FOR more than a decade, legal improvements have taken place to secure women’s rights, but have not been accompanied by sufficient determination to translate them into effective protection. Our law books now contain a catalogue of legal reforms promoting equality of women in marriage, education, the workplace, division of property, protection against trafficking in people, domestic and sexual violence, sexual harassment and age of consent. These achievements are usually recited at domestic, regional and international fora, whenever the opportunity arises. The reality, in terms of lack of effective protection for women from male violence, is a failure to convert intentions into practice. The disgust among ordinary people over incidents such as the recent Marudi savagery seem not to permeate the political class sufficiently.
The persistent failure of politics to achieve more than symbolic change in gender violence needs to be examined. The disconnect between law and the lived reality on the ground actually prompts the question whether the real political agenda is simply to ensure that politically correct laws are in place to assuage international opinion.
Whether they translate into improved safety for women seems to be a matter for others. How else could a supposedly scandalised society continue to live so calmly with weekly violent assaults and deaths of women and girls?
No politician, to date, has seen fit to criticise the nightly contradiction of television news announcing the latest gender horror followed immediately by a commercial promoting the upcoming week-end’s fete, captioned as ‘short skirt versus mini skirt’ or some similar sexist slogan. Since the systematic commodification of women in the urban areas passes without comment or sanction, what can we expect to take place in the interior?
The presence of the police patrol at Marudi reportedly was a response to complaints that small miners were illegally working lands belonging to a big overseas gold company.