Photo courtesy of Roar Media
Today is International Women’s Day
It was a day like any other. I was making sure the kids were kept entertained and getting some of my own work done at the same time. The knock on the door was the beginning of what was to become Women In Need (WIN). It was Sri Lanka in 1986 and friends and family could drop in uninvited and would be made welcome. A friend was at the door, crying unconsolably. Her sad story was of an abusive husband who had pummelled her one time too many. The first beating she got that morning made her run out of the door but she had no idea where to go. What triggered it seemed to be nothing very much. On the surface, it seemed like a scolding. She had no money and no clothes, just what she had on. She walked to the bus stop on the opposite side of the road and waited until her husband left for work. She went back home to pick up what she needed to leave him; a small bag containing a few clothes, photos of her children and her wallet.
Her resolve to stay for her children’s sake had gone out the door. She couldn’t take it anymore. The sound of the front door being unlocked stopped her in her tracks. It had to be him and she couldn’t take another beating, have her hair pulled and her face punched until she bled. She crept under the bed, quivering. He entered the room and called out to the maid, an older woman in her cloth and jacket, and proceeded to have sex with the woman on her bed while she bit her lip and stayed quiet. Their children were very young while she and the man she married were in their early 30s. Even while he was courting her, I had seen him slap her across the face in public and toss the engagement ring on the grounds where we were, which had her and her friends on our knees searching for what we thought was valuable to her. Even then I felt brave enough to tell him that he was being rude and obnoxious to my friend and that it was not right to hit a woman, in spite of her pleas to me to try not to make things worse. She thought I had all the answers as I was always outspoken and stood up for what I thought was right. In this case, I didn’t.
However the first step was to take her to the police station in order to make an official complaint against his behaviour, known as an entry, a written complaint in the police record. She asked the police for protection and to caution her husband but the policeman who was sent for the inquiry was soon smoking a cigarette offered by her husband and was having a chat and a laugh with him. This did not give her any confidence that things were going to get better and they did not. She was persuaded by the police to go back. For the children, they said. What would her parents think, they said. He had promised not to do this again, they said.
Women in abusive relationships stay in these relationships for several reasons: lack of self esteem, fear of retaliation and the mental abuse they undergo makes them doubt their capability to exist without the abusive partner and convince them that they deserve the punishment. They have been brainwashed to believe they are unworthy of a better life and that life without their abusive partner means they cannot survive. Some stay in order to give their children financial security or they fear that their children would be taken away from them, as they are apparently not good mothers. At least, that’s what they are made to think.
Women say that the mental abuse is far worse than the physical as it makes them so much more vulnerable. Children from abusive families often become abusive themselves unless they make an effort to break the vicious cycle. I resolved that day that I would do something to help women who had been abused and battered. I started talking about the need to start a centre to help abused women. About that time, in late 1986, I entered a beauty contest, which I won. The final question posed to me was “What would you do if you win?” Without batting an eyelid, I stated that I would start a centre to help abused women. I could hear an audible gasp from the audience. No one talked of such things at the time. Not because it didn’t happen because it did, in all spheres of society and across all strata of people, whether they had money and education or not.
The judges on that occasion were brave enough to award the title of Mrs. Sri Lanka to a young woman who dared to talk about abuse of women. This started a domino effect as many wanted to do interviews with me for radio and newspapers. Each time, I took the chance to talk about my dream of a centre for women who had been abused. When is it one time too many? For every woman, the answer is specific to her situation and her sense of her rights and dignity. Each incident had to be dealt with on a case by case basis and with sensitivity to specific context.
After the interviews appeared in the newspapers I had a call from Jane Merivale, a British woman who was teaching at the British Council. She told me she would help me by getting the funding for the initiative. In 1987, the two of us called a meeting of like-minded, strong women of that era, ready to tackle a bane of our society: abuse of women. These women supported me in makingmy idea a reality. This was the first committee of WIN – Women In Need – an acronym coined by Jane Merivale. WIN was a reality. It was registered as a non governmental organisation and our first centre was at Alfred House Gardens in a small apartment.
Renowned counsellors, doctors and lawyers were persuaded to give their time, pro bono. When we started off we had the support of the Canadian International Development Agency and the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation. The little apartment we rented had a steel grill door that we thought we might need considering the response to women’s shelters from some spouses in other countries. We were fortunate that we did not have to cope with such violence. Women were free to come for help incognito. The wonderful support we had from volunteers enabled WIN to get some grounding and helped it to survive these 38 years. Through the years, WIN has changed management and ideology but it has consistently done its best to support women.
The members of WIN have supported women who are vulnerable, and grown into an internationally recognised entity. Women such as Indira Gonsal Korale, Ranmali de Silva, Kamalini Wijetilleke and Anita Jayawardene were among the first members. Advisers included Professor Savitri Goonesekere and Dr. Manori Muttetuwegama. We also had Merle Weerasinghe, Tahire Fonseka, Niri Malalasekera, Perin Captain, Sheila Seneviratne, Savithri Wijesekera, Rosy Senanayake and many others who worked hard to keep the centre going and helped to create shelters across the country.
WIN has expanded its assistance to shelters in Anuradhapura, Colombo, Badulla, Batticaloa, Jaffna, Kandy and Matara and has six crisis centres. It has installed help desks in seven police stations and seven help desks in hospitals. Its lawyers and counsellors include specialists in gender-based violence.
We have now graduated to a society where domestic violence is spoken of openly. Those who have the wherewithal are able to hire counsellors and lawyers who are knowledgeable about the rights of a woman while those who cannot afford it can always reach out to WIN.
In this climate of change, several businesses have stepped up to support WIN by donating a percentage of their profits to organisations that provide assistance to women; it is encouraging to have that support in the aftermath of recent withdrawal of funding for many NGOs.