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SOCIAL RESEARCH
Indian women speaking out on crime
Female quotas on local councils introduced in 1993 also appear to improve police response to violent attacks, study finds
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STEPHANIE NOLEN DELHI
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There has been a huge spike in
the level of violent crime reported against women in India in the
past 18 years – and that’s good
news, according to new research.
The study shows that there
isn’t really more crime, but that
more of it is being reported to authorities, and researchers say the
spike can be traced a constitutional amendment in 1993 that
requires one third of seats on
local councils be reserved for
women.
Such a change might have been
expected to improve life, particularly for marginalized rural women. But when a team of
researchers went looking for evidence to demonstrate that improvement, they made a startling
discovery.
“What we were expecting and
hoping to find was a decline in
crime against women, when this
group historically discriminated
against got new power,” said
Lakshmi Iyer, a political economist with Harvard Business
School and lead author of a new
study probing the subject.
“Instead we found a very high increase. We were surprised and
distressed.”
By comparing data on crimes
against women (such as rape,
dowry death and sexual harassment) from before and after the
reservations, or quotas, were
introduced, the researchers
found that those crimes went up
44 per cent on average.
So Prof. Iyer and her three colleagues went back to their data
and dug in deep to try to figure
out what was happening. They
considered the possibility that
having women on councils was
prompting a backlash, as it
upended the normal power
dynamics in male-dominated societies, and thus more women
Researchers say an increase in women going to authorities over violent crimes can be traced to a 1993 constitutional amendment. AMIT DAVE/REUTERS
were being attacked in retaliation. And they tested the hypothesis that the greater public
participation of women was
exposing them to more opportunities to be victims of crime. But
neither of those theories held up.
Finally, drawing on more
bodies of data, they found their
answer, Prof. Iyer says. It wasn’t
that there was more crime, but
simply that more of it was being
reported when women had seats
on village and district councils.
Women were more likely to go to
police to report a crime (a huge
change, in a country where as
much as 80 per cent of such
crime is believed to be unreported). And then police were more
likely to open a case – and indeed 30 per cent more likely to
make an arrest – after the reservations were introduced.
“Paradoxically it is good news –
it shows they improve the voice
of women,” Prof. Iyer says. “If
you want justice, you have to
first record the crime.”
There was no significant increase in crimes not specifically
targeted against women, such as
property crimes, after the reservations were introduced, suggesting that law and order did not
deteriorate. Nor were there other
significant policy changes other
than the reservation of seats for
women over this time period.
The study controlled for a host of
demographic, social and economic variables, such as the size
of police forces, rising literacy
rates and urbanization.
The team has two possible
explanations for why police officers are more likely to register a
case for women after the reservations law.
“The presence of female leaders
at the local level might induce
the police to be more sympathetic towards female victims, either
because their attitudes towards
women undergo a change after
observing female political leaders, or because these local leaders
have the ability to highlight poor
behaviour by the police to higher-level officials or the local
press.”
Similarly, there are two possible
reasons women may be more
willing to report crimes, the
study finds. “They may become
more self-confident as a result of
seeing other women in political
office, hence reducing their tolerance of injustice and their reluctance to report crimes,” or they
may be motivated by the perceived changed in police behaviour.
In a national household survey,
women reported greater satisfaction in their interactions with the
police after the reservation law
were introduced, and higher satisfaction with police behaviour in
villages where the council head
was a woman.
A decade after reservations are
introduced in each area, the
spike in crime reporting begins
to level out. “We’ve shown the
reservations improve the voice of
women,” Prof. Iyer says. “Now
whether it changes their status
remains to be seen.”
CELEBRITY PENGUIN
COURTS
Happy Feet is marching home
Chirac is too ill to stand trial
for embezzlement, judge told
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NICK PERRY WELLINGTON
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H
ANGELIQUE CHRISAFIS PARIS
e needed a little push before
speeding backward down a
makeshift slide. Once in the
water, he popped his head up for
one last look. And then he was
gone. The wayward emperor penguin known as Happy Feet was
back home in Antarctic waters
after an extended sojourn spent
capturing hearts in New Zealand.
Happy Feet was released into
the ocean south of New Zealand
on Sunday, more than two
months after he came ashore on
a beach nearly 3,000 kilometres
from home and became an
instant celebrity.
Speaking from a satellite phone
aboard the research vessel Tangaroa, Wellington Zoo veterinarian
Lisa Argilla said Happy Feet’s
release went remarkably smoothly given that the boat was being
tossed about in eight-metre
swells in the unforgiving Antarctic ocean.
