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This new Act has expressly recognized certain acts as offences which were dealt under related laws. These new offences like, acid attack, sexual harassment, voyeurism, stalking have been incorporated into the Indian Penal Code. This was the result from protesters who gathered to raise awareness on behalf of the woman who was raped on the bus in New Delhi as well as other women who are constantly assaulted in India.

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This image is very self-explanatory. This image shows the gender inequality between men and women. This picture was used in a campaign to show the barriers held against women.

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Though women have come a long way in breaking the barriers between men and women, there is still much to be done. Women are still being discriminated in today's society are expected to follow certain typical gender roles.

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The fact remains that in most countries, the injustice against women is prevalent.

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This article discloses the different types of violence women experience and why. It is explained that there are many cultural stereotypes that are still practiced in modern society; commonly called "machismo". Machismo is defined as an attitude, quality, or way of behaving that agrees with traditional ideas about men being strong and aggressive.

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National figures indicate that violence against women in Colombia has increased significantly in the last ten years, while experts suggest that it is the combination of a machista culture and "institutional weaknesses" that continue to facilitate gender-based violence in the country.

The biggest problem in any analysis of gender-based violence is a lack of data. While the number of total incidents reported has increased significantly over the past decade, experts still believe that many, if not most, violent acts against women go unreported.

Still, with the help of statistics about sexual and domestic violence which are predominantly affecting women, a worrying trend is still apparent in Colombia.

Colombia's National Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Science reports that documented sexual offenses have risen roughly 40%, from about 14,000 to 21,000 incidents, between 2003 and 2012.

Sexual violence cases in Colombia

In the same time period, cases of domestic physical violence have reportedly gone up about 30%, from 62,000 to 84,000 incidents.

Domestic violence cases in Colombia

The Ministry of Defense also released figures for a similar period of time displaying an even more radical increase of these two indicators.

While different data bases and report behavior can explain for the varying figures, both sources tell the story of an significant increase of violence against women in Colombia in last eight to ten years, as 77% of recorded domestic violence victims and 88% of sexual abuse victims are female.

According to High Chanciller for the Equality of Women Nigeria Renteria Lozano, the trend is neither an increase in reporting nor an increse in violence, but a complicated combination of both. In an interview with Colombia Reports, Renteria explained that even as the public attention for the problem of violence against women has grown and more and more women report these kinds of crimes than did previously, there has still been a substantial increase of violence against women in recent years.

A multifaceted problem

Lozano described violence against women as a "multi-causal phenomenon," stressing its cultural and social roots and the difficulty to adequately capture it legally and statistically. According to Law 1257 of 2008, created to strengthen women rights and improve legal prosecution, there are five basic forms of violence against women: physical, sexual, psychological, economic and patrimonial.

While physical and sexual violence are easier to detect, economic and patrimonial violence are more subtle. There is a difference, for example, in a woman choosing to stay out of the fulltime workforce and take control of house life and childcare and a woman being deprived of material wealth by their partners and actively hindered from taking an autonomous role in society, as Ana Maria Salamanca, a women rights expert from the Women's House (Casa de las Mujeres) NGO in Bogota.

"Their partners deprive them of their economic goods. Let's say they work: then their husbands or boyfriends keep their wages because they say a woman is not capable of managing her funds on her own. This is a form of violence because it keeps women from living autonomously and independently," Salamanca told Colombia Reports.

One of the characteristics of all forms of violence against women is that it is mostly committed in the private, intimate space of family and home, another factor that makes statistical tracking difficult.

According to the National Institute for Forensics, 64% of domestic violence cases happened between partners in 2012, with 88% of the victims being female. In 43% of these cases, the boyfriend was the offender. Husbands, meanwhile, accounted for 23% and ex-boyfriends for 13%, with 59% of the total incidents occurring in the victim's home. It's hard to know, however, whether husbands abuse their spouses less than boyfriends abuse their girlfriends, or whether a married woman is less likely to report an abuse than one in a less-committed relationship.

