Violence against Women in India

Recently in India, public outrage for better protection for women’s rights and safety erupted after 23-year-old Jyoti Singh Pandey died following a brutal gang-rape on a bus in New Delhi. Together with the Ethnic Arts Foundation, AWFC will be launching an online exhibition in March of the traditionally stylistic Mithila paintings, created by women living in northern India at the Nepal border. Many of their works tell the stories of their daily hardships, reflect cultural attitudes towards women, and continue the debate and need for laws and reforms.

In the Mithila image below, the community takes a positive action against bride-burning, a form of domestic violence in many countries in which the bride is killed by her husband or his family often due to dissatisfactions over the bride’s dowry. Although bride burning is a crime, the perpetrator often goes un-punished.

In the painting below, “The Abortion Clinic,” a pregnant women lies on a gurney looking at the ultrasound image of her fetus. Her mother-in-law insists that she abort the child because it is female, while the daughter begs against it.

In this image, the artist Rani Jha states, “In the past we could only peek through the curtain, now we have joined together and our breaking through the curtain.”