Are our cities safe for women?

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Rejitha. G works with Sakhi Women’s Resource Centre, a UN Women partner in the global initiative, Safe Cities Free of Violence against Women and Girls. The Initiative seeks to develop innovative models to increase safety for women and girls in specific cities. In this article, she talks about the findings of a study on the safety of women and girls in Kerala.

New Delhi - Rejitha. G joined Sakhi as the Editor of their newsletter, and went on to become its Publication Officer and Training Coordinator. Rejitha G. has been the Project Coordinator for Kerala from the very beginning of  the Safe City Initiative in 2009.

Why do you think it was important to do such a study? What were the major findings of this study?

Women’s safety is often discussed, but little is being done to make cities safe for women. As more and more young girls and women use public transport to travel to either places of work or study, their chances of facing harassment increases considerably. Unfortunately, these issues don’t get the attention of the society.

We started with a one day consultation with representatives from various women’s organizations in Thiruvananthapuram city and the idea of a survey to generate first hand data on the issues was put forward.

It was at this time that UNIFEM (now UN Women) invited a proposal for the Safe City initiative in 2009. With the help of Jagori Delhi, a baseline study was conducted in two cities of Kerala : Thiruvananthapuram and Kozhikode.Men and women from all walks of life and age groups – students, office goers, self-employed, home makers and unorganized sector workers participated in this study. In Thiruvananthapuram, we interviewed 1000 men and women while in Kozhikode, the study covered 500 people.

The study brought to the forefront some of the critical issues of women’s safety in public spaces. 99 percent of the women felt that the city was not safe due to lack of street lights and high raised walls of residential houses on either side of the roads.

Harassment in public transport was identified as the major problem. Others included ‘eve-teasing’, sexual remarks and jokes in bus stops and roads, exhibitionism, staring, and attempting to take photos through mobile cameras.  In Kozhikode, 53 percent of the women respondents reported that the incidents took place during day time and 24 percent reported incidents after dark.

The study also revealed that women hardly speak about this kind of harassment. Only 5-7 percent of women reported the incident to the police, while 19 percent did nothing when they were sexually harassed. This refers to the incidents that occurred in the last one year before the study.

A majority of women responded by not stepping out after dark – 69 percent women said that they avoided going to secluded places and 67 percent avoided going out alone after dark.

Could you tell us about certain trends that you noticed while doing this study?

We have now completed baseline studies in two other cities namely Kochi (Cochin) and Thrissur (Trichur), as part of Phase II of the UN Women Safe Cities project. Phase I of the project ended in 2011.

In all the four cities, women felt more unsafe while travelling in public transport, especially by bus. Strategies or precautions to avoid harassment were avoidance of secluded areas and going out alone after dark. Interestingly, Kozhikode women respondents revealed that in spite of the fear of harassment in public places, 83 percent used public transport, 87 percent wore the dress they preferred, 85 percent did not carry any thing for self protection and only 19 percent avoided certain public places.

The least dependence was on help-lines and the police. The respondents felt that the process was tedious and feared that they would be blamed for the incident. The studies found that housewives’ knowledge of redressal mechanisms was lower than working women and students.

Another interesting aspect is that although Kerala is a small state but the culture varies from south to north. In Thiruvananthapuram (South Kerala), women were reluctant to share their experience of harassment. Their first response was that “we are not that kind of women”. At the same time, women from Kozhikode (North Kerala) were more open, even the Muslim women who practiced ‘purdah’.

What can men do to help the situation?

We conducted focus group discussions with the men also. In Thiruvananthapuram, one of the participants remarked that he had not been aware of the support systems available for women who face harassment. It is crucial that the government should advertise and maintain these support systems. Men need to be aware of gender issues. They should be sensitized to the flaws of the patriarchal system, which blame women for how they choose to dress and forbids the mobility of women after dark.

How has a partnership with UN Women been useful?

The association with United Nations Women has given us acceptance everywhere. Also, we have benefitted tremendously from the rich experience and valuable insights of UN Women on this subject globally. Last but not the least, the resources shared by UN Women helped us in formulating the strategies with local and state governments.