In the case of sexual violence, the institute reported that 77% of the offenders of sexual violence against women were either family members or members of the victim's circle of acquaintances, while, like in the case of domestic violence, 59% of the crimes were committed in the victim's home.

In general, an estimated 90% of all cases of violence against women are committed by males.

Different forms of machismo

According to both experts, the 2008 law has been successful in raising public awareness and encouraging women to come forward. But at the same time, both claimed that there has been a significant rise of violence against women and that the number of reports by victims is still too low in relation to the estimated number of unreported cases.

According to Renteria, the idea that a man has legitimate power over a woman and should exercise it regularly is deeply embedded in Colombia's cultural tradition.

"Even today there exist many cultural stereotypes that go back generations (in Colombia), that justify violence against women in a specific manner," said Renteria, who also described a less obvious form of Colombia "machismo."

It's commonly held, she said, that women can "provoke" violence with "a certain way of clothing or behavior" that does not comply with male expectations.

While the former gives men the right to abuse women in the context of Colombian society, the latter superimposes agency on the victims of violence themselves, preventing women from seeking help and discrediting them when they do.

Impunity and silence

This underlying societal "acceptance" of violence against women means that only a small percent of these crimes are ever sanctioned, legally or otherwise.

Societal apathy is yet another factor that forces women to keep quiet about the abuses inflicted on them. "A lot of times women don't even bother to report, because nothing will happen," said Renteria.

"The rise of violence is due to the lack of social and legal sanctions," confirmed Salamanca, saying that many female victims are not even aware of their rights, much less that they have been violated.

The intimate form of violence involved, moreover, requires a level of sophistication and sensitivity that the responsible authorities simply do not possess, according to Salamanca.

"Still, the institutions are lacking the capacity to provide spaces in which the women feel safe and comfortable enough to report the crimes committed against them," Salamanca told Colombia Reports, adding that "a lot of times women see themselves confronted with authorities who suggest that they are responsible for what happened to them, stigmatizing and victimizing them a second time."

Rather than explain victims their rights or support their decisions to distance themselves from their attackers, she said, authorities will commonly tell aggrieved women to "sort things out with their partners" in order to keep the family intact.

The problem, she said, extends both inward and outward, from the deeply personal and psychological issues involved in being abused by a lover or family member, to the "socio-sexual patriarchal system," which facilitates the exclusion of women from politics and business, and leads to disproportionate levels of representation in all the higher planes of society.

Proposals

Lanzano said that the 2008 law was a step in the right direction, but that the institutions charged with enforcing it need greater funding and better organization and preparation.

A higher level of cooperation is required between state authorities, she said, to battle the "institutional weakness" of the criminal justice system regarding these matters. And police officers and other public servants who come in direct contact with female victims of violence should be made to undergo special training.

The Ministry of Education should play a role as well, said Salamanca. "The key to change those traditional stereotypes that facilitate violence against women is to work with the children, in order to transmit also to their fathers that their traditional stereotypes are no longer valid."

Similarly, media is another focus of those looking to combat stereotypes and the ways they are transmitted - through movies, television, music videos and advertisements - especially to the younger generation.

Salamanca stated that her NGO especially works on an individual basis aiming to empower women to question the daily discrimination or violence, regardless of the form it comes in.

"We want women to ask themselves, why is it me who has to cook all the time? Why can't my husband cook from time to time?" she told Colombia Reports.

With these little steps, the NGO wants to generate a new consciousness within Colombia's female population, one that encourages women live more independently and seek help when they have become victims of violence.

Sources

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Violence against women in Colombia fueled by machismo culture and 'institutional weakness'

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National figures indicate that violence against women in Colombia has increased significantly in the last ten years, while experts suggest that it is the combination of a machista culture and "institutional weaknesses" that continue to facilitate gender-based violence in the country. The biggest problem in any analysis of gender-based violence is a lack of data.

