Abstract
ABOVE: Women commuters travel into central Mumbai in a women-only train compartment
Credit: Navesh Chitrakar/Reuters
For women, feeling comfortable walking across an urban street is not just about safety, but also laying claim to full citizenship of Indian cities, argue
The December 2012 Delhi rape case and the subsequent spate of reportage of similar cases across the country have once again brought to the foreground the spectre of violence that looms over women in public spaces. In all forms of public fora, from television and the print media, to debates in colleges, the question of safety of women in our public spaces is being discussed. While, on the one hand, demands for stronger legal structures and effective security measures are being made by the state, on the other hand, the policing of girls and women of all ages by themselves and by those around them has acquired an unprecedented justification.
Unfortunately, then, violence becomes the only language in which one can engage with questions of gender in public spaces, a situation which does nothing to further women’s rights to access public space. This single-minded focus on the dangers to women in public space contradicts two well documented facts: one, that more women face violence in private spaces than in public spaces, and two, that more men than women are attacked in public. It is worth rehearsing the argument we made in our book, Why Loiter? Women and Risk on Mumbai Streets: that we need to move beyond the struggle against violence and articulate women’s right to the city in terms of the quest for pleasure. Since conditional protection brings only surveillance and control for women, in order to claim the right to public space women must claim the right to risk. To do this we need to redefine our understanding of violence in relation to public space, to see not sexual assault but the denial of access to public space as the worst possible outcome for women.
Most women’s toilets close at 9pm, sending the clear message that women are not expected to – and not supposed to – be out in public at night
The desire to access the city for pleasure is not a new one. But for women the desire to be “flaneurs” or “flaneuses” is fraught with obstacles. Among these are ideological obstacles with regard to the “proper” place of women, and material obstacles emanating from the lack of adequate infrastructure such as to facilitate access to wandering in the city. Drawing from our research on women and public spaces in Mumbai, in this article we focus on infrastructure that facilitates access, arguing that while women must have the right to risk, risk should be a matter of choice and not imposed on women through inadequate or short-sighted planning. The right to pleasure, by default, must include the right against violence, in the shape of infrastructure such as transport, street lighting, public toilets and policies that recognise people’s fundamental right to access public space. Demanding the right to pleasure does not absolve the city administration of the responsibility of providing these facilities.
Public spaces and infrastructure are usually designed for an abstract generic user. In the context of an ideology that deems women’s proper place to be at home, this imagined neutral user of public facilities and infrastructure is invariably male. Not just gender, but all manner of politics – class, caste, religious and sexual, as also physical ability – are part of imagining this “neutral” user. In Mumbai, the prototype user then is not just male but also middle or upper class, Hindu, upper caste, able-bodied and heterosexual. Others who use these spaces and infrastructure just have to adjust and make do with what they get. So the physically challenged have to make do without access to most public transport facilities; the old have to make do with negotiating the high steps of subways and footbridges; the poor have to adjust to paying up for public spaces they once had for free; the lower castes and Muslims have to be content with being allowed just the margins; the gays and lesbians have to pretend to be invisible; and women have to learn extreme bladder control and to negotiate dark streets and unfriendly parks. Infrastructure that privileges the needs of one group stands to reinforce the status quo and promotes an unfair hierarchy.
A default response from decision-makers when the provision of adequate infrastructure for women is discussed, is that there aren’t that many women in public spaces in the first place. So the argument, for example, is that there are very few public toilets open at night because there aren’t so many women out in public at that time. However, if women users were to be asked this question, they might invert the equation and argue that the lack of public toilets makes it even harder to access public space at night. Changing attitudes may take time, but the provision of infrastructure can be a simple one-time administrative policy decision, which reinforces the point that women belong in public space.
A successful example of this in Mumbai is the presence of reserved compartments for women in local trains. These compartments clearly enshrine their right to be in that public space and one cannot overstate the extent to which this simple provision has affected women’s ability to commute and therefore access education and employment in the city. If Mumbai women are seen as being privileged in their mobility in the city compared to women in other Indian cities, the city’s functioning and expansive public transport can definitely claim some credit for this.
On the other hand, an exemplification of difference-blind design is the public toilet. As if the lack of adequate numbers of toilets in the city was not enough, the facilities provided for women are usually less than half of those for men. Moreover, the design of facilities in toilets that do exist also fails to provide for the specific needs of women. Most “ladies” toilets are dark and unfriendly and designed with minimal thought to women’s particular biological and social needs. Women use toilets more frequently and for longer than men. They often carry big bags and take children to the toilet, all of which calls for differently designed toilets for them. Yet the design of public toilets does nothing to acknowledge this difference. Moreover, whereas men’s urinals are open through the night, most women’s toilets close at 9pm, sending the clear message that women are not expected to – and not supposed to – be out in public at night.
