'Schools should teach respect for women'

As the 23-year-old girl fights for her life, filmmaker and writer Madhuri Banerjee links the rise in gender crime in India to the bias against the girl child.

She says “gender decorum” and respect for women should be inculcated in boys at the school level.

She says as a woman, one needs to be far more sensitive to sexual repression — and stand up for the cause.

“Or else, some day, my four-and-a-half-year-old daughter will ask me what did I do when the nation was fighting for this girl in the capital,” she says.

The Mumbai-based writer, who was in Delhi to launch her new romantic fiction Mistakes Like Love and Sex, cancelled the launch of her book on Friday to express solidarity with the victim.

“It is a gender crime that has touched everyone in the country,” she says.
She says there is a link between gender inequity and sexual vulnerability in the context of economics and power structure in society.

The natural psyche of a woman — perpetuated down generations by mothers and grandmothers — spurs her to take on more responsibility, she adds.

Expecting a lot

“Without realising, a woman gives the male ego a boost by managing multiple roles of a mother, homemaker and a professional. Add to this sexual obligation; the man usually expects a woman to have sex at night even if she is tired and not in the mood,” says the writer.