With a rape occurring every 16 minutes, violence is one of the biggest deterrents to women working in India. On the eve of India’s independence day, 14 August, tens of thousands of women took to the streets across the eastern Indian state of West Bengal in a “reclaim the night” march, after the brutal rape and murder of a trainee doctor in Kolkata.
But we have been here before – too many times. Most notably in 2012, when we protested at the murder of a young paramedic in Delhi. Jyoti Singh was raped in a moving bus by several men and left to die on the streets.
The incident brought hundreds of thousands of women out in protest, demanding a safer environment. They arm-twisted the central government into bolstering laws , including making stalking a punishable offence.
It was in many ways a watershed moment, or so we thought. But the statistics have remained stark, like the rape every 16 minutes reported in 2022. And here we are again – another watershed moment?
Has anything changed since 2012? I covered the protests in Delhi extensively for Time magazine, as a reporter but also a woman who works under the ever-present fear of violence, especially in public spaces. The collective emotions at these marches were a heady mix of fear, anxiety and disappointment.
In the intervening years, many other incidents have tested our patience. There have been some protests and more engagement with the government on women’s safety – and yet here we are again. Women are still angry, scared, anxious and disappointed. We are still asking for justice. We are still protesting against this culture of violence that so limits our lives.
Is it this fear that is keeping Indian women away from formal work? I have felt fear throughout my career – traversing mostly male-dominated spaces; from streets to fields to shops to offices.
It stalked me in the pornographic jokes that my male colleagues felt entitled to share in the newsroom to sexual advances from my line manager. Of course, I complained. Of course, nothing was done. Of course, I was the one who had to resign.
Did this affect my ability to work to my full potential? Of course. Not only was no action taken on my complaint, no other media houses would employ someone who became a whistleblower on the misogynistic nature of Indian newsrooms. But I had just come back from a stint at the BBC World Service in the UK and I saw things differently.
I had unbridled hope for my life in India as a journalist and as a woman. I was ready to stand alone and fight it out, but I was young and foolish. My perspective had changed; the country’s had not.
I could have dropped out of the workforce at any time during this period, but I didn’t.
Was I harassed again? Every time I went back to work in a newsroom. Which is why my career has more freelance stints than full-time roles.
I survived not because of any institutional measures to provide me with a safe environment but because of personal grit, determination and –undoubtedly – social privilege and good luck.
But every trip I have undertaken, every late night at work, has come with a deep sense of unease and vulnerability. This constant fight-or-flight instinct is exhausting and women often choose to stay at home rather than go through the rigmarole of finding a job with security and safety.
Is it any wonder that India’s female workforce participation rate is so alarmingly low? As I discussed in my book Lies Our Mothers Told Us, the gender-blind infrastructure is a major factor keeping women out of the formal labour force.
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Today India is bringing more and more girls to school and it has the highest numbers of women graduating in Stem subjects in the world, yet the transition from education to employment remains dismal. As of 2023, women represent only 19% of scientists and 27% of the Stem workforce, a huge disparity in a field critical to innovation and progress.
Women tend to opt for informal yet flexible home-based jobs where they have some control over their environment.
At just under 33% in 2023, women’s participation in the Indian workforce lags significantly behind the global average of 47%. If India is serious about achieving its ambitious target of 8% GDP growth, it will have to raise female labour force participation to 43.4% by 2030.
The Women @ Work 2024 report by Deloitte revealed that 46% of Indian women worry about safety at work or on their commutes.
A report in 2021 that examined the role of safety in women’s decision to work found that “an additional crime per 1,000 women in a district reduces the expected probability of working by 6.3 percentage points among women in the 21-64 age group. As per the 2011 census, roughly 50% of India’s 586 million women belong to this working-age category. This implies that for every additional crime per 1,000 women in a district, roughly 32 women are deterred from joining the workforce.”
Public space and workplace culture in India are built around the needs of men. Women are set up for failure at every step.
In Kolkata, the victim was having a nap, after an exhausting work shift. Government hospitals in India are often crowded and short-staffed so she had to sleep in a seminar room – why were there no proper rest areas for women working night shifts?
This is not special treatment; the least a country can do is to make workplaces suitable for the different needs of both genders.
Every time a woman is assaulted or murdered, the narrative still turns to what she was wearing, why she was out, who she was with. But women are not the problem. Rebuild existing workplace structures and make them work for every gender.
India has a litany of laws aimed at protecting women: the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005; the Dowry Prohibition Act, 1961; the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013; the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, 2006. Laws that loudly proclaim India to be a society that cares about its women. Amendments have been enacted to strengthen the fight against sexual offences, and to impose harsher penalties, including death for the rape of a child under 12.
There are other response mechanisms, too. There are safe-city projects, forensic labs, cybercrime portals, DNA analysis units – all in the name of making women safer. And yet here we are. The violence continues unabated.
Reducing crimes against women is not just about laws and crisis centres – crucial as they are – it is about addressing the entrenched misogyny in a patriarchal society such as India. For social change, we need to invest in women’s organisations as they play a key role within communities.
Efforts to get women back to work have focused on maternity and childcare benefits. These do need to be addressed, just like women’s burden of unpaid care. But if we do not address violence against women in public spaces, all those other efforts will remain ineffective.
• Nilanjana Bhowmick is an independent journalist and feminist writer based in India
