PIONEER NEWS SERVICE | Dehradun
Breakthrough Trust CEO Nayana Chowdhury said that National Crime Records Bureau data on crimes against women highlights the ongoing need to address structural and societal factors that contribute to gender-based violence. “A closer look at these crimes shows that almost a third of them are committed by husbands or relatives, while more than a fourth are attributed to assault with intent to outrage modesty, or rape,” Chowdhury said.
According to her, the normalisation of gender-regressive attitudes often means violence is viewed as a private issue. “Further, the gendered division of labour where women are seen as ‘caregivers’, ‘home-makers’, marks them as secondary citizens and pushes them to the margins. Systemic factors like inadequate gender budgeting, lack of legal protection, lack of access to social protection mechanisms, etc., contribute to this rise and lack of punitive action.”
As the head of Breakthrough Trust—an organization working to end violence against women and girls—Chowdhury has witnessed both progress and persistent challenges over the years. “Breakthrough works on culture change by shifting social norms that limit people of all gender and especially women and girls from reaching their full potential. We work with adolescents and young people aged 11-24 years aiming for an entire generation to shift and push for change,” she explained.
The organisation currently operates in 66 districts across six States and has trained close to 47,000 teachers, with programmes running in over 29,000 schools in collaboration with the governments of Odisha and Punjab, she said.
“A world where gender equality is a norm requires a long-term commitment and must involve everyone, in an effort to challenge the existing all-pervading patriarchal norms. The idea is to bring about transformation at the knowledge, attitude as well as at the practice level, so that it is sustainable at the community as well as the individual level. We have the ambitious target of reaching over 10 million adolescents with gender attitude change interventions,” she added.
