Dear Sir, Unfortunately I don’t accept any Indian male students for internships. We hear a lot about the rape problem in India which I cannot support. I have many female students in my group, so I think this attitude is something I cannot support.
Professor Annette G. Beck-Sickinger
The professor may believe that violence against women is a huge problem in India. And she is right. What she seems to have forgotten is that the increasing and increasingly disturbing cases of rape are a global phenomenon. To attach the problem to a country, or race smacks of prejudice.
In fact a 2010 UN report quoted in The Telegraph shows that the rape-rate (rapes of women per 100,000 of the population) is nearly 9 times higher in Germany than in India.
While the figures are from before 2012 and the Nirbhaya case, and rapes are often under-reported in India, they still point to a disturbing global trend. The US, Germany, Sweden, Australia all have a ‘rape-rate’ significantly higher than India.
So, while women’s safety is a global issue, the western media tends to focus on the Third World.
“The western media often, for example, concentrates on honour killings in Pakistan, while ignoring the fact that two women are killed each week in the UK by former or current partners. The UK murders receive little media attention,” says Canada based Feminist writer Emer O’Tool.