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>> hello, i'm libby casey. it often takes a horrible crime followed by graphic headlines to draw attention to a problem that has been right before our eyes all along. such is the case in india why a violent sexual attack made a nation come to its feet and stream, no more. but a flash of anger or regret is not enough to end sexual violence against women. we'll unwrap the reasons behind this global problem highlighted in a new united nations study. we begin with adjustment day in new delhi. >> four men in india were sentenced to death today after a new delhi court found them guilty of raping a 23-year-old student last december. >> today not just one person, but the whole country is happy

that the accused who committed such a horrendous crime with our daughter has finally been punished. >> reporter: the victim was on her way home after going to the movies with a male friend when five men and a juvenile lured them on a bus and repeatedly raped and tortured her. the woman died from internal injuries two days later. the case brought outrage in the plight of women where rapes of women go largely unnoticed and uniparous cuted. the youngest attacker was sentenced to prison, and the oldest attackerring hung himse himself. >> the death sentence has been welcomed across here, and you can see celebration and relief on the part of the average indian who has come here to find what the verdict what, what the sentence was, and react to it. a mantling me this is the sentence that he believes that

everyone who commits rape in india should receive. that's a far-fetched statement, but it is certainly the mentality of many people across india following this very public case since december of last year. the question many people are asking going forward how long will this momentum last when it comes to talking about women's rights and women's safety across india. this case has come to an end in terms of offensing. we don't know when the punishment will be handed down given the appeals process likely to take place. but the biggest spotlight is how long can india keep it going when it comes to protecting women across the country. >> joining me now from new delhi india is kavika krishnan, a member of the communist party.

has this brought an incident of violence against women out of the shadows? >> there has been large protest against violence against women, but what this movement did following this terrible incident was to shift the discourse from inside about women needing protection to the question of women needing autonomy and freedom, and the need to safeguard that freedom. so in a way what was new about this movement that followed the december terrible incident is the crisp against rape culture, the direct challenge against rape culture that we heard on the streets of new delhi and the country. >> what is rape culture. >> the culture of blaming women for rape. i see connections between the movement here and the protest that started in canada and spread all over the world. i see that in india you had

women on the streets, don't teach yourself how to dress. teach men how not to rape. so these slogans on the streets of new delhi and india were new and encouraging. >> was this a movement that came from the women of india, and if so, was there one particular part of the culture that stood out the most? >> no, what was new about this movement was that there were women as well as men participants. the women's movement has the history of several decades, and it's been there for quite awhile. but now we saw the women's movement being arrest particul y women as well as men. >> let's talk about the death penalty. is it justice? >> we have held consistently, the entire women's movement has held that death penalty does not

really solve as a deterrent to rape. we did not seek the death penalty. thothers did also did not look r the death penalty to rape. it may actually act as incenti incentives to eliminate the rape victims because they may have a chance to appear in the rape trial. >> a court, an adjustment may be deterred against convicting a rapist because the punishment

would be so severe its better not to convict them at all. >> yes, it's likely we feel to do that, also, if you look at it, you see in the same court today where this verdict came out in very short span of nine months. in the same court there have been 23 recent rape cases. in 20 of them concluded in acquittals. only three of them could result in convictions. so you cane the ey the acquittao high. we need to understand the reason for these high rates of acquittals, and i would say the rape culture, the culture of suspecting a woman of lying about rape unless she's severely injured, unless it's within an inch of her life. there was a gang rape in you mumbai recently last month, and

they spoke publicly to say that 90% of rape cases are actually false complaints, and he explained that by saying, look, the complainants are not severely injured enough to land in hospital. so you know, this is the kind of attitudes. these are the kinds of attitudes that we're up against. the commissioner of mumbai said that people are kissing in public, and that's why rapes are increasing. so rape culture is very rampant, the culture of blaming women, how they're dressed, how they're behaving, and were they out too late. this is not jus just in india a. it's across the globe, but we're fighting it head lone. >> we'll broaden this discussion beyond india and look at the global problem of rape and sexual violence. stay with us.

we'll tell you where it is and what it can mean for our educational system. coming up.

