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Abstract
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The term sexual violence encompasses a range of sexual offences and is defined by the World Health Organization as "any sexual act or an attempt to obtain a sexual act, unwanted sexual comments, or advances, acts to traffic or otherwise directed, against a person's sexuality using coercion, by any person regardless of their relationship to the victim in any setting, including but not limited to home and work."
In India, the problem is much deeper and more complex, especially at this juncture when the media is brimming with the news of gruesome rapes and heinous sexual crimes. There is no winding down of the situation despite several mass movements, strikes, protests, and stringent laws; we perhaps are missing the wood for the tree. In India, underpinning of various socio-cultural and religious factors along with sexual illiteracy, human and drug trafficking, gender inequality and conservative attitude of society pose challengers.2,3 There is a surge in reporting of such cases of sexual violence in recent times perhaps because of the unfortunate Nirbhaya case and "Me Too" movement which caught the attention of the public. Despite the increased consciousness, there is still a pressing need to understand what we need to do to prevent sexual violence to happen in the first place.
To stance our preventive strategies better we need to understand a few aspects of this growing problem: First, the demography of the country: one third of the country population is less than 21...
Language: en |