By Nikhilesh SinhaOn
‘Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive, 
but what they conceal is vital‘ – Aaron Levenstein

Levenstein’s quote seems a suitably chauvinistic way for the male of the species to broach the topic of rape. What it says about statistics is suggestive, and the way it says it is also suggestive, but the politics of academic discourse particularly in the fields of mathematics and statistics though vital, must be discussed elsewhere. I came across a video which links the objectification of women by the Indian media with the rising incidence of sexual violence against women, titled ‘no country for women.’

  I must add the disclaimer that you require a strong stomach as well as a under-developed aesthetic to survive the first few minutes of the video. You will require even greater resilience to watch till the end. There is so much that is distasteful about the attitude to women that it is hard to know where to begin. For most Indian women, being ogled, propositioned and groped is the price they pay for leaving the kitchen. And that is just the start.

The Delhi rape case, involving the brutal gang-rape of a 23 year old physiotherapist in Munirka who subsequently died from her injuries became a watershed moment, spawning country-wide protests and much needed though arguably misdirected reform of the archaic rape law. It has it’s own wikipedia page. It also meant that perhaps for the first time, the issue of rape was being discussed openly in the media, in homes as well as public spaces. This didn’t mean that the incidence of rape had increased necessarily, just that it had become more visible. Here’s a ‘rape map’ of India which shows you the number of registered rape cases across the country in 2011 from a WSJ blog.

The first thing that jumps out at you is that the highest record of rape seems to be in the North, although Central India is not far behind, and in fact Madhya Pradesh recorded 3400 cases – the highest for any state. However these statistics are the tip of the iceberg, because most rapes in India don’t get reported to the police and in many cases where victims go to report the crime, the police refuse to file the complaint. In fact the incidence and report of rape may have a perverse relationship in some places, where incidence is so common and the likelihood of action by the police so low, that rapes rarely get reported at all. The blog goes on to quote Vrinda Grover a Supreme Court lawyer who said “I’m afraid we do not have enlightened zones anywhere in the country,”  implying that the incidence of rape was probably pretty much the same anywhere you go. So, rape stats for India are pretty misleading. What about the rest of the world?  
Below is a chart representing the top twenty countries by reported cases of rape per 100,000 people for the year 2008* collected by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC):
The dataset includes figures for 126 countries. India is 79th on that list with a rate of 1.8 rapes reported per 100,000 population, but that is not surprising if we consider how few incidents of rape actually get reported. The big surprise is Sweden at number 2, but perhaps that is a result of the measures that the Swedish authorities have taken to ensure that every single case of alleged sexual violence is recorded. As we go down the list though, there are more surprises. Belgium and the US at numbers 8 and 9, New Zealand at number 11 and Norway at number 17, all seem out of place. Cross country comparisons of these statistics are tricky to make because of the differences in the ways in which rape laws work in different countries and how sexual violence is seen or dealt with in different cultures, but one can begin to develop the hypothesis that rape is not just a third world problem.  
The ‘Rape Culture’ was a term coined in the 70s to describe a the practice of normalising rape, and focusing attention on the actions of the victim. Unfortunately, we don’t seem to have moved forward. The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey conducted in the US revealed that nearly 1 in 5 women have been victims of sexual assault, making rape more common than smoking. There has also been a recognition of the unhealthy and deeply misogynistic attitudes and practices prevalent on college campuses in the US, the latest group to come under spotlight is an unofficial fraternity called Epsilon Iota or EI. About 70 pages of emails and messages culled from EI’s listserv make for horrifying reading.  
“She’s the type of girl you need to fuck hard and rape in the woods.”  is one of the less extreme extracts. 
It’s obvious statistics don’t tell the whole story, and in the case of sexual violence, the gap between what happens and what gets reported is large enough to make the numbers virtually useless. However the high reported incidence of rape in countries of the ‘developed’ world must indicate that this is a global problem, and that there is a fundamental issue with the way that most human societies construct notions of gender and sexuality. We are uncomfortable admitting that rape is part of our society. In India the image of the uneducated unwashed migrant labourer laying his hands upon the chaste body of an upper class girl is credible, whereas the repeated sexual abuse of domestic workers by their employers or the rape of tribal girls by upper caste panchayat members does not enter the discourse. On a US college campus drunk and passed out means yes. Until we admit the enormity of the problem, we’re not going to be able to tackle the issue of rape and sexual violence. I suspect that if we can begin to change the way we think about rape, the statistics will improve in their accuracy, although it is high time this was supplemented with data on the rate of convictions and a responsiveness index of the police and other authorities to reports of rape.    
* The dataset was most complete for the year 2008 and included figures for 96 countries