This despite legislations like Section 376, covering rape in the Indian Penal Code, the Dowry Prohibition Act 1986, the Child Marriage Restraint Act 1929, the Pre-Natal Determination Act 1994 and the Equal Remuneration Act 1975.

These shocking statistics, evidence of the violence against women, on display at the SNDT College campus at the ongoing Indian Association of Women's Studies conference are another aspect of the deliberations by charged up delegates. Books and posters at an exhibition venue on campus, prominently displayed and easily accessible to all, are adding to the women's movement in their own little way.

While at the conference venue, 550 delegates from five countries and almost all Indian states get into the intricacies of the needs and necessities of the present, for the common woman, attracted by the crisp cotton kurtas of SEWA and the exquisitely embroidered file holders of Kutch, it is the exhibition venue screaming for attention.

For every 100 men in Parliament, there are hardly eight women, for every 100 professional men there are only 26 women. ``Patriarchy has a seat in Parliament and in parties too, where are the women?,'' goes a bold message in one of the posters put up by the National Centre for Advocacy Studies.Patriarchy is an attitude, is the message being driven home. There are some strikingly chauvinistic quotes from the judiciary. ``Since Mathura is a tribal girl, there is no question of her being violated,'' reads the Mathura case text, of the Tukaram vs State of Maharashtra 1979. In the Bhanwari Devi case, in the Sessions Court of Rajasthan in 1995 it was said, ``upper caste women cannot rape lower caste women.'' Many other cases are cited too.

Freedom is invisible and so is justice, is the point accentuated.Much attention, ironically female, is rivetted to a piece of hard hitting poetry, that cruelly capsulises the gender bias. ``Because, what we look like is more important than what we do, if we get raped it is our fault and if we get bashed we must have provoked it, if we want to get married we're out to trap a man and if we don't we're unnatural, and if we don't want a pregnancy we are made to feel guilty about abortion...and for lots and lots of other reasons we are part of the women's liberation moment,'' cries out a poster, flanked by a photograph of a woman in a burkha carrying an infant.