Women in Sri Lanka – especially low-income women – rely heavily on public transport. Half of female study participants said they use it to go to work, and 28 per cent said it was how they travelled to pursue their educations. UNITED NATIONS, New York/COLOMBO, Sri Lanka – Ninety per cent of women in Sri Lanka have endured sexual harassment while taking public transport, a new study commissioned by UNFPA has found. 1 Trained women planning on contesting for local government elections brought together to advocate for nominations. Many thanks to our web design, development and hosting partner Culture Foundry for keeping the site active while we plan our next move. Culture Foundry builds, evolves and supports next-level websites and applications for clients you know, and you couldn’t ask for a better partner to help you thrive in digital. If you’re considering an ambitious website design or development project, we encourage you to make them your very first call.
- The ADB is blending $9.5 million of the We-Fi grant funding with an ADB $23.3 million line of credit that is has extended to 10 financial institutions for their own on-lending programs to women entrepreneurs.
- Even with data on the prevalence of VAW, the issue would compete with other priority health issues.
- The Isis Feminist Activist School aims to strengthen the communication capacity of women from the Global South so that they can effectively articulate and take on leadership roles in organisations, communities, networks and/or social movements.
- These decades of instability coupled with a history of colonial rule created an uphill battle for women’s rights in Sri Lanka.
- Asoka de Zoysa, a Sri Lankan academic, points out that the sari has become synonymous with appropriate dress for women at educational institutions today.
- Women In Need is one of Sri Lanka’s leading organisations committed to the elimination of all forms of violence against women and girls.
- The Internews Social Media Meetup III represented the diverse experiences of women using technology to educate and empower Sri Lankan society in times of reform and change, as well as unlocking opportunities for women through technology.
In my own experience as a Sri Lankan academic, female academics come under pressure to wear the sari for lectures, examinations and meetings. Female students in many universities are also under pressure to dress modestly. Thus many students, with the exception of some , refrain from wearing sleeveless, shorter than knee-length clothes or clothes that are form-fitting. At the University Grants Commission, which manages most state universities, all Commission Members are men; in the nearly 20 standing committees, only a handful of members are women.
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High-level government officials, international agencies and MOH, all must agree to recognise VAW as a pertinent public health issue, and empirical data should be collected to support this recognition. Internationally, in the early 2000, women’s organizations and activists in the US and Europe joined UN agencies (e.g. the World Health Organisation – WHO) in framing VAW not only as a human rights, but also as a major public health issue . Despite early studies documenting the pervasiveness of VAW in Sri Lanka , such thinking reached Sri Lanka only around 2008, with the development of a National Report on Violence and Health, jointly published with WHO . This is an important milestone document for violence and health in Sri Lanka, which marks the official recognition of violence as a public health issue that needs to be tackled by the health sector. Since then, MOH policy documents have addressed violence as a key socio-health issue, as reiterated in its newly adopted National Health Plan .. Subsequently, the inclusion of the health sector as an institution responsible for implementation strategies set out by the plans to address VAW in Sri Lanka, has reinforced recognition of VAW as a public health issue and the need to strengthen the health sector response.
“The study is important as it highlights the grave gender discriminations that persist towards women and girls,” said Sharika Cooray, a UNFPA gender analyst in Sri Lanka. This commitment, aimed to increase access to information and ensure that trained or qualified women can be nominated and elected in local government elections. However, as the Elections Commission did not publish the names and profiles of all women candidates prior to the election, there was no change in access to information as a result of this commitment. According to a representative from the Centre for Policy Alternatives , the Ministry of Women and Child Affairs took steps to finalise selection criteria for women candidates (Milestone 15.1).
