Living as a woman in an Indian city is a very different experience from living as a man in India. As a woman, I have experienced a constant fear of sexual violence or harassment in isolated/dark places (or at night) and sometimes, even in open populated public spaces. The very idea that accessing a space of solitude is not just safer for another sex but possibly life-threatening for mine, hits me in the gut with the feeling of frustration - the frustration of not having the privilege of accessing a space I desperately want to experience. All my movements in the city including routine, mundane everyday walks to work in my city have been underscored by an alertness to watch out for sexual assault. I have spent almost all of my very occasional, unavoidable solo walks in the night, constantly being aware of places to avoid or being wary of areas without sufficient lights and areas that did not have public visibility. With reports of women being sexually assaulted in different parts of my city, the fear of being assaulted contributed majorly to everything I did. I am not alone in this experience and neither are Indian women. Women everywhere lead very different lives from men due to this fear occupying a major portion of their mental space. As Leslie Weisman writes in her book Discrimination by Design, “If the fear of sexual harassment on the street causes women stress, the fear of rape keeps women off streets at night, away from public parks and dangerous parts of town, and unconsciously afraid of half the human race.” 1 As an architect, what has always been astonishing to me is that, in a country (and a world) where there is a widespread oppression of women and where there is an urgent need for safe spaces, there are so many spaces that have the affordability to accommodate incidents of sexual oppression.
(The above text was submitted to SSoA as a part of an essay assignment. You can read the full essay here)
