In India, SHARE director empowers women

Baluch, the director of Princeton’s Sexual Harassment/Assault Advising, Resources and Education (SHARE) program, traveled to India from late November to early December as part of a U.S. State Department program called “Women’s Empowerment: Preventing Violence Against Women and Children.”

Baluch went as part of the Take Back The Night (TBTN) Foundation, for which she serves on the board of advisers. TBTN, “a national foundation committed to ending sexual violence in all forms and lending support to survivors,” was invited to speak about its history as part of the State Department program.

During the tour, Baluch visited many cities, including Mumbai, Goa, Chennai, Trivandrum and New Delhi.

“The tour was really about an exchange of ideas and current practices,” Baluch said, adding that the U.S. consulates in Mumbai and Chennai and the U.S. embassy in New Delhi “arranged university lectures [and] meetings with sexual harassment hearing committees, various NGOs, members of local law enforcement, civil groups and the media.”

Baluch shared U.S. data on “sexual assault, domestic environment and sexual harassment” and discussed what women can do to prevent being assaulted, she said. She cited such primary prevention strategies as “addressing social norms, creating a consent culture — i.e. a community where obtaining affirmative participation is the norm — involving men as allies and developing bystander-intervention training.”

Though she was thousands of miles from the country where her data were compiled, the situation in India was not completely dissimilar.

“The activists, educators and students I met with in India are really addressing many of the same underlying issues we face in the [United States],” she said.

Some of these issues, which include the occurrence of domestic violence, sexual harassment and assault, and backlash against abuse survivors, “may be culturally specific,” Baluch said. “But some of the underlying causes were common to women around the world.”

There are ways for Princeton students to get involved with the issues being faced in India despite the distance, Baluch explained.

“The American embassy in India has several opportunities on its website,” Baluch explained. “Through the United States-India Educational Foundation (USIEF) ,it offers educational advising and fellowship support.”

Students can also get involved without even leaving Princeton through SHARE’s Peer Adviser program or SpeakOut, she added.