Dr. Argilla said crew members
from the boat carried the penguin inside his custom-built crate
to the stern of the ship for his
final send-off about 90 kilometres north of remote Campbell
Island. The crew had already cut
the engines and put in place a
canvas slide that they soaked
with water from a hose.
But when they opened the door
of the crate, the penguin showed
no interest in leaving.
“I needed to give him a little a
tap on his back,” Dr. Argilla said.
The penguin slipped down the
slide on his stomach, bottom
first, she said. He resurfaced
about two metres from the boat,
took a look up at the people
aboard, and then disappeared be-
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The emperor penguin nicknamed Happy Feet was released into the ocean
on Sunday. WELLINGTON ZOO/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
neath the surface.
The one-metre-tall aquatic bird
was found June 20 on Peka Peka
Beach, about 65 kilometres
northwest of New Zealand’s capital, Wellington. It had been 44
years since an emperor penguin
was last spotted in the wild in
New Zealand.
At first, conservation authorities said they would wait and let
nature take its course with the
penguin. But it soon became
clear the bird’s condition was
deteriorating, as he scooped up
beaks full of sand and swallowed,
likely mistaking it for snow,
which emperor penguins eat for
its moisture when in Antarctica.
With the world watching, authorities finally took action, moving the penguin to the Wellington
Zoo four days after he was discovered.
At the zoo, the 31⁄2-year-old bird
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underwent numerous stomach
flushing procedures to remove
sand from his digestive system.
He was given a makeshift home
in a room that zoo staff kept
filled with a bed of ice so he
wouldn’t overheat.
Local television station TV3 set
up a webcam and streamed
images of the bird around-theclock. Soon, Happy Feet had a
quarter-million followers.
And, perhaps befitting of a bird
from the Internet age, those followers will be able to keep track
of him for a while longer. Happy
Feet has been fitted with a GPS
tracker, and his movements will
be posted online at wellingtonzoo.com.
Dr. Argilla expects the tracker
to fall off the next time the bird
molts.
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Associated Press
One of the biggest political courtroom dramas in modern French
history open in Paris on Monday,
but its central character, former
president Jacques Chirac, is unlikely to appear.
Chirac is accused of masterminding the embezzlement of
state funds while he was mayor
of Paris in what became known
as the case of the “fake jobs.”
The corruption saga dates back
to the 1990s, when Mr. Chirac allegedly added the names of allies
from his political party, the RPR,
to the Paris city hall payroll, paying them salaries for jobs that
never existed.
Mr. Chirac allegedly siphoned
off state funds for work benefiting the party political machine
that ensured his election as president in 1995. While not acknowledging wrongdoing, Mr. Chirac
and his party struck a deal last
year with Socialist-run Paris city
hall to pay back $2.2-million for
the jobs in question. He faces
charges of embezzlement, breach
of trust and illegal conflict of interest, which could result in 10
years in jail and a fine of
€150,000.
But lawyers for the 78-year-old
wrote to the court this weekend
saying he was not capable of taking part because of his fragile
mental state and failing memory.
They argued he was not fit to answer questions about his past
and the trial should go ahead
without him.
Mr. Chirac’s family had dreaded
an appearance in court as a humiliating postscript to one of the
longest political careers in
Europe: twice president, twice
prime minister and 18 years as
mayor of Paris. It would be a historic downfall. The only other
French leaders to face French justice were King Louis XVI, guillotined in 1793 after the French
revolution, and Marshal Philippe
Petain, the leader of France’s
Nazi collaborationist regime,
who was convicted of treason
and exiled after the Second
World War. Mr. Chirac was to
appear in the same courtroom
that saw Marie Antoinette sentenced to the guillotine.
Last week, lawyers for Mr. Chirac said he would appear at his
trial on Tuesday. But in a sudden
turnaround at the weekend, they
confirmed they had written to
the judge to say his health had
deteriorated over the summer
and he “no longer has the full capacity to participate in court proceedings.”
They enclosed a neurological
report, sought by his family,
which said Mr. Chirac was in “a
vulnerable condition which will
not allow him to answer questions about his past.” The lawyers
said Mr. Chirac still wanted the
trial to go ahead, stressing his
“willingness to assume his responsibilities.”
Judges will rule on Monday
whether the trial can take place,
with lawyers standing in for an
absent Mr. Chirac. Nine other
defendants face trial in the same
case.
The trial was postponed in
March over a constitutional issue.
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Guardian News Service
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