Causes
There are many causes of the problem gender-based violence in India though it is hard to pinpoint a direct cause for a problem like this. Largely because it is the life that people have always known, and sadly, they are used to not having rights. Most cases of sexual harassment are not reported because it could bring shame to families of the girl. Another cause is the conviction rate for these types of crimes is only 26% and many cases are dropped due to lack of evidence.There were 5,337 cases of rape reported in the past 10 years and of those, 3,860 of those were dropped because of that. Dowry deaths are murders of women because of a dispute over dowry which is property or money promised to a husband by a bride. These also cause a lot of deaths and caused over 8,000 deaths of women in 2012 alone. Honor killings are another small percentage of killings where the family of a girl may kill her in extreme cases if they disprove of the man she is marrying. Women in India need to feel safe in their own country and not feel threatened because of their gender.
Effects
Women cannot feel safe if they feel threatened by gender-based violence everyday. An example of this was when a seventeen-year-old village girl was drugged and gang raped in November 2012. She then committed suicide after a police officer pressed her to drop the charges and marry one of her assailants. Reports came to light that officers had harassed the victim, did not register her case, and sought an out-of-court settlement between her family and the families of her alleged attackers—"a practice known locally as "compromise" that analysts say occurs often in some parts of [India]" (Xu). If things like this are happening in India, how can women feel safe?