The Women In Our Cities

Women's complicated relationship with public spaces

Sep 29, 2024

Hi there,

Picture this.

You’re walking on a busy Mumbai street. Or any Indian city for that matter.

You see people chitchatting on the sidewalk.

Some are drinking tea at a roadside stall, while others are having a heated debate about the situation in the Middle East over a quick smoke. A few young ones are scrolling their phones, laughing, and idling around with friends. Some are just sitting on the footpath, staring at the traffic and doing nothing.

Easy enough, right? Now here’s the twist.

Imagine that all of these people are women. Young and old. Rich and poor. Some in skirts, some in burkhas.

Does that image look a tad too unrealistic?

It does because it’s an image we’ve never seen in our cities.

It does because, in our society, we never see women loitering around.

This was one of those perception shifts I felt when I read the book Why Loiter? by feminist authors Shilpa Phadke, Shilpa Ranade, and Sameera Khan.

Why does this happen? Let’s explore the various factors- from sociological ones to those related to urban design- that impact women’s relationship with public space.

Everyone should have the right to loiter around, but we only see men doing this in our cities. Establishing this is important- because it’s only by being out in the city that women can truly stake a claim to the city and the idea of citizenship. The idea that a woman just hanging around in public should arouse suspicions (of her being “bad” or mad) is a problem- and it directly affects their ability to freely access public space.

We need this level of access everywhere, not just in ladies’ compartments
This ability is greatly restricted because of loud media reports of violence & sexual abuse against them. However, this ignores a crucial data point- that women face much more violence in their houses than in public.
Women in public always have to manufacture purpose, and have to carefully strategize the things they do to signal that they’re out for a reason- so even if they’re waiting for a friend, they’d do so at a bus stop. Women can’t just be seen standing idly, for people may assume that they’re soliciting. Accessing the city is a basic right- and the fact that public morality deems an idle woman as shady/disrespectable is a norm that we must move past. This is exactly why women’s right to access public without it being seen as moral depravity is critical.
Building on the previous point, women must also manufacture respectability. This has led to those working late nights being looked at with a questioning gaze by residents of their society. Women working in BPOs have had a tough time, with society residents thinking “Does she really go to the office at night?”. The authors wrote this in 2009, a time when the IT/BPO industry was witnessing a meteoric rise, and this was an issue I hadn’t even thought about. Normalising loitering is thus needed to move beyond the mentality that the right place for a woman is her home- which will continue to ensure limited access to mobility.
One may argue that women do have spaces where they can loiter freely- malls, cafes, pubs, and lounges. But these spaces merely have the veneer of public space and are gated private enclaves that are accessible only to the rarefied consumer, provided they can demonstrate they belong to the upper class (right clothing, makeup, hairstyle) and purchasing power. If you don’t have these two, many of these seemingly public spaces suddenly become inaccessible (unless you’re employed by them).
Real access would mean the ability for women to freely access parks, promenades, streets, and gardens- spaces that are fast disappearing in a city that a) allows its real-estate lobby to privatize more and more public space at a breathtaking speed and thus, b) allows access to gyms, parks, and pools only to the elite so they don’t have to deal with the messiness or dangers of the public.
With the elites satiated by these enclaves and gated societies, they’re less concerned about the utter lack of public space that plagues a city like Mumbai. Thus, this leaves the problem of demanding more of these public goods from the lower classes- who aren’t powerful enough (or important enough for politicians, even though the city would crumble without them) to demand change. This withdrawal from citizenship means that we get less from the city than we ought to. So rich women don’t get more access to public space- they just shuttle between one private space (society) to another (pub) in a private mode of transport.
If the urinals of the city told a story, it’d be this: there are 5 men per woman, that if women want to pee they should do it at work or at home (because there aren’t enough public toilets), they shouldn’t step out at night (because the urinal isn’t well-lit and not many are open late at night), and that lactating or menstruating ones shoudn’t be out in the open (because the toilets don’t have any breastfeeding rooms, diaper changing stations, or the space to change clothes).
Given the way things stand, it’s important that we normalise the idea of women being out in the public, without any apparent purpose, because it’s only by courting risk and being out in the open can they claim their fundamental right to the city. Loitering is an important act- it signifies that accessing space can’t happen only if one’s a rich consumer, that being in public doesn’t have to have some purpose, and challenges the idea of a city where all access can only happen for a privleged class in gated enclaves.
That they will face risk of violence or sexual abuse in public isn’t to be discounted- it is the state’s duty to ensure adequate security & justice. But for the citizen, it’s important to have this idea in mind while thinking about women’s relationship with the city, and how being confined to private space is a double whammy, because it not just eats away at a woman’s fundamental right, but also reinforces the idea of a city where only privileged, middle class males can experience it physically with real freedom, and for everyone else, this is only possible in a utopian dream- an image that this article began with.

I am only a privileged male who has never had to contend with these issues while accessing public space. Instead of ending this article here, I’d like to start it by sparking a conversation.

So if you’re a woman in Mumbai or any other city for that matter, please write back and share your experience, because I’d be eager to know what your perceptions of public space are, and how you contend with these issues.

Who knows- it might just turn into an interesting follow-up piece based on latest, real-time, feet-on-the-street insights!

Make sure to respond to the email or comment on the post. I’ll be waiting to hear your perspective.

Thanks for tuning in. If you enjoyed this, you’ll also love these pieces:

Learning Machine

Discussion about this post