Why Loiter? Radical Possibilities for gendered dissent
Shilpa Phadke, Shilpa Ranade and Sameera Khan
The author starts
off by talking about how urban-educated women of today’s world have a desire to
independently roam and explore their cities free of any restraints. Then she goes
on to talk about the way the society looks at women with such desires and how these
women are blamed, often more than the perpetrators for the occurrence of any untoward
incident.
She had conducted a social experiment in Mumbai, in which it was observed
that women accessing public space was seen as something provisional and not inherent.
Due to intersection of class and social background, poor lower caste men are
seen as the habitual predators of such women. This is also a convenient assumption
as men are considered to have more access to public spaces compared to women.
The good woman
is said to be one that seldom comes out and the ones that come out are seen to
be bad women unworthy of any social protection. Mahatma Gandhi had also famously
said that “The day a woman can walk freely on the roads at night, that day we can
say that India has achieved independence”
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