Women are asked to shrink so that the streets can stay unreformed

This term, the echoes of that question rang through a classroom one of us teaches at Delhi University, in the same week that two young girls in different parts of the country discovered the unfamiliarity of familiar places. In South Delhi, a 17-year-old girl was gang-raped by three men who assumed the authority of the uniform she had been taught to trust. In Jamui, in Bihar, two schoolchildren were stopped by a group of men on the very streets they had travelled down countless times before. The girl was sexually assaulted, and her male friend was beaten.

As students at Delhi University, that question takes us back to a time when we asked it ourselves, loud and clear, marching through the campus at night to reclaim public spaces, arguing with administrators over curfews that shut the gates of women’s hostels long before the city retired for the day. Years later, as one of us stands on the opposite end of that classroom, it is clear that this generation can speak about autonomy and consent with enviable fluency, and yet some of them, dishearteningly, admit that they avoid taking the last metro home.

Feminists have spoken of the drawbacks of gender mainstreaming in urban planning to accommodate the different ways in which women access spaces. Women’s journeys often involve “trip-chaining”, combining multiple stops at schools, clinics, marketplaces and workplaces. Footpaths vanish into construction debris, streetlights work on arterial roads but not in the lanes linked to them, and the scarcity of clean and safe public toilets makes a full working day outdoors a feat of endurance. None of this is accidental. Structural violence is designed into our systems, and with courageous leadership, it can be designed out.

When such a city fails a woman, it is not uncommon to hear prominent figures in power question the purpose of the woman’s presence instead of holding perpetrators accountable. Mothers asking their daughters to be home before dark, neighbourhood women policing the movements of unmarried women, and hostel wardens sternly checking curfew registers are all examples of a society that sees compliance as security. Women are asked to shrink so that the streets can stay unreformed.

Patriarchy does not just constrain women. It hands out a script to men and punishes them for stepping outside it. The young man who objects when a friend catcalls a stranger is called soft. A system that tells women their worth lies in modesty tells men theirs lies in dominance, leaving both less than whole. The first act of violence patriarchy demands of men is not against women but against themselves, against the parts of them that feel. Accountability cannot simply rest with institutions; it has to run through hostel rooms, friend circles, office WhatsApp groups, the ordinary places where men hear other men say something ugly and let it pass.

A state that lights its streets, runs buses on time and secures convictions in court is doing exactly what it should. The failure comes when its instinct, confronted with an assault, is to manage the woman’s movement rather than the danger around her. Delhi’s pink bus tickets and trains, along with apps like Safetipin that carry out safety audits of public spaces, are some steps in the right direction, but a truly feminist cityscape can only be achieved by rewriting the public contract with women.

Reclaiming the night was our slogan as students. It should not need to be one. It means a walk after dinner is a walk, not an act of defiance. So, when a student asks what to do, the answer we give now is the one we were reaching for back then. Take practical precautions, but refuse the premise that safety is a private burden. Every time a woman’s presence outdoors after dark must be explained or forgiven, the promise of equal citizenship remains unfinished.

Mani teaches Political Science at Vivekananda College and Parija is an independent researcher and co-founder of an upskilling venture in Odisha