>> we're talking about women and the problems of rape and sexual violence that so many face. first, some context. a recent united nations report on sexual assault in the asia pacific region revealed some disturbing trends. more than 10,000 men from bangladesh, cambodia, papa new guinea were asked questions like, did you ever have sex with your partner when you knew that she didn't want to, but you thought she should because she's your partner. and did you have sex with a girl who was too drunk to say if she

wanted to or not. the answer was yes. the common motivations men had was they had a right because the woman involved was a partner. the second was the man was bored and thought it would be fun. the third was punishment, the man was angry and wanted to get revenge. the one of the lead authors of the lead study, a research specialist for the united nations partners for prevention program. here in our washington studio mary ellsberg, and still with us from new delhi is kavita krishnan from the women's association. this could not have been an easy survey to conduct. you're asking very personal questions, and asking men what they've done. you didn't go out and say, did you rape a woman? you're asking about their experience, why? >> well, the word "rape" really

can be a very subjective term and it could be understood differently across different culture contexts. and men themselves may not see their actions in those terms. it was important to ask about very specific acts that we could then compare across countries and ask men about whether they perpetrated those acts, how often, against whom, and during what time period. so we asked--we try to describe an objective act like have you ever physically forced a woman to have sex when she didn't consent, and things like that to enable us to get a better picture of what's actually happening. >> was it hard to have those conversation? did the men have an awareness of what they had done. >> well, an important part of this study and collecting this extremely sensitive information, particularly around sexual violence is actually that the survey, those questioned in

particularly were done in a totally anonymous format. so we used hand-held computer devices, ipod touches, actually, that had an unique app programmed on them in the local languages with the corresponding audio track so the men could answer those sensitive questions in a totally anonymous way. so not even the interviewer knew what that man was reporting. so we tried to get an effective picture, but then we don't know, you know, how they, themselves, would describe whether they thought that was rape or not. that was sort of not the objective in the sense. >> mary ellsberg, how incredible is it that men are willing to admit these things? >> it's not as surprising as one would normally think. the degree to which men were willing to discuss these having raped or beaten women in their

lives shows the degree to which it's considered a normal thing, and it's not anything to be ashamed of, and the fact that they do it because of sexual entitlement. they think they're allowed to do it, and there is no reason that they shouldn't talk about it. >> kavita krishnan. tell us what you learned as you worked with this. >> rape is an act of desire or an act of sort of unbridled desire, and this is a specifically male function that can't be controlled, and women should not provoke it. but we know, don't we, in the women's movement, that we have an understanding--we have arrived at an understanding that rape is actually about a sense of power over someone else. if there is a pleasure derived there, it is pleasure derived

from the other person's helplessness, the sense of powerlessness from the other person. it is a crime of power, very much. >> mary ellsberg you've done research on this from the women's perspective for a long time now. why is it important to hear two perspectives. >> this is a very important moment, and the u.n. study is a landmark study following in the multi country study that took on domestic violence on women's health, and that surveyed women in 10 countries. we found approximately one out of three women had been beaten or raped in their life sometimes, and something that is also confirmed by this data, it's usually by a husband or somebody they're close to in their family, and something similar came out on the data on the men's side as well. >> tell us what you learned in terms of motivators.

we learned that men perpetrate violence, but what is driving their violence tendencies? is it poverty, anger, the feeling of disempowerment? >> i think it's a complex interplay is what we found. we asked the men about their direct motivations. and as you mentioned the most common motivation related to sexual entitlement, and then followed by some form of entertainment seeking. but we also looked at the data to try to understand what characteristics, factors, increase the likelihood of a man using violence, and here it was things related to gender attitudes. for example, men who asserted control over their partners. men who had sex who had

transactional sex, and factors relating to men's own experiences of violence. men who had experienced abuse as children or witnessed their own mother being abused were more likely to use violence. there is no one single factor. but it is this complex interplay, but very much driven by gender inequality, and these ideas of what it means to be a man that are related to dominance over women. >> mary ellsberg when you talk about poverty, it's it's an ovr simplification. >> it is true that in poor environment there is more violence against women in general, but we don't really see poverty as a cause of violence. we see it as one of many, many factors that are leading to it,

