Re-versing the Social Gaze: Sexual Violence, Law and Gender

Research Paper (postgraduate) from the year 2013 in the subject Sociology - Relationships and Family, grade: A, Jawaharlal Nehru University (School of International Studies), course: Ph.D, language: English, abstract: The formation of gender identity and consequent gender differences is instilled in the social fabric, reinforced in daily life and is practiced and perpetuated through the process of socialization. This leads to asymmetry and consequent inequality which in a way sanctions male hegemony over gender hierarchy and allows for a male gaze through which women are viewed as an object of gratification; a vulnerable group; a voice less gender; and traditional care-givers. This narrow gaze vis a vis women consequently put the lives of women in jeopardy and expose them to various sexual violence and discrimination in private and public domain. However, enforcement of law has not sufficiently reduced the crisis of sexual violence. The reason behind this being legal consciousness having a narrow value laden gaze in which sexual violence is defined through the same larger framework of patriarchal discourse which considers it to as crime only. This escapes the root cause of sexual violence and intensifies the problem of gender inequality and gender violence in society. This paper therefore, attempts to analyze the ways through which women are viewed through a social gaze which objectify them as modest, tender, and weak and thus justifies their vulnerability in public spaces. It also analyses how the legal consciousness has been influenced by the patriarchal gender discourse and reinforces this social gaze. Therefore, this paper seeks to investigate into new ways which helps in reversing this social gaze by triggering a change in the social mindset at larger level so as to delimit the scope of this social gaze on women. This, the paper holds that the solution lies in reversing and widening the social gaze with respect to gendered space, gender role performance, and conceptual domain of sexual violence so that a woman could receive her freedom, liberty and rights not being a woman only but as an equal gender.