On the eve of March, the month when I am geared to write about Women’s health, I incidentally watched the movie: Assi. Assi, is the Hindi word for the number ‘eighty’. The title is a statistic. The movie, is everything in society that lies beneath that number. It is no revelation that rape destroys the well-being of the victim. Rape, one that is inflicted on a woman every twenty minutes, is an outcome/effect of an unwell socio-cultural environment. Addressing the flaws of/ causes in this socio-cultural environment will change the outcome. For years we have blamed the victim and crime against her has normalised pushing women to a lower health and community status. It is important to address this question because if a positive change has to come about in women’s well-being, then, the environment that they live in must be transformed. Gender is a social construct, and rape is a social disorder. We rarely articulate the causes in conversations that we have when we protest rape. Assi, 80 rapes a day, few of which are reported, fewer truly investigated, still fewer argued to completion in court and almost none that even after a favourable verdict were announced have done justice to the victim, her family, her community and society at large.
The compromised environment that normalises rape in society is part of the larger environment that compromises every woman’s health and well-being. Our health is an outcome of our interactions with the environment from the time life is conceived. The food, water, air, social-cultural interactions, economic status, the built environment and access to all of these determine our health. For each of these and others that I may have missed, women’s access is compromised compared with men of an equal socio-economic status.
The most relevant argument in the movie was, Irrelevant’. The defence argued that the general state of law and order, lack of evidence in rape cases was irrelevant to the particular case that he was defending. I am drawing a parallel to women’s health here. The environment where women develop illnesses lacks support for them in health and disease. Research on women’s physical-mental-social health that should then build the evidence for the medicine or rehab to be delivered is often missing. The medicine, the technology and knowledge that is applied to women’s health have mostly been studied on men. It is no surprise then that doctors are often unprepared, biased and women may be sent off from clinics as suffering from psychological symptoms, thinking too much, or the wrong medicine! (Invisible Women). This dilapidated support, research and outreach is responsible for the poor health status of women today. To this day, I hear a diagnosis of ‘hysteria’ when a woman has suffered a pain or blood pressure related fainting! Women easily steer to the internet or social media for remedies and this is partially because they resonate with the propositions that give recognition to the symptoms that are often dismissed in clinics. When discussing the current health needs of women in a clinic, the environment may seem irrelevant as the doctor must find medication for an outcome and bring relief to her in that moment. If we are to steer in the right direction, diagnose correctly and treat every patient in the clinic with equality, evidence- without bias, the environment is most relevant!
When we are unprepared for adversities, they hit us hard. The victim in the movie wants to return to teaching at her school but the principal says that her institution is ill-prepared. Let alone a healing environment, the school is a vicious space for the victim to be in, she confesses. The brazen messages that young boys have shared on social media have rocked her confidence in herself and all her years of service in education! We must confront the un-ready us, the discomfort of children learning of our ways, the misogyny that silences women and the complacency that prevents change.
As a society, we are as unprepared for non-communicable diseases, climate change and other health hazards that disproportionately affect women, as we are for rape! We are seeing statistics that tell of the exclusion of women in health provision and care. Evolutionarily, women live longer than men and yet, social constructs lead women spend 25% or their lives in poorer health when compared with men. Women are worse affected by obesity and heart disease. The list is endless as it is plagued by a fundamental discrimination in research that has ignored women for the longest time. Knowing the stats and numbers does not equate with providing the environment to improve health and healthcare. Beneath these numbers are the socio-cultural-economic and other stagnated environmental factors that put women’s health and well-being at a disadvantage.
The environments need to be re-constructed. A shift is required in the discourse from the victim to the perpetrators, the authorities and to the society at large. A deliberate constructive shift must engage people, institutions and practices that sustain misogynist environments that reinforce the prevalence of disproportional determinants for women’s well-being.
I always enjoy cinema that uses its potential in presenting perspectives in a concise and creative manner. Assi is contemporary, it addresses the many diverse demons that threaten women’s being, and the possibility of a different future of society.
Being is fundamental to women’s health and is constantly combated. It may not be the first movie on how women’s being is defied but it certainly is among the best I have ever watched.
My favourite sentiments from the movie were: We, women, are enraged ourselves but we aren’t out to express it and we don’t want to set the world on fire. (Why is feminism not ok but rage expressed by men totally OK?). It reiterates that humour is often at the expense of women’s well-being. Make a joke that women can laugh at too! Get creative on that sexist sense of humour! It is shameful when women are the ‘object’ in stand-ups, insta reels and roadside comments. Anger, humour and all emotions are directly related to our health. Let’s challenge ourselves and demand a healthy social-cultural-economic-built environment that is accessible to women. Let’s turn on its head, the blame the victim and burden the victim with ‘solutions to find’ attitude.
