SECTION II: UNDERSTANDING POWER & CONTEXT

2.1 Power, Patriarchy & Workplace Dynamics

Primary references - Understanding Patriarchy and Gendered Hierarchies

Leela Dube conceptualizes patriarchy as a multi-layered social system and removes it from the usual understanding of male dominance alone. Dube argues that patriarchal structures function in tandem with structures of household, workplace, kinship, community and governance. This helps us understand that patriarchy is closely embedded with cultural institutions and social norms. The resources made available below deal with patriarchal structures in different yet very similar workplace/cultural/social settings. Here we are attempting to understand how oppression employed by patriarchal settings tends to transform itself depending on the institutional dynamic. 

Important Resources

 

2.2 Consent, Boundaries & Bodily Autonomy

Here we try and understand Consent from a far more nuanced perspective rather than reducing it to functions of vocabulary and speech. There are several judgements and social movements that invoke this way of reading consent. Consent transforms in various forms in the personal, public and professional space. The conclusion to this discourse should be that bodily autonomy is the primary facet from which one needs to approach the concept of consent.  

 

 

 

 

2.3 Why Systems Fail Survivors

Contrary to several landmark judicial pronouncements in the Indian context on rape and sexual assault, post Criminal Law (Amendment) Act, 2013, legal practitioners representing survivors have consistently argued that any act involving bodily invasion for the sexual gratification of the perpetrator must be recognised as rape. However, this interpretation has frequently been either rejected or diluted by Indian courts, often being treated as a matter of legal contention rather than a settled principle.

Two high-profile cases, the rape of a nun by Bishop Franco Mulakkal and the conspiracy involving the kidnapping and sexual assault of a prominent Indian actress, illustrate instances where the legal system has failed not only the survivors but also the broader jurisprudential understanding of sexual violence in the country. Such judicial outcomes risk establishing problematic precedents, potentially discouraging future survivors from seeking justice and undermining the progressive intent of sexual assault laws.