Written by Lora K. Prabhu:
Earlier this year, sports women in India made headlines for the wrong reasons. Women wrestlers, including Olympic medallists were protesting on the streets of Delhi, against inaction on sexual harassment charges against the Wrestling Federation president. The sordid saga of sports women being subjected to ongoing sexual harassment with impunity made it to media platforms, but the institutional response was tepid to say the least. It took five months of our star wrestlers sitting on dharna( protest), for the police to file a First Information Report (FIR) against the federation head, but with the caveat that the charges of child abuse (meaning higher punishment) were left out. There was no surprise, no public outrage and business continues as usual.
Back in 2009, my NGO CEQUIN had conducted a baseline study on gender-based violence in public spaces in Delhi, with a sample size of 630 women and girls. As per the findings, 96% of the respondents perceived Delhi as an unsafe place for women and 98.6% reported having faced sexual harassment in some form during their lifetime. Several other studies following this, with larger sample sizes, corroborated these findings. The Nirbhaya rape case in 2012 of a young physiotherapy student in the heart of the capital brought to the fore, the scope and impunity of gender-based violence. A lot has changed since then, in terms of an overall awareness of the issue. There are gender sensitive laws in place. Gender purportedly is being mainstreamed into planning and design, women’s cells, sexual harassment committees, etc. However, women’s workforce participation rate in Delhi remains less than 15% and India ranks 135 among 146 countries in the Global Gender Gap Index 2022.
The massive mismatch between the big increase in girls’ retention in education in the last couple of decades vis-i-vis the low and declining workforce participation rate, is I believe, the most significant indicator we need to track. While implementing the Disha project in partnership with UNDP across Haryana in 2018 (conducting career counselling and job placements for over 12,000 women college students) our critical learning was that unless we acknowledge and comprehensively address gender-based violence, we will not make any headway. Young women in higher education are the most vulnerable to sexual violence whether in their educational institutions or while navigating public spaces and even within their own homes. We are encouraging our girls to dream big, but then observing their aspirations often crushed as they step out into the ‘world’. One of the active girls from our Seemapuri project who recently dropped out of our programme due to family pressure, wistfully lamented “Would I have been better off without this self-awareness of my rights and capabilities? Maybe it would have hurt less!”
The patriarchal framing of Indian public spaces continues to present it as the male domain, and young women stepping out to join higher education and subsequently the workforce, are often treated as ‘intruders’. The ability of women and girls to navigate public space with confidence requires active challenging of gender stereotypes and consciously creating enabling environments. CEQUIN started its Kickstart Equality programme in 2010, using football as tool to challenge gender stereotypes and engender public spaces. Hundreds of girls have emerged as footballers through this programme, while learning to confidently navigate their city.
What has it taken for these girls to be able to participate in sports in public spaces? Our programme entails creating mothers’ collectives to conduct gender audits and advocate with local stakeholders for a safe and enabling environment for their daughters. We conduct a gender sensitization and leadership programme for boys, who become enablers for the girls in their peer group. We actively promote role models for girls, in the form of women football coaches, so that they have a safe and inspiring environment to blossom.
The transformation in girls participating in sports is phenomenal. From the time that they were in their hijabs or dupatta-covered heads, they now feel confident to walk through the streets in their football gear. They regularly access public spaces; they are physically and mentally prepared to combat gendered violence; they are ambitious and driven to achieve their dreams.
While talking to some of our senior football players from the Jamia University area last year, they shared how street harassment has been a regular ordeal. They would travel in groups in order to feel safe. One day, frustrated by the daily onslaught, and ostensibly inspired by the film Chak De, the girls decided to thrash the boys. The boys never repeated that behaviour again. Girls playing football in public spaces is a very common sight in Jamia today. Girls claimed to feel respected while wearing their jersey, and reported feeling much safer. Counter violence on the girls’ part is not to be condoned, but the tangible increase in the girls’ physical and mental strength definitely had a positive impact on their mobility and access.
Earlier this year, on a field trip to our project site in rural Haryana, some of our women football coaches (who have been a part of our programme for over a decade) faced sexual harassment from middle school boys, who were not more thirteen years old. It was by far the most very unnerving experience to see how deep seated the scourge of gender-based violence is. This coincided with the street protest of our women Olympians in Delhi, driving home the fact that we have miles to go before we sleep, in the context of addressing gender-based violence.