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A reporter tells her story of being sexually assaulted and raped in Eqypt. Her intention is to break the silence, not only for her but for women around the world to experience the same attacks.

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SEXUAL HARASSMENT --- A WIDESPREAD ISSUE FOR EGYPTIAN WOMEN

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SEXUAL HARASSMENT --- A WIDESPREAD ISSUE FOR EGYPTIAN WOMEN

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This video speaks about the many injustices women face on a daily basis in Egypt.

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Sexual Harassment - A Widespread Issue for Egyptian Women

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Sexual harassment is a widespread issue for Egyptian women. Women in the streets of Egypt are facing an epidemic of sexual harassment. Heba Morayef, director of Human Rights Watch for the Middle East and North Africa, told NBC News: "Men don't have to worry about being caught.

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SEXUAL HARASSMENT AGAINST WOMEN IN EGYPT

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SEXUAL HARASSMENT AGAINST WOMEN IN EGYPT

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In Egypt, sexual harassment is far too common. The article shares stories of women who have been sexually assaulted and the justice system failing to avenge their harassers. It was briefly explained that Egypt has a strong philosophy on paternalism where women are belittled and ignored. Statisitics have shown that 99% of women have been sexually harassed; 96.5% of which were physical and 95.5% were verbal.

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By: Ester Meerman

Amira, 26, commutes to work every day by bus. "Most of the time it is too crowded to sit", she says. One night she is almost at her stop when a man standing next to her tries to shove his hand down her trousers.

"From behind I felt somebody lift up my shirt and put their hand between my belt en my skin," Amira describes, recalling how she created a big scene and dragged the man to the nearest police station.

It's been more than ten months since Egypt adopted a new law that was supposed to make it easier for women in Egypt to press charges against someone who has sexually harassed them. Unfortunately, in reality, not much has changed.

At first the police officers made fun of Amira. "Go home, girl, they told me."

When she insisted on pressing charges they started threatening her. "The officers knew who my father is, where he works and what his boss' name is. 'Surely your father wouldn't like to hear that his daughter is a whore' one of them said. They stood uncomfortably close to me the whole time and everybody in the building seemed to be undressing me with their eyes. They catcalled me and whispered dirty comments."

According to a 2013 UN Women report, 99.3 percent of Egyptian women say they have been the victim of sexual harassment. More harrowingly, 51.6 percent of Egyptian men admit to harassing women. Meanwhile, only 6.6 percent of women who are harassed were found to seek help from the police.
HUMILIATED TWICE
"If you press charges for sexual harassment you get humiliated twice. First there is the actual incident and then you get harassed again at the police station", Reda El-Danbouki, a prominent lawyer and women's rights activist explains. "It creates a threshold to press charges and that is exactly what they want."

Kate, a 32-year old American woman that has been living in Cairo for more than five years, was out with a friend when she briefly got out of the car to buy cigarettes from a kiosk. To get back in the car she had to walk past a truck that was parked on the side walk. In between the open door and the wall Kate found the truck driver with his pants to his knees, masturbating.

"I stared straight into his crotch. He had seen me come down the side-walk and was waiting for me to get in between the truck and the wall so he could show me his privates. It was disgusting," Kate says.

Terrified, Kate hurried back into her friends car and the truck sped off. "I was flabbergasted," Kate remembers. Her friend chased the harasser and after a wild pursuit they managed to corner the truck and take the driver to the police station to file a report against him and press charges.

"Initially they didn't understand what we came for", recalls Kate. "Then I had to give a statement, while the harasser sat in the chair next to me. The officer was merely jotting down some key words. He didn't take it seriously at all. After a while the harasser's family came to the police station and they filed a report against my friend. They claimed he had stolen money from them! Completely ridiculous, but the police were all too keen to arrest my friend and throw him in jail. His hands cuffed to those of my harasser, mind you. My friend spend an entire night in prison like that!"
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH
Both Kate and Amira say they expected to face trouble pressing charges, but neither of them anticipated the system's discouragement to exercise their rights would be so grotesque.

