1912
20-24	19.2	618
25-29	16.3	76
Source: Nepal Demographic and Health Survey, 2011

Table above makes clear explanation regarding the actual state of women in Nepal. This has to be accepted, that marriage is done for sexual satisfaction in primary cause from the table above. And despite of unwillingness of wives, husbands force them for their satisfaction.

Every individual has their own right towards their body, and the case should be more highlighted when the question comes to female. After all, they have their right for deciding their pregnancy time. In order to ensure this, Nepal Government has signed into Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) as well. But, we find it is generally husband who takes the entire decision upon birth of a child. He listens to his parents, and simply in order to satisfy the need of his parents regarding grand children he ignores the health condition of his wife and makes his wife pregnant. Since, the wife solely belongs to his husband; she stays silent and accepts with her husband decision despite of her unwillingness. 555 cases of rapes, 156 cases of rape attempts last year must probably be enough to portray the actual situation out here.

However, we must admit that the society is changing, and we are progressing. At least the cases are better than decades back, and we are in movement. Today, at least we respect women, and women violence is in diminishing rate. Still, agitation like Occupy Baluwatar is shameful thing for the state bodies. More than that, we still hear news like ‘Man Kills Wife for not cooking chicken’, and that indeed is most shameful out of all in this age.

Education has made significant remark in determining the violence rate as well. It has been reported that those who have passed SLC have not been into such phase (9%) as much as those compared to those who have no education at all (32.5%) as per the report of Nepal Demographic and Health Survey 2011. Hence, education is one way to reduce the violence among women, and only when women get good education they can boost up with the confidence to make her own stand and fight against the violence.

Still, the state bodies need to play strong role in minimization of it. Consider the case in Saudi Arabia, where unexpected punishments are given for any males who even does minor violence. There are lessons to be learnt from them as well. A woman can walk freely during mid night in the streets of Saudi, and it is risky for any female to travel through public vehicle during day time itself. State bodies are the one who play the main role anyway in its determination.

Exactly like male have their rights towards their body, they have the rights to use their mouth whenever they want, so do females. They have the rights to be pregnant; they have the right to decide when to have intercourse as well. Anyone, trying to go against their willingness is a crime, and it has to be the state who must address it. After all, it is their body, and they have the right for it.

Published in HOPE Magazine of February Issue 2014