Educate men, respect women's choices: Addressing sexual harassment in public spaces at Jaipur Lit Fest

Jaipur: The topic of sexual harassment of women in public spaces took the centre stage at the ongoing Jaipur Literature Festival, as social activist Aruna Roy, lawyer Vrinda Grover and economists Seema Jayachandran and Abhijit Banerjee discussed the factors contributing to the offence, ways for its redressal, and its long-term solutions.

The panellists were speaking at a session titled 'The City Through Her Eyes: Voices on Sexual Harassment in India' on Saturday.

The session was set around the findings of a survey conducted on women's safety in public spaces by the research centre J-Pal South Asia and NGO Aparajita by Pramod Bhasin.

The survey conducted across Jaipur and Delhi with 1,899 and 2,093 women respondents, respectively, revealed that nearly 50 per cent women in Jaipur and about 65 per cent women in the national capital faced some form of sexual harassment in public spaces in the past year, including staring, cat call, gestures, groping, stalking, flashing and sexual assault.

They reported that women were subjected to sexual harassment in virtually all public spaces, including on the streets, public transports, bus stops and railway stations, market places, schools, and even places of worship.

Grover, who's also a child and women's rights activist, said it's important to make this distinction since there is "a social obsession with only looking at rape" as a crime against women.

"...and feeling angry about rape and that anger need not necessary be productive. So I am really glad that today we are focusing on sexual harassment, which, as your survey shows us, is part and parcel of women's daily life in the public space," Grover said.

Roy, meanwhile, argued that to draw any conclusion from such a survey, it would have to be conducted across intersectionalities of religion, caste, and class at various places with all the differences taken into consideration.

"...with cultural differences taken into consideration because the kind of harassment they face in different places of India are different, and I think that's why one feels that all these issues are right and things like surveys produce technical support to the issues that we feel are relevant but the solutions are all democratic, political, and socio-economic," the Ramon Magsaysay awardee said.

In response to Banerjee's argument that women in rural areas may be relatively safer compared to their urban counterparts because of the social structure, Roy said women are more or less targeted in a similar manner.

"But in a rural area, culturally men cannot do certain things. Public spaces are restricted, segregated, for instance, so some kind of protection may come from that but there are as many cases of terrible sexual harassment among rural women as in urban areas, only the stations are different," Roy said.

The former bureaucrat noted that women in rural areas may face sexual harassment based on their caste as well.

"There is a general feeling that women who belong to lower castes can be treated anyhow, which is something you don't get in an urban area," Roy said.

Talking about legal remedies available to women in such cases, Grover said despite there being a structure in place, she does not encourage women to go directly to police stations as the system is not "accessible or enabling".

"Am I therefore suggesting that these women, these girls who are going to actually march to the police station or ask for any accountability through the law... That's not happening. I don't encourage them to go running to the police station because we have not made a legal system that is either accessible or enabling. And that process should not be further debilitating.

"But what is important is that it has spelt it out. Unfortunately, in our society, what is a wrong towards women unless and until it is spelt out in black and white... I think there is an ambiguity around it," Grover said.

Roy addressed Grover's concern by saying that during her work in Rajasthan, they managed to "attach Mahila Suraksha Kendra" to about 24 police stations across the state, where women can go and talk to the police "without feeling any fear".

"...that has considerably increased the possibility of getting some kind of attention in justice," she said.

Going forward, Grover felt hope that more and more women are "not accepting that kind of behaviour".

"There is mobility and they are finding answers and we move from eve-teasing to sexual harassment through feminist interventions. Women are not going to stop, either economically or socially. Politically, you see women voting in larger numbers than ever before," she said.

And even as there are hurdles such as instrumentalisation of violence against women during elections, women will continue to forge ahead, she added.

While Jayachandran suggested working with adolescent boys at home and in school to help them understand gender equality, masculinity norms and their emotions, Roy echoed that there is no one solution but a bundle of solutions, including educating men.

"The men in our society need to be educated. I think this is a fundamental reason why things happen. The society as a whole has to understand why these young men are so frustrated... Because they are jobless, on the streets and that this produces all kinds of quirks in their social behaviour," Roy said.

Grover argued that while men and boys need policing and discipline at home, women's choices should be respected for a long-term solution.

"The people who indulge in sexual harassment, they are not dropping from somewhere else, they are in our midst. Stop policing the girls and women in your family. Rather, police and discipline the men and the boys a little bit. Respect the women's choice," the lawyer said.

JLF this year features a lineup of over 300 luminaries such as Nobel laureates, Booker Prize-winners, journalists, policymakers, and acclaimed writers.

The participants include Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Dufflo, Amol Palekar, Ira Mukhoty, Geetanjali Shree, David Hare, Manav Kaul, Javed Akhtar, Rahul Bose, Yuvan Aves, Shahu Patole, and Kallol Bhattacharjee, among others.

The festival will come to a close on February 3.