Women live in dangerously self-embracing situations: Chowdhury

Renuka Chowdhury, Minister for Women and Child Development, India, overruled the criticism that new Domestic Violence Law was too harsh on men as compared to women. In an interview, Chowdhury asserted, ‘Women live in dangerously self-embracing situations. Even if you see it as ferocity in the Act or the ambit is too wide, please understand that women are burnt to death, beaten to insensitivity’. Regarding verbal abuse, she said ‘What you deem as silly is really not something I’ve created today. Under the IPC speaking in a vein that is denigrating to the status of women, which removes her from dignity, is very much an act (offence)’. She justified the law covering divorced wives and former girlfriends by asserting, ‘Because women even in those relationships have been harassed and held to ransom. There have been enough divorced women who have been divorced for various reasons and their money is not returned. Because a woman is removed from her house, she is threatened, forced, coerced and then you have an ex-parte divorce… I cannot accept every divorce has been examined on the merits of the case’.