Woman in the City
City of stars Are you shining just for me? City of stars There’s so much that I can’t see Who knows? Is this the start of something wonderful and new? Or one more dream that I cannot make true?
The male and female protagonists in the movie La La Land thus express their hope, sorrow, excitement and apprehension about their new life in the city. Such is the promise of city life, bringing forth the excitement of something wonderful and new but also the possibility of disappointment, failure and breaking down of many dreams.
It is this Janus face of the city that is often reflected in popular culture. On one hand, we see that cities are often romanticised: Paris is the ‘City of Love’, Kolkata is a ‘City of Joy’ and Mumbai as the ‘City of Dreams’. We also see city imagined as a space of anonymity, inauthenticity, mistrust, violence and corruption full of amoral people among many regional literary traditions, often coupled with nostalgia for the rural spaces left behind. City is even likened to a wily woman ready to ensnare the men away from the family.
But do the city-spaces conform to only either of these descriptions? Unconditional love, joy or dreams or misery, mistrust and violence? We don’t think so. An African or Arab immigrant in Paris or an immigrant from rural Bihar or UP in Mumbai would tell a far more complex story. An immigrant of 1960s would tell a different story from one in the new millennium. Far too often such stories would be of men. It is only in very recent times that we have begun to hear stories of women migrating and living in the cities. And, if we imagine such an immigrant or a migrant woman to be a transgender person, an underprivileged background, what would we hear? This broadsheet is an attempt to move beyond such utopic or dystopic visions of the city and city life to explore what city could mean for women in contemporary India.
India is undergoing a rapid urbanization, the number of women coming to the cities for education and employment is growing every year (see box item Why women migrate4). Cities, however, are not mere physical spaces, nor are they inherently egalitarian. One’s gender, caste, class, religion, location determines how one encounters and inhabits the city-space. Equally, our imagination of it, as the repository of aspirations and anxieties, also forms/structures our relationship to the city. In this broadsheet we propose to see the city as a structured gendered space which is hierarchical but at the same time highly contested. We share a sense of ‘notional urbanity’ which is in a constant flux.
We have put together this issue of the Broadsheet in the course of working on a project titled “City and Sexuality: A Study of Youth Living and Working in Hyderabad”, at the Anveshi Research Centre for Women’s Studies. We found that most of the literature on youth migrating to cities, focused on educational spaces or the spaces of work with city remaining as a mere backdrop. In our interviews with fifty women, mostly single, we found that city occupied a central place in their narratives in and around work, educational and hostel spaces. While trying to understand their aspirations, desires and struggles as individuals we also saw that these single women were negotiating their space in a big city.
Our study was an attempt to understand how moving away from family and setting up their lives in the city affected women. We focused on how this journey shifts their sense of self, relation with family and their notions of intimate partnership. Their accounts of changes (or otherwise) in clothing, lifestyle, notions of morality helped us to understand how they complied with, negotiated and resisted the patriarchal code of conduct.
The city in fact allowed them to broaden their horizon, gave them more opportunities and access to knowledge networks. At the same time, it kept them under constant surveillance that curtailed this access. Finding more financial autonomy often helped women to better negotiate their choices in marriage and career.
However, for many women, especially those from more marginalized sections, jobs are often extremely demanding and the support network available in bourgeoisie families is not available to them. Life becomes precarious in these conditions, while some women are able to follow their aspirations and are able to hold onto the city dreams even in relationships, many are forced to go back to traditional marriage setups.
City dreams, Surveillance and struggles
City exists in the form of dreams and desires for many women for whom coming to the city itself is the most crucial step to take. City of Hope by Mithun Som attempts to analyse the individual paths of women migrants to Hyderabad. These paths reflect the ways in which this city has developed in this region an educational and IT hub over the 1980s and 1990s; the neoliberal city providing employment and civic facilities amidst paucity throughout the state. Who can inhabit the city in what ways depends on the background they come from and the nature of entry that one gets to the city.
A Room of one’s own by Rani Rohini Raman describes and analyses the constant surveillance that single women are subjected to in accessing residential spaces in city. Not just landlords or hostel wardens (government and private) but fellow inmates and the entire neighbourhood try to be their custodians to see that these single women do not pose any threat to the ‘normalcy’ of ‘their’ city.
Bloodshed in Bathroom by Subhadra Joopaka brings the issue of caste and gender together. Her story of the inmate of a social welfare hostel, brings out the determined struggle of a young Dalit woman for self-respect who stands her ground to refuse a medical test to prove her innocence. It brings to the foreground the moral policing and surveillance of conduct that young women from marginalized background face in public funded hostels that are meant to serve them.
