"Over spring break, I was fortunate enough to spend some time in Brazil. As my friends and I sat by the beach trying to soak in as much of the culture and sun as possible, a catcall grabbed our attention. A waiter was calling out to a lady passing by and she seemed to enjoy the attention she received.I couldn't help but think about eve-teasing in Bangladesh and how differently it is perceived there.
In Bangladesh, 'eve-teasing' is seemingly innocent name for girls and women being ogled, taunted, harassed, humiliated, sexually molested, and assaulted – and in extreme cases has led to girls being attacked with acid, abducted and raped. While there are marches against eve teasing and more recently a law passed to punish those who tease, little is being done to address the underlying cause of this problem – the status of women.
When the norm is to treat women as inferior to men, it almost naturally follows that as lesser beings, women would be subject to harassment without so much as an ounce of guilt on the part of the teaser. This forms another norm in society where these harassments are accepted; otherwise observers would stop these louts.
Nave realism is the theory that we think we see the world as it really is and in a disagreement, the further the other party's views are from ours, the more biased and misinformed we think they are. This is a problem in Bangladesh, where religion and culture are used to justify unequal treatment of women. Perception of teasing differs between the 'teaser' and 'teased'. A 'teaser' may think he is teasing women just like everyone else and that he is not treating any woman differently. To the girl being teased, she may feel singled out and think she may have done something to warrant this type of behavior. This can explain why it causes so much anxiety in young women to the extent that they feel the need to commit suicide. In April last year, thirteen-year-old Umme Kulsum Elora committed suicide by swallowing pesticide after being repeatedly harassed by some hoodlums including 20-year-old Rezaul Karim. She was among 20 girls who committed suicide due to eve-teasing in the past year alone.
It is common knowledge that women should avoid walking by themselves and using public transport even in broad daylight because they risk being harassed at the least or even kidnapped and assaulted. What is worse is that in almost all cases, the victim is blamed for being harassed. When people cannot justify why horrible things happen to innocent people, they reduce their cognitive dissonance by blaming the victim.
This is not unique to Bangladesh. In many societies, including in the United States, rape victims are considered damaged, as though what was done to them was their own doing. Victim blame was also used to justify racism in the United States – harassment or unequal treatment of those whom society considered inferior. Armies use a variation of this when training soldiers who are going to fight in another country. By mentally conditioning soldiers to think that foreign enemy is of a lower status, soldiers are able to attack and kill the enemy more readily.
Eve teasing is an important issue that needs urgent attention. A recent study by the Bangladesh National Women Lawyers Association showed that nearly 90 percent of girls aged between 10 and 18 have experienced eve teasing. About 13,000 women became victims of harassment and violence across the country during January-July, 2008. In 2010, eve-teasing resulted in 20 instances of suicide.
Just a few years after Bangladesh's liberation, the government established the Ministry of Women's Affairs. Dhaka Metropolitan Police Ordinance of 1976 first addressed the eve-teasing directly. Section 76 of the ordinance defines eve- teasing as, "willful and indecent exposure of ones person in any street or public place within sight of, and in such manner as may be seen by, any woman, whether from within any house or building or not, or willful pressing or obstructing any woman in a street or public place or insulting or annoying any woman by using indecent language or making indecent sounds, gestures, or remarks in any street or public place". This act is punishable with a maximum one year of imprisonment, or with a maximum fine of Tk. 2,000, or both. However, enacting a law against eve teasing in a country where rule of law is weak is not the answer. In addition, it is difficult to prove cases where the aggression is not physical. Society could empower young girls to remain unaffected by verbal teasing. Unless women enjoy a higher status so that they are treated with respect and unless society recalibrates what it means to be a man, instances of eve teasing are unlikely to decrease.
Social psychologists have long argued that people do not act in a void. Situation is as important a factor in explaining people's action as their own preferences, heuristics and beliefs. The fundamental attribution error we make when we march against eve teasers is that we attribute the root cause of teasing as starting with the teaser. We assume that the teaser is acting in a vacuum based on his preferences alone.
In an experiment to see what made more hotel guests recycle their towels, the condition that set recycling as the norm among hotel guests resulted in significantly more recycled towels. If we could instill a different norm in young boys and men that eve teasing is a marginalized activity, that it is not the norm, perhaps it would have a greater impact on reducing eve teasing.
Perhaps policy-makers in Bangladesh can learn lessons from Glide Foundation in San Francisco, California, that has a 'Men in Progress' program. Participants use a model that, in addition to physical violence, identifies behaviors like emotional coercion, manipulation of resources, and stonewalling as forms of violence. The weekly group works to undo the internalized destructive beliefs about what it means to be a man in this society. By recalibrating the meaning of being a man and the status of women, instances of mental and verbal abuse, humiliation and taunting could be reduced.
In the meantime, by learning that it is an unfortunately common experience shared by 90 percent of teenage girls, young girls can be conditioned to not feel singled out if they are teased.
Rooting out eve teasing will not be an easy task. Once we recognize that it is an act that is based on centuries of patriarchal traditions, we can start to think about ways recalibrate society to view women differently. This will take time. As more and more women in Bangladesh join the working force and become more independent, maybe that is when women will enjoy a higher status in society and not be subject to eve teasing."
I think it described the problem behind eve teasing perfectly so I shared it here.Eve-teasing is a bigger problem in BD. I agree with the writer of this article its the inequality of man and woman which is the biggest issue. Banning item songs might help in the short run but it won't in the long run.
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