“Is deterrence of crime a valid end of justice, and therefore a valid measure of punishment?… Which is the crime whose deterrence one is talking about? To say that punitive justice may validly seek to deter rape is at least a sensible proposition.”
In 2022, the theme for Pakistan’s annual Aurat March was Reimagining Justice. The manifesto highlighted failures of the criminal justice system, and emphasised the need to build a “feminist culture of care that looks beyond the individual to address structural violence”. The word ‘care’ it said, needs to be “decoupled from stereotypical understandings of feminine traits and envisioned as collective responsibility”.
By a feminist approach, I specifically mean the ethics of care articulated by the philosopher Virginia Held, which understands that people are intrinsically interrelated, as opposed to the model of the independent, self-sufficient individual of liberal theory.
When The Third Eye organised a discussion with three caseworkers from Banda in Uttar Pradesh, we began the conversation with one detail. We had noticed that the caseworkers used the word iqraarnama a lot. The meaning of the Urdu term iqraar is to declare or acknowledge something. The caseworkers use this idea as a tool while negotiating for women in cases of gender-based violence.
Can consent culture be introduced into workspaces? A series of short films offer an interesting starting point.
