Stop Street Harassment

Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming

A male ally in New Delhi, India, speaks out – part 1

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[Editor’s Note: This is part 1 in in a 3 part series. You can read parts 2 and 3 later this week]

These are real life stories. Narrated as it happened.

I was at the super market getting late for work and needed to pick up some milk. This is a super market that I frequent often and I know most of the people who work there by their first names and they know me well too.

This new girl had joined recently, like a month back and wasn’t very sure how to handle customers, especially male customers. She was on duty at the check out counter, and I could see a couple of rough looking guys getting their groceries checked out by her. One of the guys stood to the left side and started to hand out the stuff from the cart and the other stood to the other side with a huge sack in his hand.

The girl started to bill the stuff and pass them on to the other guy to put them in the sack. In a couple minutes, while I was looking at them trying to figure out what their intentions were, the other guy then lowered the sack to the floor and opened the top of it and requested the girl to pop the stuff in it. The girl threw in the vegetables but for other groceries she obviously had to bend  from the waist a bit. The guy holding the sack lowered the mouth of the sack a little bit more and very happily ogled inside her shirt each time she bent down.

Needless to say, this incident angered me. There were other people behind me in line who were getting irritated because the girl was doing a slow job, or so they said and the other counters were still closed.

The guy passing out the stuff from the cart bent over to pick up something from the very back of the cart and that was when I saw the ID hanging from his neck. He was a Delhi Police officer. They both were Police officers. (New Delhi, Capital city, India)

That was when I did what I do best. I kept my milk on the counter and moved behind the counter to help her out everything in the sack.

The two cops were angered by this, and humiliated too. They managed to figure out I guessed what they were up to and that must have embarrassed them somehow, or so I’d like to think.

After that, they moved out real quick and the girl still had no idea what those two had been up to.

Another guy who worked there figured it out and murmured me a thanks, and I sure hope he did coach his new comer colleague how to handle such customers from now on.

I remember another incident very vividly. I was standing in line at a fast food pick up place. There was a young teen girl standing in line ahead of me and some guys standing a little away towards the right. Apparently those guys had already ordered and were waiting for their food to be packed. The girl in front of me placed her order and stood to the side. I ordered and I moved back too. The girl was wearing a tee and jeans and a jacket, with no skin visible. The guys standing a bit away were constantly staring at her, and they must have been in their 40’s at least. Pretty soon, the girl became aware of their stares and became a little uncomfortable too. I didn’t know what to do or how to react, so I just moved from where I was standing and stood between the guys and the teen girl. The teen girl was petite and the guys ogling at her couldn’t see her anymore standing besides me so they soon lost interest.

The guys got their food and left, the girl got her food and left. She did not look back or anything, but I’m sure she realized for a moment that there are some good folks in this planet. Very few, it seems to me though.

[Come back tomorrow to read Part 2]

– Tbg

@TbgDgc

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Making New Delhi Safer

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Women in New Delhi were surveyed about their experiences traveling in a specific area of the city. Over 1/3rd faced sexual harassment and over 1/3 faced theft and nearly 1/2 felt threatened when in the area.

“Women reported it to be one of the unsafe areas (in the city) especially after dark. They faced various forms of sexual harassment like catcalling, groping or lewd gestures. Open drug usage was another issue,” the survey pointed out.

The recommendations to make the area safer include traffic monitoring, better pavements, and monitoring of drug usage on the roads. The government has plans to implement many of them.

This survey is part of a larger study of four cities (Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, Delhi in India, Rosario in Argentina, and Petrozavodsk in Russia) focused on making cities safer for women called the Gender Inclusive Cities Project. It is sponsored by Women in Cities International and the UN Trust Fund.

I’m glad these organizations are addressing this important issue – there will not be gender equality unless women and men can safely access public spaces – and I plan to learn more about their initiatives. I hope the Gender Inclusive Cities project can eventually address other major cities around the world too.

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Harassment on New Delhi Metro

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Is public transportation in any country safe for women who don’t want to be harassed (99%)? I don’t know, but given how many stories I’ve read where it’s not safe, I’m wondering… From Thaindian in New Delhi, India…

“Molestation is rampant on the Metro, insists Anuradha Jha, a mass communications student and resident of Vikaspuri. ‘It is for this reason that I avoid taking the Metro during peak hours.’

Delhi Metro Rail Corp (DMRC) that runs the service says it is faced with acute shortage of security personnel. ‘We do not have that much manpower to deploy guards all the time and so we do that during peak office hours only,’ DMRC spokesman Anuj Dayal told IANS.

On an average, more than 850,000 people travel daily in the Delhi Metro, the bulk of them commuting between 8.30 and 11.30 in the morning and from 5.30 to 8 in the evening.

Dayal said DMRC was looking at the possibility of engaging security personnel in plain clothes to check sexual harassment. ‘People should know there are CCTV (closed circuit) cameras both inside the trains and on platforms.'”

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In India, New Opportunities for Women = Abuse from Men

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The Washington Post has an article by Emily Wax about how attitudes toward women in India aren’t necessarily keeping pace with the progression of rights of Indian women. Street harassment or eve teasing is an example they give – more women are in the streets as they go to work and school and men are harassing them. Tellingly, a women who is part of a theater groups that educates the public about issues like street harassment and sexual assault says she regularly gets harassed when she is going home from performances. Another example:

“Chaudhry is one of the brightest students in her working-class district. But since several local men started following her to class, she sometimes stays home now. She has friends who have been raped or are constant victims of “Eve teasing,” when men on the street spew lewd comments or aggressively paw women’s bodies.”

Pretty horrible, right?

In the US this has also happened. An example that comes to my mind is the sexual harassment women faced when they were allowed to be integrated into traditionally male (and high paying) jobs because men were not happy to have them there on equal terms.

Do you have other examples?

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