It is this public-private surveillance of young women away from home, either in public or private hostels that the new urban movements such as Pinjra Tod seek to challenge in order to claim equal access to hostels and public spaces. They have argued that such surveillance amounts to public control of their conduct which is discriminatory and violates the fundamental right to equality that the Constitution guarantees. The interview with the Pinjra Tod members, Breaking the chains , elaborates their critique of the unjust hostel rules in universities of Delhi and their broader perspective in raising their voice against them.
Looking for Leisure, pleasure in the city
The story of unbelonging: women in public space by Madhurima Majumder discusses the book Why Loiter , that brought attention to the issue of women’s access to urban public spaces for the first time. It goes on to discuss several other small but significant movements that were organised to claim public spaces by urban women in India.
Conducting/curtailing pleasure: Notes on leisure, conduct and urban sexuality by Pranoo Deshraju brings to our attention the contradictory ways in which spaces of leisure such as pubs function for young urban women. In enabling some of them to be ‘uninhibited and free’ in these cordoned off spaces, Pranoo argues that the largely male and misogynist nature of the public space in general remains untouched and endorsed. We understand that women can be consumers but not equal citizens.
In Owning the City: Belonging and anonymity, Madhumeeta Sinha discusses an important documentary film Mera Apna Sheher by Sameera Jain that demonstrates the normative maleness of the city space that women encounter when they try to ‘belong’ to the city in everyday life. As municipal workers or drivers or as pedestrians they have to inhabit the city which is designed and meant for men.
Public transport is the primary way in which most people get to know the city and navigate it. It is like the main artery, determining the degree of access to the city of people, especially newcomers. Commuting to college, to work, to shop or for leisure depends on the availability and accessibility of public transport, to a large extent. Mithun Som tries to bring alive this dimension through an experiential account of public transport in her My tryst with local transport in villages, towns and cities .
Claiming the City Space: Unheard voices
The margins speak but can we really listen? While putting this broadsheet together, we were acutely aware of the fact that though we have tried to raise certain issues by charting the lives of women, they are not the only vulnerable dwellers of the city. Those who don’t conform to the norm, like non-binary or transgender people face far more violence and systematic exclusion in our smart cities.
The collection of social media posts made by Rachana Mudraboyina, a prominent transgender activist of Hyderabad indicates the enormity of the struggle involved in transpeople claiming the city space. Rachana’s activism is expansive and actively engages with issues of other marginal communities like Dalits, farmers, sex workers and labour groups. Her activism comes from a deeper understanding that intersections of marginalized identities like caste, religion, region have significant bearing on trans people’s lives.
Indeed, we hear very little of how Dalit women encounter or experience the city. Madhavi Mirapa’s article focuses on the experiences of Dalit women who migrated to the city. The younger Dalit women come to find financial autonomy and as a way out of the restricted lives back in their homes. However, their meagre salaries and long shifts keep them from engaging with the city, form a community outside their familial networks or engage with any political discourse.
Unexpected bonding in the city
City engenders different forms of bonding which do not fall under the conventional labels. Devyani and Anusha’s piece Urmila Conducts presents one such bonding between Urmila, the bus conductor and the male driver she works with as well as her other female conductor colleagues in the predominantly male public transport sector. It beautifully captures a day in her work life as a bus conductor as the authors travel with her throughout the day. Khadeer Babu’s Subway narrates the bond between two colleagues working in the software sector. The characters, a male and a female, brought together in the workspace, develop a relationship that is intimate but not romantic or sexual. In both these instances, one real and one fictional, the urban workplace provides a space to interact and form unique kind of relations among women and men that cannot be named.
Neha Dixit’s, ‘ Why did you let him shoot that?: An Indian women’s story of “revenge porn”’ on the other hand talks about the darker side of relationships. A man takes revenge on his exgirlfriend by posting their intimate pictures for public consumption when a relationship does not work out. Both the relationship and the revenge is borne of toxic masculinity enabled by the new spaces in urban India. But the new opportunities for the former also require new cultural imagination and institutional support so as to not result in the latter. How does one do it is something that this essay asks.
Hyderabad: Breaking the myth of the old and new
Hyderabad, like most other long-standing cities, is geographically divided into old, new and cyber cities. Often, this geographical division is mapped onto conceptual categories of backward, modern and ultra-modern. Two essays question such conflation of categories by discussing the complex interplay of modernity, geography and politics.
JaveedAlam’s essay, The burqa and the rickshaw, situates the new visibility of the burqa, often seen as a symbol of backwardness, in the socioeconomic changes in the city of Hyderabad. Increased educational opportunities for Muslim girls is accompanied by increased visibility of burqa in several new places, suggesting that it is seen as a sign of modernity. It seems to have facilitated Muslim women’s increased access to public spaces. At the same time with changing development paradigm of the city that promoted auto-rikshaws, cycle rickshaws which earlier constituted the main image of Hyderabad, have gone missing.