In the end, Amira decided to withdraw the charges against her harasser. "Everybody - and I really mean everybody - was on my case about it. The cashiers at the supermarket, my building's doorman, my neighbours, my family. I was getting phone calls from distant relatives I had never even heard of. Complete strangers were sending me Facebook messages. Everybody was asking whether pressing charges was 'really necessary' and if I couldn't just 'let it go this one time'. But that is exactly the problem: this is not just 'one time'. This is the zillionth time. I get harassed by men like this on a daily basis. Enough is enough", she says, fuming with anger.

But when even her mother started to question whether going to court was such a good idea Amira relented and sent her father to the police station to drop the case.

"I was tired and done, I didn't have the energy for it anymore", she says, sounding very disappointed.

Meanwhile, it took Kate half a day and a full night at the police station and the prosecutor's office, but in the end the man who sexually harassed her got sentenced to three months in prison. Unfortunately, Kate paid a high price for that: she has had to move to the other side of the city.

"The perpetrator lives in my neighbourhood and my house was constantly being watched by all of his friends, family and acquaintances," Kate explains.

"The second I left the house I was harassed by one or more people: sometimes they were calling me names, sometimes they were begging me to drop the case. It seemed safer to get out of the neighbourhood before this guy was released from prison."
HAVING THE RIGHT CONTACTS
Despite having to move houses, Kate doesn't regret pressing charges. "I would definitely do it again", she insists.

"I wouldn't take an Egyptian friend with me though", she adds. "I am absolutely horrified by what he has been through just for trying to help me get justice. If he wouldn't have had the right contacts to get him out of jail who knows what could have happened to him. They could have locked him up for months or maybe even years!"

Explaining why women face issues bringing charges against perpetrators, El-Danbouki links the phenomenon to the paternalistic nature of Egyptian society.

"Egypt is a paternalistic society in which women are ignored and belittled", El-Danbouki says. "We will need an enormous cultural shift for that to start changing."

Nevertheless, El-Danbouki remains optimistic. "Every time somebody goes to prison for sexual harassment it sends a message to future perpetrators and the whole society that this kind of barbaric behaviour is simply not acceptable."

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Women Battle to Report Sexual Harassment in Egypt

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By: Ester Meerman Amira, 26, commutes to work every day by bus. "Most of the time it is too crowded to sit", she says. One night she is almost at her stop when a man standing next to her tries to shove his hand down her trousers.

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This image reinforces the concept that most of the law enforcement in India usually turns a blind eye either because they have been bribed to do so and because it is usually elusive to effectively deal with the issue at hand.

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A woman in India dies 13 days after she was gang raped inside a bus. 5 were charged including the bus driver who refused to stop the bus and intervene. Her death was caused by the severity of her injuries. At one point, her intestines were removed because of a metal rod used to assault her. She suffered massive brain injuries, infections to her lungs and abdomen, as well as undergoing cardiac arrest.

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"We appeal to the people that they maintain peace," Satyendra Garg, a joint commissioner of the police, said in a televised interview. "We want the situation in Delhi to normalize as soon as possible," he said. Until then, he added, Delhi commuters will have to plan their travel carefully and be aware of the restrictions.

Upamanyu Raju, 21, a student at Delhi University, said he has been attending protests since a day after the rape victim was admitted to the hospital because of the "utter atrocity of what happened." Mr. Raju said he has given his younger sister pepper spray and a Swiss Army knife, but he worries that won't protect her. "It's wrong to stop girls from going out" of the house, he said, but there's little choice because the city is so unsafe for women.

Sheila Dikshit, the chief minister of Delhi, arrived at the Jantar Mantar protest grounds in the early afternoon, and was booed, heckled and jostled by the crowd, even as the diminutive 74-year-old was surrounded by a police escort. She left after only a few minutes, after lighting a candle and holding her hands together in prayer, and without speaking to the crowd.

