Men can't hurt women without damaging themselves. Women are dominated just the same all over

Initiating V-Day six years ago as a global movement to prevent violence against women, dramatist Eve Ensler is the recipient of prestigious playwriting prizes. Her Obie Award-winning The Vagina Monologues, translated into over 35 languages and running to packed houses in theatres across the world, is a celebration of feminine strength and sexuality. Credited with such other outstanding plays as Necessary Targets (read with a cast including Pakistani actresses on the same visit to Mumbai that The Vagina Monologues was staged), Lemonade and The Depot, her work directed towards ending domestic violence has grown out of her own experiences with abuse.

What universal aspects of violence against women do your plays spotlight?

The degree to which women are violated everywhere is obscene. One out of three women is raped or battered. It covers various connotations, not all obvious. Girl babies are killed before they even get here, rape, female genital mutilation, bride burning, dowry deaths abound. There’s also subjugation, humiliation – without physical attack there can be incredible battery within. Expression of violence may vary but hatred directed against women, desecration of their bodies, continues. Domestic violence has come forward as a central issue that must spread to a global level.

You consciously draw men to the “Until the Violence Stops” programme....

The Buddhist in me respects all life. Women are the carriers of life, holders of the future. Men as well as women must realise two opposite worlds need to be held together for peace. There has to be growing awareness of the truth that men can’t hurt women without damaging themselves.

Which have been V-Day’s heartening success stories?

Strong, wonderful women have challengingly staged the play in Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad in the face of censorship, baked vagina cookies in Cairo where a safe-house for victims of brutality has opened; conservative women with raised levels of consciousness use ‘forbidden’ words fearlessly, traumatised women come close to discuss their problems…these are significant marks, a cumulative effect of our ongoing struggle. The Philippines’ law governing violence against women has changed, seven women Members of Parliament are performing the play tonight in London, a transnational European group did likewise in Luxembourg and I’ve received a mail from Bosnia stating this has gone from being a personal to a national issue.

How far do you widen the circle when you claim “Afghanistan is everywhere”?

It’s a myth to believe the West isn’t affected. When I returned to the US from Afghanistan, I noticed a tendency to deny atrocities back home. American women referred to “those poor women out there”. In a sense, non-Western women enjoy more liberation, they aren’t tyrannised by capitalism – breeding insecurities difficult to overcome. Brought up to ‘be good’, conditioned not to offend, women are dominated just the same all over. Researching Jadi, part of my new play, threw up surprising discoveries about women’s perceptions of their bodies. In Africa and India, women are definitely more comfortable with their physicality and sensuousness.