NEW YORK
Bollywood actor Aamir Khan feels it’s high time Indian men redefine masculinity and bring about a change in the balance of power. Speaking at the opening night of the sixth annual ‘Women in the World’ summit in here, April 22, Khan discussed female feticide, gender inequality and honor killing in India, saying change can be brought by reaching out to people with love and affection.
“Unless we redefine what it is to be a man, things aren’t going to change,” Khan said, asking whether a real man is a protector or someone who goes and beats people up. “You cannot raise a boy telling him not to cry,” he continued. You are, in effect, distancing him from emotion and then you are surprised when he grows up and beats his wife, he noted. “In India, the conventional wisdom is that real men don’t cry and real men don’t hold their wives’ hands,” said Khan, who pointed out he often gets teary eyed on his TV show.
The summit is hosted annually by editor, journalist, author and founder of Women in the World, Tina Brown. This year, Women in the World partnered with The New York Times as well as Georgetown University for research on girls and war. While Boko Haram and the #bringourgirlsback movement were the dominant areas of interest at last year’s conference, this year, the Islamic State group and the female recruits were front and center, the media organization said in a press release.
The conference included five panelists who are on Time magazine’s 2015 list of the 100 most influential people in the world, including Hillary Clinton. Clinton spoke about gay rights, unequal pay, family leave, childcare costs and education. She highlighted the struggles of her own mother, Dorothy Rodham, saying “I said to her, how could you have survived, how could you have a built a family of your own?”
The three-day event covered all areas – from India’s female empowerment movement, addressing the country’s history of rape, to an Israeli mother joining forces with a Palestinian mother, both grieving over the sons they lost. Generation Katniss, a sort of millennial take on women’s rights, was also discussed, as well as the daily battle over self-esteem in an era of endless pressures from social media.
Tackling India’s Taboos
“Rape is a big issue in India,” Khan said in a session titled Tackling India’s Taboos while in conversation with Iraqi-American humanitarian Zainab Salbi, who founded Women for Women International. Khan said a rape survivor is often ill-treated by police and medical staff and does not get swift justice. He spoke about his crusade for women’s rights and justice. “I wanted to combine the goodwill that I’ve earned from my acting career with investigative journalism,” he said.
Since he launched “Satyamev Jayate,” a show which focuses on sensitive social issues prevalent in India such as female feticide, child sexual abuse and rape, Khan has been actively initiating social change in India. “I wanted to combine the goodwill that I’ve earned from my acting career with investigative journalism,” he said. According to him there are two ways to bring about change – one is by making laws or policies and expecting people to follow them, while the other way is a longer route but it’s an attempt to transform hearts and minds at a young age.
The Debate That’s Shaking India
Barkha Dutt, the former NDTV journalist, quashed all misconceptions about India being unsafe for women during a panel discussion with journalist Norah O’Donell and filmmaker Leslee Udwin, April 23. Udwin is the director “India’s Daughter,” the documentary on Nirbhaya which was banned by the Government of India. Dutt, however, said that rape is more common in the United States and Britain, and pointed out that India has achieved other goals for women that the United States has not.
In the panel, introduced by actress Freida Pinto, Udwin said rape was “the tip of the iceberg,” noting that she was disappointed by the response in India when she was making the film. During his talk at the summit earlier, Khan agreed with Udwin. Though he has not yet seen the film, the actor believes it is highly unfortunate that the film will not be allowed for public viewing because there should be freedom of speech.
Stop the Trolls
Along with discussions on problems facing women in the real world, a panel focused on online harassment. Actress Ashley Judd and Anita Sarkeesian, a Canadian American feminist public speaker, media critic and blogger, spoke out about the endless online harassment they’ve endured on a panel titled “Stop the Trolls,” describing times they feared for their lives and how their daily routines have bee, or at least prosecute people who threaten, harass, or exploit others online. They were joined by California Attorney General Kamala Harris, who is leading her state’s fight to punish online harassment, laying the groundwork for reforms needed nationwide.
Under Harris’ leadership, California recently convicted the operator of a “revenge porn” website and sentenced him to 18 years in state prison. The case was the first time an operator of a cyber-exploitation site has been criminally prosecuted in the U.S, according to bustle.com. Prosecuting cyber-exploitation faces the same problems as trying to prosecute for sexual violence. Harris said. “The obstacle is having a victim come forward because there is still so much about the issue of sex and sexuality in our society that when it’s raised in connection with a woman, it causes the victim herself and others to judge her and judge her on a moral standard,” she said.
Other panels included “Here Comes the Sun” headed by Sanjit “Bunker” Roy, a social activist and educator who founded the Barefoot College, a voluntary organization working in the fields of education, skill development, health, drinking water, women empowerment and electrification through solar power for the upliftment of rural people. At the panel, Roy, along with Sanchaita Gajapati Raju, managing trustee and founder of SANA, talked about how a growing army of Solar Grandmothers are harnessing the sun to bring light, water and a new sense of possibility to communities around the world. In a panel on “Why is Mortality on the Rise in the U.S?.,” presented by Merk, Dr. Priya Agrawal, executive director, Merck for Mothers, along with Monica Raye Simpson, executive director, SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective, and Elise J. Turner, associate professor at Belhaven University in Jackson, Mississippi, discuss this human rights crisis and identify what women in America need to know in order to decrease their risk of pregnancy-related complications.
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