The roads leading to India Gate, the site of earlier protests that had turned violent, had been barricaded by the police, and nearby subway stations were closed. More than 40 police units have been deployed in the area, including 28 units of the Central Reserve Police Force, which are national anti-insurgency troops.

Revulsion and anger over the rape have galvanized India, where women regularly face sexual harassment and assault, and where neither the police nor the judicial system is seen as adequately protecting them. Top officials now say that further change is needed, and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh expressed his "deepest condolences."

"We have already seen the emotions and energies this incident has generated," he said in a statement. "It would be a true homage to her memory if we are able to channelize these emotions and energies into a constructive course of action." The government, he said, is examining "the penal provisions that exist for such crimes and measures to enhance the safety and security of women."

And Sonia Gandhi, India's most powerful female politician and the president of the governing Congress Party, made in a rare televised statement that was broadcast on Saturday.

"As a woman, and mother, I understand how protesters feel," she said. "Today we pledge that the victim will get justice," she said.

Activists and lawyers in India have long said that the police are insensitive when dealing with crimes against women, and that therefore many women do not report cases of sexual violence.

India, which has more than 1.3 billion people, recorded 24,000 cases of rape last year, a figure that has increased by 25 percent in the past six years. On Thursday, Delhi government officials said they would register the names and photographs of convicted rapists on the Delhi police Web site, the beginning of a national registry for rapists.

The family of an 18-year-old woman in the northern Indian state of Punjab who was raped last month by two men and committed suicide on Wednesday blamed the police on Friday for her death.

Relatives of the woman say she killed herself because the police delayed registering the case or arresting the rapists.

If the police "had done their job, she would be alive today," the woman's sister, Charanjit Kaur, 28, said in a phone interview. "They didn't listen to us; they didn't act."

On Friday, the Punjab high court intervened, asking the police to explain their delay. Three police officers have been suspended in the case, according to news media reports. Punjab police officials did not respond to phone calls seeking comment.

Ms. Kaur said the men abducted her sister from a place of worship near the small town of Badshahpur on Nov. 13, then drugged and raped her repeatedly.

When her sister reported the attack at the local police station a few days later, she was asked to describe it in graphic detail and was "humiliated," Ms. Kaur said. Over the next few days, she said, her mother and sister were repeatedly called to the police station and forced to sit all day.

But the case was not registered for two weeks, as police officials and village elders tried to broker a deal between the men accused of the rape and the victim. In some parts of India, women are commonly married to men who have raped them.

Ms. Kaur said the police told her family that, because they were poor, they would not be able to fight the matter in court. "They kept putting pressure on my family to take money or marry the accused or just somehow settle the matter," she said.

After no agreement was reached, the police registered the case, but made no arrests.

The victim was stalked by the men accused of the rape, who threatened to kill her and her family if she refused to drop the complaint, her suicide note said.

"They have ruined my life," the note read, Ms. Kaur said. It named two men and a woman who allegedly helped them in the kidnapping. Those men have been arrested, the police said.

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Victim of Gang Rape in India Dies at Hospital in Singapore

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"We appeal to the people that they maintain peace," Satyendra Garg, a joint commissioner of the police, said in a televised interview. "We want the situation in Delhi to normalize as soon as possible," he said. Until then, he added, Delhi commuters will have to plan their travel carefully and be aware of the restrictions.

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According to the OHRC, sexual harassment is engaging in a course of vexatious comments or conduct that is known or ought to be known unwelcome. Sexual harassment does not have to be sexual and can also mean that someone is bothering you because they think that you do not act, look, or dress in a way that a man(or boy) or woman(or girl) should.

More specifiadlly, in accordance to this course, sexual harassment is a violation of women's human rights and a prohibited form of violence against women in many countries. it also violates women's dignity and reinforces the idea of subordination of women to men in society.