but as emma said, gender inequality, norms are really the ones that are probably really driving violence the most. >> and briefly, kavita, india is a multi layered society. the men found guilty of this horrible rape crime were from lower class, but this is not an issue that is just a lower-class issue in india. >> no, certainly not. in fact, that's exactly what we've been underlining, that there isn't any kind of possibility to arrive at a profile to say that poverty or poor men tend to rape more than privileged or richer men. we have no such evidence at all. so what we keep reminding people is that women, too, are poor. in this case these men who committed the crime were migrant poor, but so was the victim herself. she, too, was a migrant woman in

the city. so this is not a crime where poverty was the main factor. i agree to the person who just spoke before me. it is absolutely right that there are je gender norms workig there. but i think we need to go beyond understanding this as a culture phenomenon alone. violence against women, we have to see what produces that culture? what are the structures, the material and economic structures that produce this cul culture. >> when we come back we'll hear about the solution. we'll hear from our guests about what to do.

>> welcome back to "inside story." we're talking about sexual violence towards women. let's go to emma fulu, also mary ellsberg, director of global women's institute, and kavita krishana.

we've heard about people taking matters in their own hands by staging protests. >> these kinds of actions help women to show the world that it's not the women who are to blame for rape, that the accountability is with the women who rape. that they have a right to walk and to dress the way they want to, and it's really shifting, as kavita said, shifting the accountability of the rape from the victim. >> what are the discussions going on in fixes things, and in terms of creating solutions? >> we're trying to emphasize here that we really aren't interested in politicians from the government or opposition telling us how much they want rapists to be hanged. we are trying to tell them that we are interested in knowing how much money they plan to allocate

for rape crisis centers in india, across the country, how much money they plan to allocate to ensure that we have more courts and judges in india so trials can be speedier rather than rape trials taking over a decade in some cases. and which want to know how much money they plan to reallocate for rape survivors of how to rebuild their lives. we would like people in public positions who make rape culture remarks, they really should face some kind of action. if they are policemen, judges, they should not be allowed to remain in their seats. if they're politicians, we feel that people should teach them an lesson in elections. >> emma folu, how does this happen on an individual level?

how can men and boys be worked with to change the culture? >> yes, i think it's very important at the same time we're addressing accountability and criminal justice responses to really think about how we stop this from happening in the first place, how do we prevent sexual violence. and that really require working with individual young boys and young men, all the way through communities, societies, and government levels. there are a number of things we can do. school-based programs had some success. there are community programs and parenting programs to reduce child abuse, which is an underlying driver. >> mary ellsberg we talked about india. we're talking about the u.n. study that looks at the asia

pacific religion specifically, but this is a global issue. >> i want to point out it's not just an issue for other places outside of the united states. we have rape culture here, and we've seen it with the steubenville rape, and how people reacted to that. >> remind us of that. >> the steubenville rape was of a woman who was gang raped repeatedly and then th thens ard in social media. there have been studies of evaluations of different kinds of intervention to pre prevent violence, punishment never works. what most works as emma said are community-based solutions. we now have several of them, not just in the united states, but

also in africa and asia that is showing that you can work with men, women, and young people, and you can change norms and power relations. >> you mentioned young people. not just women but also men are taking to the streets and talking. emma folo. what is the drinks in terms of the age gap? are you seeing a difference among young people? >> we found a couple of things. we found that rap rape, there we teenagers that committed rape. that highlights the need that we need to start working with much younger boys if we're going to be able to stop this from occurring in the first place. but we did also see that gender attitudes were more equitable among the younger generation. there is change happening, and

certainly change is possible. i think it's just a matter of really prioritizing this at the highest levels, and i think from a global perspective, getting it on the post 2015, and prevention of violence against women is a priority, and at the same time working with individual young people and through communities. >> thank you so much to all three of you. we appreciate you being with us. that's all from the team in washington, d.c. and from me, libby casey for now. but you can keep this conversation going by logging on to our facebook page or send us your thoughts on twitter. our handle is aj insidey story am. thanks for watching.