Anita Anand | As Women’s Anger Boils Over, Read The Signs Before It Leads To Rise In Murders

In recent months, several cases of women murdering their husbands have been reported in the national news media. The most shocking was the case of the murder of a man by his wife in Jaipur. For most of their 25-year marriage, the couple with five children were at odds. Their children and neighbours witnessed the fights and aggression. In the early years, the husband had hit his wife. Five years ago, the wife, then 42, started working at a clothes factory and developed a relationship with a younger businessperson. She withdrew from her family and her household duties. The husband objected to his wife’s new friend, whom she brought into the family circle as a brother. One day, the husband discovered them and confronted his wife, which led to an altercation, and his wife and the young man killed him. They wrapped the body in a bedsheet and, on a bike, drove to the outskirts of the city, where they burned the body. A local man discovered the half-burnt corpse and called the emergency helpline, and the police were alerted. The CCTV footage showed the couple transporting the body, and they were arrested. The 10-year-old daughter says the last thing her mother said to her was: “I had had enough of your father. That is why I killed him.”

In March, in Meerut in Uttar Pradesh, a man was allegedly murdered by his wife and her lover. His dismembered body was sealed inside a plastic drum filled with cement. The man had recently returned to Meerut from London, where he worked. The couple had a love marriage in 2016 and lived in Meerut with a five-year-old daughter for the last three years.

In the same month, at Auraiya, Uttar Pradesh, a 22-year-old woman, two weeks into her marriage, hired contract killers to murder her husband. She was in a relationship with a man for four years. Her parents disapproved of the relationship and forced her to marry another man.

In April, a woman in Madhya Pradesh’s Burhanpur district allegedly got her husband killed with the help of her lover and then video-called him to show his blood-soaked body.

Are these incidents of extreme violence and criminal activity a new phenomenon? Probably not. It is possible that such cases of violence were occurring, but were not covered in the media, especially the social media. With better technology, it is easier to document and report on such crimes. It is also possible that women are now emboldened to commit such crimes.

For decades now, intimate partner violence (IPV) has chiefly been from men towards women. But it has been changing, with reports of women being violent towards men. As women leave their homes to enter the workforce or become entrepreneurs, they become more economically and socially confident. Where marriage, home and family were a top priority for women, many are now questioning this. They are unhappy and feel trapped.

Ntasha Bhardwaj is a criminologist whose research focuses on the impact of gender on crime. “These murders are not just crimes of passion; they are often crimes of entrapment,” she says.

“Many of these women saw no way out. Divorce was not an option, leaving was impossible, and the abuse was relentless. For them, murder was not about power or control, as it often is when men kill their wives. It was about escape.”

Escape is also a way to settle the anger that women feel.

Researchers Olivia Metcalf and David Forbes suggest that there is much for women to be angry about. They link women’s anger to trauma and see anger as not pathological but a vital emotion for harmonious social functioning, motivating us to address individual, social, and systemic injustices. As such, the anger is normal and adaptive in response to the threat, powerlessness, injustice, and betrayal that typify traumatic events.

“Both men and women have been poorly served by the gender socialisation they have received,” says psychologist Sandra P. Thomas, a leading researcher in women’s anger, who has recently also begun studying men’s experiences with rage.

Thomas conducted the Women’s Anger Study, a large-scale investigation involving 535 women between the ages of 25 and 66, over 15 years. She says anger is a confusing and distressing emotion for women, intermingled with hurt and pain. It is grounded in interpersonal interactions where women feel they are denied power or resources, are treated unjustly, or others have behaved irresponsibly towards them. The offenders are their closest intimates.

How can we deal with women’s anger? Researchers suggest that acknowledging, noticing, and respecting women’s anger is essential to undoing the cultural dynamics that suppress the power of women’s emotions. By actively seeking out women’s anger, understanding its sources, and listening to their experiences, we can foster an environment that values and validates women’s emotions.

The media, a powerful tool that influences people of all ages, can help by reporting and portraying female rage more sensitively and depicting women as multi-dimensional beings capable of expressing anger while transcending vulnerability. Most media imagery depicts women as imitating men in their violent and criminal activities or as victims.

We may see more criminal activity from women toward men and vice versa. Increasing violence in the media could suggest to people that it is okay to kill. Rising aspirations and media depictions of the possibility of another life are attractive to both sexes. Whether this life is real or not is not relevant. Incarceration does not occur to them or deter them.

Murder is the only way for desperate people.

The writer is a development and communications consultant