SO high are the rates of sexual assault in general that many women around the world would say that being attacked in some way is not a matter of if, but of when. In the West, the recent shootings by Elliot Rodger have brought to the fore, yet again, the fact that gender can imperil one’s life. And closer to home, too many cases of rape in the recent past have horrified the region and the world.

There have been some resultant gains in legislation: the Delhi case jolted India’s legal system into action. Yet is protecting women from assault merely a matter of making laws and applying them stringently? No, although both these factors are absolutely necessary components.

Even more important is the need to change attitudes and fight back against the misogyny that is entrenched in large parts of the world, and is obvious in patriarchal societies such as in the subcontinent.

Consider, for example, the statement that came from Indian politician Babulal Gaur on Thursday in the context of the gang rape and hanging of two young cousins recently.

He described rape as a “social crime”; “sometimes it’s right, sometimes it’s wrong”. And he is far from the first person to have expressed this view. Mulayam Singh Yadav, whose party runs Uttar Pradesh, said dismissively about legal changes that envisage the death penalty for gang rape: “boys commit mistakes.” Rape is a common horror in Pakistan, too; in March, a young rape victim set herself ablaze because of her failure to get justice.

And it was our erstwhile president Pervez Musharraf who in 2005 told The Washington Post that rape was a “money-making concern” and that women “get themselves raped” to facilitate emigration.

What is appalling is not really that views such as these continue to exist, but that they are held also by people in senior positions who craft public attitudes. How can we expect societal attitudes to shift when this is the case?

Published in Dawn, June 7th, 2014