Written by Sarah Soysa

Studying in Australia for two years sounded exciting for me. I was super delighted from the moment I received the scholarship acceptance letter. After a lot of excitement, drama, emotions of leaving loved ones and nervousness about entering a totally different academic structure, I actually found Melbourne very peaceful and easy to live in, more than Sri Lanka.

I also expected a greater difference in the way gender is depicted in their society from what it is in Sri Lanka. Maybe this was where I went wrong. In the first couple of weeks I felt very safe in Melbourne, especially while travelling in public transport, where you don’t get judgmental looks for your clothes or for your playful behavior and most importantly you don’t get sexually abused while travelling and you see respect and manners.

However with time, I reached a level where I really had to argue with myself: is there a considerable difference when it comes to gender or sexual violence in Sri Lanka and Australia? One woman is killed every week in Australia by her partner or ex-partne., The Australian Institute of Criminology indicates that 36% of all homicides occur in a domestic setting. Of those homicides, 73% involve a woman being killed by her male partner. 78% of people in Australia who are homeless due to domestic violence are women. One woman is hospitalized every three hours in this country. The news advises women every day –not to jog alone or travel alone at night in certain areas due to the high risk of rape and violence. This reminds me of Sri Lanka because it is widely accepted in Sri Lanka that ‘GOOD’ girls do not leave home after dark and that’s when girls get raped, so it is their fault because they left home after dusk! Irrational of course, but the warnings on news in Australia is pretty much the same more or less, restricting women’s freedom covering it with the ‘safety’ shield.

A Public poll in Australia declared that 97% of the people agree to the fact that there are sex offenders living around them, which is an alarmingly high proportion. Proving this, the chat I had with guards in the train stations revealed that there is sexual abuse happening in public transport and that is why there are police guards after 6 pm till the last train leaves. The condition of women sounds about the same as in Sri Lanka, maybe with a little more security involved in Australia, because it is a developed country and clearly they can afford it.

As I am passionate about safe abortion rights of women, it was shocking to know that safe abortion is restricted in one way or another in almost all the states. In New South Wales an abortion is allowed only when the mother’s life is in danger, in Northern Territory it is also  allowed if the child is likely to be disabled. The law is pretty much similar in Queensland, Tasmania and South Australia only with a difference in the number of weeks that the abortion can be performed. Horrific! Don’t you think?

Being a developed country, I was expecting them to be very liberal and rights based !! But  Australia needs gender sensitization as much as Sri Lanka does! Australia needs to follow a rights and choice based approach as much as Sri Lanka does! Yet It was a great surprise for me to see only 4 men in the Gender and Development class in the university and later I learnt that three out of four of them fell into the LGBTQ group and the other one was government funded therefore it is an obligation for him to take this subject.

This is confusing! Where are all the men who want to learn about gender? Why aren’t they taking this course? Is this supposed to be a subject taken by women and LGBTs? These so called ‘Men’ feel inferior to take the course? Or is it because they think gender is “women’s problem or a problem of gays and transgender?” Surprisingly with the discussions we had in class I realized the answer to all these questions is a YES! ‘Men’ felt inferior to take the course and others would laugh at them mocking at their manliness and wait a minute, gender is a problem of women! Isn’t it? They get abused, they get unequal treatment, they get judged, they get deprived of their rights so it’s their problem! Sigh!!

This is where development has gone wrong! This is where most organisations working on gender, including UN agencies have gone wrong! They simply do not ‘get’ gender. Men are left out in the development discourse largely and focus is only on women when it comes to gender. Gender is used interchangeably to ‘women’. These gendered women are treated as pregnant women, mothers, victims of, or at risk of, undergone sexual violence etc. They are not treated as individuals, or as subjects, in their own right! They are someone’s sister, mother, daughter, and wife! Don’t you see this post everywhere? Very IRONIC !

WOMEN ARE SOMEONE.  PERIOD!

To be continued…