The provision of infrastructure such as transport and toilets does not necessarily mean women will be safe from rape/assault in public, but it does enshrine women’s right to be there, and in doing so perhaps contribute to a reduction in victim blaming, arguably performing the opposite function to that of those closed toilets. Infrastructure does not change attitudes but it does make a difference. The gang rape and murder of the young woman in Delhi in December 2012 was facilitated in part by the lack of adequate public transport, which meant that she was travelling in a private bus. Public transport, especially buses, has many checks and balances, which means that it is much less likely that such crimes will occur there.
Urban designers and planners have repeatedly pointed out that the way to make a public space safer is not by keeping out those perceived to be “undesirables” but by encouraging more and more of those considered “desirables”. The irony of the matter is that in Mumbai far more energy is spent on keeping people out of public spaces than in inviting them in. To begin with, the quantity of public open spaces in the city is dismal and it is fast receding. Where open public spaces do exist, they often tend to be badly maintained or officiously policed, both of which discourage popular use. Open spaces such as parks are frequently seen as an invitation for what is termed “anti-social activity” and, as a result, controlled through both physical means such as high walls and fences and administrative means such as “controlled timings”. This anxiety is then reflected in relentless policing of these parks, premised on the exclusion of the majority who might be variously seen to be impoverished, overwhelmingly numerous or visually unappealing. Access fundamentally dependent on surveillance ultimately remains limited. The design of public facilities determined by an exclusionary impulse actually makes these spaces inaccessible and sometimes even unsafe for women.
In recent years, while women have been present in increasing numbers in higher education and the workforce and even in political office, this has not translated into equal access, much less rights to public space for women
Parks as open public spaces are also used to impose a specific “moral vision” of order on the city. In Mumbai, as in many cities across the country, this morality is peculiarly directed at public displays of romantic affection, and sometimes even the mere presence of couples. In a city where the private home is often a space of crowding, couples seek privacy along the promenades or in parks across the city. In some ways, the public offers them an anonymous sanctuary. But not for too long. Increasingly, in city public spaces, couples are being censured for holding hands, which is construed as threatening the “moral fabric of Indian society”. In the present, such moral policing is aimed at heterosexual couples, but this is reflective of the invisibility of same-sex couples rather than any progressive politics. If heterosexual couples find it difficult to find undisturbed spaces, for same-sex couples it is virtually impossible.
ABOVE: Women in Mumbai often feel threatened in public streets and squares
Credit: Sheriar Irani/istockphoto
Design in urban public spaces is not just important at the micro level of individual parks and toilets but at the macro level of the overall planning of the city. Over the past few years Mumbai has been steadily undergoing a makeover, primarily achieved by segregating spaces for different people and activities.
This tunnel vision of the city is unfriendly to women at multiple levels. Zoning spaces on the basis of use into residential and commercial areas is detrimental to women’s mobility. Our research shows that women have more access to public space in mixed-use areas, where shops and business establishments are open late into the night, ensuring activity at all times. Moreover, when public space falls off the agenda in planning, what is left becomes increasingly privatised, policed and often fraught with risk. Contrary to common-sense notions of urban “beautification”, clean lines and people-less streets do not equal comfort or safety for women, who often seem to prefer a degree of chaos, ambiguity and multiplicity to univalent notions of cleanliness and order.
Taking risks is only possible, especially for women, when the infrastructure is in place – when the streets are well-illuminated, when the public transport system runs day and night and when safe toilets for women are accessible at all hours. These might not be adequate by themselves, but they are essential conditions for making city public spaces more accessible to women. Such facilities are not luxuries bestowed by the state but the right of all citizens.
When public infrastructure disregards women’s particular needs it in effect renders women invisible in the city, de-legitimising their right to be heard in the process of shaping the city. Women’s presence in the city – on the streets as opposed to in privatised public spaces like malls – stakes a claim to women’s right to participate in the everyday politics of city life. In recent years, while women have been present in increasing numbers in higher education and the workforce and even in political office, this has not translated into equal access, much less rights to public space for women. Women will only have a real political voice when these voices can be heard, not only in the rarefied spaces of the Panchayat, legislative assembly or parliament but also on the streets. Occupying the streets – in purposeful and even in playful, purposeless ways – is not merely a matter of women gaining access to physical public space but also about them laying full claim to citizenship of the city. It is about women finding a visible space in the larger urban discourse and in the public conversations and debates that help shape the city and its politics.
Public space represents what the city might mean for its citizens – the possibilities it creates for them to become part of the city, to belong to it and have it belong to them. When we say “become part of the city” we mean in a visceral sense – where all citizens can go out there and claim the city with their bodies, walking its streets, strolling along its edges, watching its movement and partaking of the thrills of risking pleasure in the city. If we can imagine this we can imagine a radically altered city.