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We selected the Shiffman and Smith framework for this study because it provides an approach to examining gaps in political priority. The framework has mostly been used at a global level and we wanted to test its utility for national policy analysis. Specifically, we use it to explore the role of the health sector in the response to VAW in Sri Lanka, and why the health sector has not always been fully active in its involvement. We investigate how the issue of VAW in Sri Lanka has developed by exploring the actors involved; the ways in which VAW has been understood; the severity and prevalence of the issue; and the political context in which VAW has developed. This paper aims to explore the historical development of the national policy response to VAW in Sri Lanka, explore who the actors involved in the national VAW response were, understand how VAW was framed and what role the health policy sector played in addressing VAW. The paper will focus on one of the most common forms of VAW worldwide, namely intimate partner violence . The conflict has also led to a general state of militarisation in the country as a whole which intensifies the violence in society, particularly violence against women.
- Sri Lanka has been governed under the Emergency Regulations and the Prevention of Terrorism Act for almost all of the past 20 years.
- Moreover, the ability of NGOs to continue to provide counselling services for VAW is affected by government officials’ biases towards all NGOs labelling their work as anti-government or pro-separatist .
- Other than that, we also provide single/double/family private room upgrades at extra charges.
- Have noted that violence against women worsened as a result of the civil war, which ended in May 2009.
- She has smacked 1867 runs and taken 30 wickets in her 89 matches of T20I career so far.
- Female sterilization is still the most common method of family planning in Sri Lanka, and 16% of married women of reproductive age report having gotten sterilized.
Receiving information on VAW from police departments, such as the number of partner violence and sexual violence complaints filed, does not depict the health consequences nor severity of each case unless it results in a homicide. In fact, a review of research evidence on VAW in Colombo found that only 23% of abused women accessed any sort of support institution, and of those even fewer accessed police services . The findings suggest that the networks and influences of various actors in Sri Lanka, and their ideas used to frame the issue of VAW, have been particularly important in shaping the nature of the policy response to date. The Ministry of Women and Child Affairs led the national response on VAW, but suffered from limited financial and political support. Results also suggest that there was low engagement by the health sector in the initial policy response to VAW in Sri Lanka, which focused primarily on criminal legislation, following global influences. Furthermore, a lack of empirical data on VAW has impeded its promotion as a health policy issue, despite financial support from international organisations enabling an initial health systems response by the Ministry of Health. Until a legal framework was established , the political context provided limited opportunities for VAW to also be construed as a health issue.
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In 2016, 74.3% of women of reproductive age (15-49 years) had their need for family planning satisfied with modern methods. Government has provided development and humanitarian assistance to Sri Lanka to promote a healthy, educated, and employed population. As Sri Lanka’s largest export market, the United States is in a strong position to support the country’s economic growth. USAID’s current program supports the Government of Sri Lanka’s efforts to promote inclusive economic growth, strengthen its democratic systems, and support marginalized and disaster-affected communities. Help women leaders to develop Collaborative Action Plans on WPS, identifying up to three priority issues and challenges related to reconciliation and gender-based violence. It is also “a first step in addressing the data gap at a national level on violence against women,” she added.
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Using the limited data available regarding the female sector in Sri Lanka, the paper seeks to spell out the impact of Western style modernization on the role of the female hitherto hedged around by heterogeneous norms and perceptions. It explores the role conflict, stresses and disabilities of the female, areas of change, in social attitude and activities as well as in the administrative and legal spheres, and, what is more important, areas which are still largely traditional. It is suggested that, as yet, the pull of tradition is stronger than the ‘push’ of modernization in many aspects of social organization. Reflecting on the four gender norms and roles discussed above, our research found that even though the women involved were ethnically diverse, they had similar experiences in accessing healthcare.
Violence has become a part of everyday culture in Sri Lankan homes, justifying men beating up their wives, justifying women being catcalled in the streets, justifying men raping women, justifying child abuse, and justifying gender inequality. The data used in this article are based on peer review articles and reports and documents available in the public domain. The case studies presented on this site were prepared by graduate students as part of a seminar course dedicated to critical perspectives on international planning, focusing in particular on planning in contexts of urban informality.
