Shubham Mishra Week 6

Why loiter? Radical possibilities for gendered dissent

The authors Shilpa Phadke, Shilpa Ranade and Sameera Khan in their article talk about woman’s access to public streets in the form of loitering. The article is inspired from a Gender and Space Project done by a research organisation named PUKAR. The authors highlight how the struggle against violence and the struggle for pleasure are intertwined, with the latter being framed in more inclusive terms. Taking the city of Mumbai as their sample, they analyze the intersections of gender, class, religion, and caste. Mumbai is supposed to be a safer city for women as compared to other cities. While the overall visibility of women in public spaces has improved, their corresponding rights have remained stagnant. Women of certain class or caste (mostly upper) are more likely to enjoy the public spaces than the lower class/caste women. The authors talk about intersectionality in Bombay and the targeted section here are lower caste males as they are always seen as a threat to woman explicitly in the form of assault and implicitly by having a consensual relationship with them. A woman accessing public spaces often has to go through an elaborate procedure of dressing and representing herself in a way that shows purpose, religion or familial connections.

The authors propose that the necessity for loitering comes from the fact that it can potentially disrupt the notion of normative respectable femininity that is expected in public spaces. By being allowed to loiter, women can experience their spaces, shaping their identity, not merely as anonymous outsiders. Loitering has the potential of curbing the existing social hierarchies and provides a space for more inclusive citizenship.