Namrata Goswami, Week 6

“Why loiter? Radical Possibilities for Gendered Dissent.” by Shilpa Phadke, Shilpa Ranade and Sameera Khan talks about the rights of women to public places in different places in Mumbai. The concept of power hierarchy seeps in here as it is seems people who belonged to a greater status in the social hierarchy and were economically powerful had access to such public places, but the access to women were denied in such places. Such discrepancies come to being because women have been referred to as the ‘dangerous other’ and this beings in aspects of gender and class into the scene. Women are burdened by the code of conduct when it comesto their behaviour in public spaces, whereas there is no such burden on men and they can behave in their natural manner in such places. The word ‘loitering’ has been used where the threat on middle class women has been talked about in places called ‘Tapori’- whereas the same threat is not felt by a high-class woman. These are the kind of women who are respectable, whereas others are not worthy of protection of any sort. Sex workers, however are the only exception to loitering, however, they are not representative of this concept at all. Thus ‘loitering’ is not normalized and and seen as reflective to a woman’s character in the society.