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How safe are women around the world in general, and in India in particular? Protests have broken out over the rapes in Delhi, but how does that compare with other countries?
In Delhi, with 16-million people, there were 572 rapes last year. That is a rate of 35 per million. Here is how that compares with US cities, which I chose at random. (My figures are rounded off to the nearest 100, averaged over three years):
Delhi, India = 35 (the worst in India)
Tacoma Washington = 700
Fargo North Dakota = 500
Macon Georgia = 400
Omaha Nebraska = 400
Pittsburgh Pennsylvania = 300
Los Angeles California = 300
Houston Texas = 300
New York New York - 100
That means a woman from India, who emigrates to the USA, is ten times more likely to be raped in her new country, than she was at home.
Here are the rates per 100,000 by country. (Multiply by ten to compare with above cities. India and USA are not listed))
Keep in mind that these figures can be highly specious, depending on the definition of criminal rape in each country, and the likelihood that an incident will be reported to police.
These are the ones that are known about i wonder what the true figures are.
I'm not talking about the US, although you could could count Detroit and New Orleans ghettos, but just the Americas in general. Why is it that people living in very similar conditions in said countries aren't as violent? And I am talking about the slums not the entire city btw.
Most of the countries in the Americas don't have problems with people buying or abducting toddlers, then cutting their limbs off, blinding them, burning them and/or letting their wounds fester and putting them on the streets so that they garner more sympathy from passersby, and paying bribes to the local authorities so that they're allowed to do this completely unaffected by law, while this is all fairly common in South Asia.
Rape is definitely underreported in India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, etc etc because of the attached social stigmas towards women who have been raped, and some degree of social acceptance towards rapists. A woman is more apt to
a) keep it secret
b) tell male family members who may hunt down and maim or kill the rapist(s)
c) commit suicide
than go tell cops who at best will just ignore the situation, and at worst, will confront the attackers sympathetically and allow them to allege that she seduced them and let legal and social stigmas fall back on her.
Honor killings, family vengeance, tribal/clan wars, etc. are much less an issue in Latin America and practically nonexistent in North America due to cultural differences - the Americas are largely a product of European colonization and, at least theoretically, are more apt to give a nod to individual liberty as opposed to a centuries-old caste and clan system. Meaning, you're more apt to see riots or unending tit-for-tat violence in Southeast Asia, versus "that guy pissed me off" or "she chose another man over me" in the Americas. Even in the worst parts of the US, there's not much of a "that guy looks like he's from a different Christian sect so I'm going to shoot him" thing going on, whereas in Pakistan... well, my ex's brothers emigrated here on amnesty visas because they had cousins who were murdered by rival clans and religious zealots because they followed a more progressive/modern sect of Islam and were deemed "infidels."
One thing that is probably fairly common to all parts of the world is victimhood. In Baltimore, or Bangkok, or Bombay, or Brazzaville, or Bogota, a murder victim is highly likely to fall into one of two categories: Either a stranger who does not know where to go or not go, or a person who knowingly associates with the criminal underworld. To a certain extent, that might also be true of rape, as well as murder. But nearly everywhere, ordinary people familiar with the city are pretty good at avoiding being crime victims.
That is one of the reasons crime statistics are do misleading. To a large extent, they are only a picture of the closed society of the underworld, and to not reflect the safety of living and working and keeping your nose clean in the city.
Aside from a drastic level of under-reporting of sexual assaults, many of these cultures are intrinsically tolerant of abusive behaviors against women. There is generally little in the way of support services for victims, and the legal and judicial systems are often structured so as to make it virtually impossible to obtain a conviction.
Another element to keep in mind is that in cultures like India, date-rape is off the table, there is no such thing as "date" in the western sense of the word, so there can't be date-rape (except for a small demographic of a westernized elite).. Eliminating date-rape and similar social rapes involving people who are together voluntarily, would reduce the USA rape statistics to somewhere in the neighborhood of the Indian statistics. In India, a rape is a complete stranger tied up and gagged and beaten and left for dead, and that occurs rarely in this country, too.
I am talking about murder, but rape would be the same I'd imagine - you can live in a slum in say Manila, Delhi or Jakarta. Or in nearly identical slums in Caracas, Rio or Bogota. Which slums do you think your more likely to get raped or murdered? In the Americas for some reason. Cultural, drug trade and easier access to weapons is the only reasons I can think of.
manila and jakarta aren't exactly safe. dont get me wrong, caracas is the worst out of the cities you listed, but aside from that, rio/bogota vs manila/jakarta. walkin down random streets at night i suspect you have a similar chance of something happening in all those cities.
There are protests in the UK every day about everything.
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