Gendered impact of the lockdown after rapid spread of COVID-19 – domestic violence in India

Abstract

With more than half of the world’s population under home lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic, cases of domestic violence have been increasing around the globe. In many of these cases, victims are unable to leave due to their economic situation or because the corona virus crisis limits their ability to find an alternative place to live. While the lockdowns are considered necessary to protect public safety during the pandemic, they’ve fostered a risky situation for those already in abusive relationships. Domestic violence perpetrators are already fragile individuals who cannot bear frustration, so the confinement will only worsen the situation. This paper presents a descriptive study which highlights the only gendered impact of lockdown that is increasing Domestic Violence (DV) on the most vulnerable groups of society that are women and children during lockdown after the spread of Covid-19. The present situation of women during lockdown, types of domestic violence they are going through, Government failure in implementing DV Act, Courts are closed, no legal aid, registering domestic violence: a big time dilemma for women, signs of controlling men and those women prone to Domestic Violence, methods to change the mindset of women and families to avoid getting into a situation involving Domestic Violence, measures taken by the Indian Government during Covid-19 lockdown for safeguarding the rights of abused women and limitations in implementing DV Act measures are described at length in the present paper.