OpinionHorrors of rape victimlay bare society's unexamined prejudices

Over the holidays, the news about a young woman who died after being gang-raped on a bus in India shocked the world. She was not just India's latest victim of such unspeakable evil - she was the world's.

The horrors of what the 23-year-old student had to endure struck a deeply troubled chord - a chord that demands outrage as a response. In the face of something so horrendous, this is the only emotion to feel. Even before her death, her ordeal, during which she was assaulted with an iron bar, had impelled thousands to protest against crimes against women and the failure to allow women to live without fear.

The calls for an overhaul of a judicial system that blames victims of sex crimes, the need for expediting the wheels of justice, debates over punishment, and changes in attitudes towards women are all valid, and necessary. And, yet, it is not only those in India who must face the music for dragging their feet.

For those of us living outside the world's largest democracy, it is not enough to simply be outraged and shed tears.

The woman should be a reminder to all that this act of violence stems from disrespect. The lack of respect happens - in varying degrees, in different forms - every day in every place and in every culture. Now's the time to examine the social norms, the cultural "excuses", and the stereotypes that we, however inadvertently, adhere to, and hence perpetrate, in our own corners of the earth.

We must be self-aware: because any sort of change will take an enormous number of individuals examining themselves critically.