Why public space isn’t public unless women feel free

The death sentence to Nirbhaya’s rapists has drawn much attention recently — but how has life really changed for young women like her who study and work and watch movies and travel, who brave a hostile world to lead a fuller life? Justice for the 2012 gang rape, and the crimes since, can only come when our public spaces are fully public, when women feel welcome and relaxed in the city at any time. Last month, a TOI report found streetlights off, security still spotty on the lonely stretch where the crime occurred seven years ago. large73325325Untitled Carousel 72738061Who owns the world, and who merely lives in it? In most of the world, that had been a settled question for centuries — men roam free, women stay enclosed. Public space is assumed to be male, and private space is female. Look at all our streets and institutions named after men and populated by them, and that tells you the story of power.The personal is the political was one of the famous mottos of the women’s movement. Every default public setting has been designed for men, and it will take active effort to make them open and inclusive for everyone.As women fight to establish themselves as fully human and equal, rather than foils and caretakers to men, they have struggled to claim public space. In the last century, women started studying and working outside the home. But their equal right to the city, to simply exist outside like men do, is still to be fully realised. To hang out at a park or go running, wander without purpose, eat a meal alone, find a public toilet, take a solitary stroll at night, breastfeed a baby, mingle in a crowd — these are simple things that women can’t fully take for granted yet. large nocaption73325345They are taught to move anxiously through the world. To see how patriarchy literally cramps Indian women, just observe their body language on the streets. So many young women train themselves to hunch, hide their bodies, lower their gaze, make themselves invisible. Men rarely make way; women step aside, evade passing motorcycles and cars, keep distance from others. Hostels chaperone women as though they are fragile items in transit from the parental to the marital home, rather than thinking self-possessed adults.Any government that claims to care about women as equals must push for their ownership of public spaces. Some policies have acknowledged this: for instance, AAP’s talk of letting women ride free in public transport aims to boost their mobility and feminise the city in welcome ways. Anganwadis and creches and eldercare facilities liberate women from some of the care-work that falls to them. Street lighting, more open commons for families, restrooms for women — thoughtful city-planning is essential. If women built cities, they might look radically different. The most influential writer on urban design was a woman, Jane Jacobs, who resisted top-down masterplanning and spoke up for connected neighbourhoods and smallscale improvisations that make an urban environment come alive. medium nocaption73325362Blog: Delhi government's landmark move to empower womenIn the last decade, several state governments gave bicycles to young girls, and these teens on wheels have been one of the most heartening sights in rural India. They widen a young girl’s limits, they let her run errands, meet friends, go places.It’s the same with women on scooties in small towns — they face down male hostility, honking, harassment, because they have places to go and things to do.But for true change to happen, we need to stop talking about women’s safety, and start talking about women’s freedom. Women are controlled by an atmosphere of sexual threat. They are imprisoned by their “izzat” — the social standing that a patriarchal world gives some women is also a constraining shell. medium nocaption73325419And so, most women spend a lot of their energy and wits trying not to get molested or raped — venturing out only with purpose, carrying safety gear, calculating their journeys. If they ever get assaulted or harassed, they and other women are further intimidated into keeping themselves constrained ‘for their own safety’.Rape is the action of a rapist, and has nothing to do with the victim, what she was wearing or where she was going at what time. And yet, the victim bears the crushing burden of caution, inhibits herself. As writer Rebecca Solnit says, the wilful action of the male perpetrator is so absent from our common narratives that it is as though women are raping themselves. “Men are abstracted into a sort of weather, an ambient natural force, an inevitability that cannot be governed or held accountable,” she writes. Social and institutional attitudes need to be straightened out — misogyny in the police and courts and media silences and doubts women, instead of supporting them if they are hurt. medium nocaption73325442In recent years, homegrown movements like Blank Noise and Why Loiter have attempted to snuff out the fear from women. They encourage each other to walk at night, to go take up space in a park, to learn not to internalise street harassment.“I wanted to take up lots of room/I wanted to loom”, goes an old song by Ani DiFranco. Anyone who has been taught by society to shrink their own presence, dim their own light, can identify.Illustration: Sajeev Kumarapuram