Gender Based Violence — Can Self-Help Groups be Effective?

Vivek Kumar is a 2021 Graduate student from the Harris School of Public Policy. His policy interests lie around gender based empowerment in South Asia.

“Even if I work outside as a laborer and bring home 200 rupees every day, I will still get a beating from my husband in the night”, said Vimla remorselessly. She continued, “This is not just my case. Almost every woman in my village gets beaten by her husband and in-laws”. Like Vimla, millions of women have no idea that the violence they have accepted as normal, has been named and defined as “Gender-based Violence” (GBV).

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) defines GBV as “violence that includes sexual, physical, mental and economic harm inflicted in public or in private. It also includes threats of violence, coercion, and manipulation. This can take many forms such as intimate partner violence, sexual violence, child marriage, female genital mutilation and so-called ‘honour crimes’”. The UNHCR further says that GBV disproportionately affects women and girls and in situations of displacement, their risk of exposure to GBV increases.  GBV is complex and takes place in varying contexts — schools, homes, workplaces, and in public.

GBV in India has caused global concern. In 2019, India ranked 129^th out of 166 countries on the Gender Inequality Index, Switzerland ranked first while Yemen ranked last. In India, 28.8% of women aged 15-49 years face physical or sexual intimate partner violence in their lifetime and 22% experienced this in the last 12 months. The issue of violence against women in India is current and chronic. This translates to more than 200 million women experiencing GBV in India, however this is likely an underestimate because the government does not publish official statistics of non-partner sexual violence. Many victims fail to seek redressal for such crimes because of social and cultural barriers, the stigmas associated with rape and divorce, and social pressures.

The National Crime Records Bureau’s 2019 publication “Crime in India” provides a closer look at the nature and spread of the reported crimes in the various states of the country. Uttar Pradesh reported the highest number of crimes against women, 59,853, accounting for 14.7 % of such cases across the country. It was followed by Rajasthan (41,550 cases; 10.2%) and Maharashtra (37,144 cases; 9.2%). Assam reported the highest rate of crime against women at 177.8 per lakh population, followed by Rajasthan, 110.4, and Haryana, 108.5. As per the NCRB data, a crime against women was recorded every three minutes in India in 2014. Indeed, a Thomson Reuters Foundation survey ranked India as the most dangerous country for women followed by Afghanistan and Syria.

“What can we do about this? I am alone and at the mercy of my family,” Vimla lamented. She was right. Even if data about crime is published and the violence is named, it would be of little use as the household is a private institution. No one can barge into people’s homes at all times and stop violence. The police and the judiciary do not intervene in such matters unless a First Information Report (FIR) is filed. Filing a FIR is a herculean task in India with substantial social barriers. What about solidarity among women? “Ah, no one cares! No one helps. No one dares to help”, Vimla resigned.

Self-Help Groups (SHGs) can be a useful tool to tackle GBV even when it occurs within the private domain of family. In SHGs, women in rural areas come together to take loans to start small businesses or expand agricultural activities. Recognizing the success of SHGs in improving the financial inclusion of rural women in India, the Indian government has initiated a billion dollar project funded by the World Bank called National Rural Livelihood Mission (NRLM) to expand the SHG model to tackle several issues including GBV.

There are three reasons to be optimistic about NRLM. First, it is well funded by the World Bank. Second, it has a long tenure of ten years. Finally, it has a pan-India reach. With a trained pool of social science experts from the top colleges of India, NRLM has the ability to work on a large scale of GBV. There is ample scope for several long-term capacity building programs on GBV to be designed and implemented in thousands of villages. It has the potential to form the next generation of women leaders in rural areas who mobilize other victims of GBV and trigger a large-scale movement to combat these crimes. Now is the time to unite women through NRLM SHGs on a large scale in order to combat GBV.

Vimla is not holding out hope. “They come to our villages, hold a few meetings, click photos and then leave”, Vimla continued, “I have seen many such programs.” It is true that NRLM, despite its scale and depth, is prone to being hijacked by slow government machinery. To combat this tendency, it is extremely important that programs to combat GBV include randomized control trials (RCTs) from the beginning, not merely as an afterthought included by a separate third party agency. These low cost RCTs must be deployed in a regular and phased manner to ascertain progress and care must be taken to ensure the program does not remain limited to financial inclusion only. Similarly, data collection, quantification, and analysis for GBV must be part of the program as well. The goal is to implement programs to reduce GBV while also mapping the impact of these programs. Earlier SHG models have been critiqued extensively on this gap.

NRLM can be used to tackle GBV because it has a large reach, a guaranteed pool of funding, and a long time horizon. Program implementors need to carefully handle evidence about intervention on GBV and progress made. Vimla and countless women like her need to establish that violence of any sort on the basis of gender is not acceptable. NRLM can provide them with much needed support to tackle GBV. In ten years, millions of women like Vimla will have access to effective social institutions like Self Help groups and Federations. These programs can provide women with a platform for discussing GBV as well as tools to take immediate and effective action by engaging with the police and judiciary to process offenders. The key to success is maintaining implementors of the program who are themselves oriented and trained around reducing GBV. NRLM needs to reflect a GBV free mindset in its manifestation. If this doesn’t happen, Vimla will have another sad story to share about GBV.

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Arango, Diana J.; Morton, Matthew; Gennari, Floriza; Kiplesund, Sveinung; Ellsberg, Mary. (2014). Interventions to Prevent or Reduce Violence Against Women and Girls: A Systematic Review of Reviews. World Bank, Washington, DC.