In Tamil Nadu, Domestic Violence Cases Rise, and Women’s Activists Cheer

Ruth Fremson/The New York Times Women at a platform in Madurai, Tamil Nadu, in this 2011 file photo.

Tamil Nadu boasts some of the best indicators in India when it comes to women.

The southern state’s female literacy rate is 73.9 percent, well above the national average of 65.5 percent, according to the 2011 census. It has also one of the narrowest gender gaps in India, having 995 women for every 1,000 men.

Another statistic that bodes well for Tamil Nadu’s women, although it may not seem so upon first glance: Tamil Nadu logged 3,983 cases of domestic volence in 2011 - or 42 percent of all the cases reported in India, by far the highest of any state.

Policy researchers and lawyers in Tamil Nadu say this figure indicates that women feel more comfortable reporting these incidents, which used to be considered a private matter. They also said the increase in reporting is a positive development amid discussions about violence against women following the fatal gang rape of a young woman on a bus in New Delhi in December.

Tamil Nadu overtook Andhra Pradesh as the state reporting the highest number of domestic violence cases in 2010. While the number of reported cases of domestic violence reported rose 67 percent in India between 2008 and 2012, the figure went up 400 percent in Tamil Nadu.

“The number of cases reported in Tamil Nadu is rising due to better awareness and more scope for women to report cases against them,” said Akila Radhakrishnan, a policy specialist with the United Nations Children Fund, o! r Unicef, in Chennai.

That increased sense of empowerment stems from a number of other factors, including the growing economic power of Tamil Nadu women and legislative changes to protect them.

“There is also a historical advantage for women that is rooted in the social history of Tamil Nadu,” said Ms. Radhakrishnan. For example, nearly a century ago, women in Tamil Nadu benefited from anti-caste movements that celebrated women’s liberation.

Women in Tamil Nadu also find protection through local marriage practices, which join them with men within the same village and within a wide family network, allowing women to seek help from family when faced with a violent husband. Shireen Jejeebhoy, the author of a 1998 study comparing violence against women in Tamil Nadu and in Uttar Pradesh, found that women in Tamil Nadu saw themselves as less alienated after marriage compared to their counterparts to the north, where marriages within a village are prohibited.

However, V. Geetha, a hisorian based in Chennai, said she believed that the practice of marrying within the family is fading away in Tamil Nadu as more men and women leave their homes in search of factory jobs. Tamil Nadu is the second-most industrialized state in India after Maharashtra, and women make up nearly 55 percent of the workforce of some companies, like the Finnish cellphone maker Nokia.

“Marriage circles have become wider in recent years,” said Ms. Geetha. “But despite the violence of displacement, the fact that women are leaving their villages is empowering.”

A 2012 report from the International Center for Research on Women, or I.C.R.W., showed that the female labor force participation in Tamil Nadu has been rising since at least the 1980s, when 39 percent of Tamilian women ages 20 to 39 were employed. In 2004, that figure rose to 51 percent, the I.C.R.W. study reported, quoting National Sample Survey data.

The “self-respect movement” that was started by the social activist and pol! itician E! .V. Ramasamy in 1925 did take radical positions on women’s autonomy in a marriage and advocated motherhood by choice, Ms. Geetha said. But for decades afterward, “there were no progressive discussions on gender, and Tamil cinema merely filled this void with sketches of virginal, beautiful, victimized women and tragic mothers.”

In 1998, the state government was forced to take a harder look at how it dealt with violence against women. That year, Sarika Shah, a 20-year-old student at Ethiraj College in Chennai, decided to stop by a juice shop close to her college with a friend. They were harassed on the way by a few politically connected men in an auto-rickshaw, who threw water on her, The Hindu reported. One of the men jumped on Ms. Shah, causing her to fall and hit her head.

She later died from her injury.

This case dominated headlines in the state that year and spurred tough legislative action gainst sexual offenders through the Tamil Nadu Prohibition of Eve Teasing Act, later renamed the Tamil Nadu Prohibition of Harassment of Women Act, which carries penalties of life imprisonment and a minimum fine of 50,000 rupees ($900).

Following the Delhi gang rape case in December, Tamil Nadu’s chief minister J. Jayalalithaa was one of the first to announce a series of initiatives, including the death penalty and even chemical castration, for sexual assaults against women in the state.

To be sure, violence against women in Tamil Nadu still occurs “because it is still a patriarchal society and gender hierarchy is entrenched,” said Ms. Jejeebhoy, now a scholar in New Delhi who works with Population Council, a New York research group. “Still, women in the state have more access to economic resources and opportunities.”

“In terms of the social structure of violence I don’t think, w! e can say! one region of India is better than the other,” said Geetha Ramaseshan, a lawyer and advocate of women’s rights based in Chennai. “The difference I would say is that there is greater access to the system here when compared to the other states. I will not say access is perfect or pretty good.”

One question is whether Tamilian women will be able to expand on what power they have now. The state’s overall sex ratio is poised to decline, with just 946 female children in the age group of 0-6 years for every 1,000 male children. And easy Internet access is leading to new forms of sexual harassment that are harder to prosecute.

Changing the laws alone isn’t enough, said Sudha Ramalingam, a social activist and a lawyer based in Chennai. “We have to introspect and change our mindsets,” she said.