Thoughts about Gender and Space in the city of Hyderabad by Tejaswini Madabhushi reflects on her experiences of organising different gender based campaigns to occupy public spaces in the city of Hyderabad. The city, she learnt, was not an abstract empty space but inhabited and lived space for different communities. Campaigns for occupying public spaces need to be attentive to these histories and lived realities.
In love with the City
City itself also is the object of affection for many writers. We have included short poems and stories where city becomes the main protagonist. Ravish Kumar’s poems describes the love of a young migrant man living and romancing Delhi. Nabina Das’s poems Ode to Leaving and Dilli Nazm, are about the love for the city, where city becomes an integral part of individual lives, its culture seeping through their bodies. Her short story, The Meeting, weaves an engaging story about two individuals in the background of hustling, running, singing and dancing city.
Conclusion
City provides single migrant women of a certain class with the cherished anonymity allowing them to be free of the constant surveillance of family and relatives in their villages or hometowns. Transgender people too find a little space in cities. Men and women form new bonds and relationships as the work and educational spaces provide them opportunity to meet and interact. However, a code of morality, an unwritten rule of what is expected/ allowed of women and what is not, also defines the conduct of women. Anything beyond it becomes unacceptable – including dress, timing, company, and gestures among other things. Such codes are endorsed and reinforced through the media debates. As such in the case of single migrant women, the larger society takes up the role of guardianship, often trying to control women’s lives in the garb of providing safety. The different spaces in the city like the hostels, pubs, residential spaces and other public spaces become the platform for execution of such guardianship.
Seen from the gendered lens, the very physical geographical division of the city into a ‘stagnant old city’ and a ‘vibrant new city’ comes across as dubious. Women from the ‘stagnant’ Old city are travelling and aspiring for education and jobs, while the women in ‘vibrant’ and ‘shining’ Hitech City are being interrogated about their conduct and freedom by the office employees and hostel wardens.
In fact, when we bring in the often-unexplored area of the intersection of migration to the city with gender, caste, class and religion, what emerges is the way in which the people from different locations interact with the multiple sites in the city to create their own narratives. Both city and experiences of the city dwellers, in this case, Hyderabad, turn out to be extremely heterogeneous, enabling us to complicate the pre-existing portrayals of Hyderabad.
Rani Rohini Raman, Mithun Som, Madhurima Majumder, A. Suneetha
(The editorial team would like to express gratitude to all the writers and translators)
Why women migrate: Based on census data of 2001 and 2011
Mithun Som
In India, of the total population that migrates, women form a higher percentage than men. According to the 2011 census, 69 percent of all migrants are women. In Andhra Pradesh1 however, 65 percent of all migrants are women.
The major reason for migration of women is marriage and this hasn’t changed much from 2001 census. Across India, this figure is 70 percent. In Andhra Pradesh, the figure is lower: 61 percent of the women show marriage as the reason for migration. The percentage of women migrating to urban areas because of marriage is less than to rural areas (78 to rural and 47 to urban in India; 71 and 37 percent respectively in Andhra according to the 2011 census).
Moving with the household is another major reason for migration.
About 10 percent of all Indians migrating reported work as the reason in 2011. In Andhra Pradesh, the percentage is higher at 12 percent. However, among women, work related migration is a very small 2.4 percent of the total reasons for migration. This is higher for Andhra Pradesh at 3.5 percent in 2011. There has been a noteworthy increase in this figure of women migrating for work and employment after the 2001 census. Between 2001 and 2011, the all India figure of women migrating for employment rose from 1.7 to 2.4 and specifically to the urban areas, this figure rose from 2.9 to 3.7 from 2001 to 2011. Overall in Andhra Pradesh during the same period, the percentage rise was from 2.2 to 3.5 and to the urban areas of Andhra Pradesh it was from 4.2 to 5.5 percent.
Business as a reason for migration is seen in only one percent of the migrating population in India and 1.4 in Andhra Pradesh. For women, this is even more miniscule with 0.4 percent in India overall and 0.5 percent in Andhra Pradesh. There hasn’t been much of a difference between the 2001 and 2011 census.
Pursuit of education was the reason for 1.8 percent of all the migrations in 2011 compared to 1.1 percent in 2001 for the whole of India. For Andhra Pradesh, the corresponding figure has been 3.7 and 1.8 respectively. The percentage of women migrating to pursue education increases from 0.4 (2001) to 1.0 (2011) for the whole of India. In Andhra Pradesh, in 2001, 0.8 percent of the women migrated for education and this figure increased to 2.5 in 2011. This is a little more than a 300 percent increase.
Mithun Som works at Anveshi Research Centre for Women’s Studies, Hyderabad.
1 The figures in this note refer to the undivided Andhra Pradesh state. Figures for Telangana and Andhra would have to be looked at after the 2021 census.