Travel 2013: Sexism in india

The oppression of women, or sexism, in India was worse than I expected.  However, I’m sure that several of these things are sexist as I perceive them and may not be perceived that way by the women who live it every day.   I can say for sure, that men make it uncomfortable for women (at least foreign women) to walk on the street.  They stare blatantly and harshly.  This can range from curiosity to something more lustful and scary.   Many times a day, men would walk by staring directly at our breasts and not make eye contact – this is from close range.  There was rarely a time when my sister and I were sitting some place where there were not men staring.  I’m not exaggerating.  For example, in restaurants, often there would be either another patron or multiple wait staff staring.  One time, I counted 10 at once in a restaurant.  On our train ride from Delhi to Agra (a major tourist thoroughfare) 5 men stared as we played cards.

In a tourism book, I read that it isn’t uncommon for women to get groped in public spaces (like crowded markets or public transportation).  Fortunately this didn’t happen to me, but I had the mind to grab some man’s wrist after he tried anything and not just let him walk away freely from it.

Occasionally, often with some layer of protection, like speed (from a moving autorickshaw) or glass (from inside a restaurant), my sister and I would challenge blatant and unrelenting staring.  Once Licia stuck her tongue out at a guy who was staring from outside restaurant and he started laughing as he tried to return the gesture.  He eventually moved out of direct line of sight but still checked in on us.  The last few days, we started saying things loudly to each other, like “you shouldn’t stare,” or “stop staring at us.”  I’m pretty sure it is also seen as impolite in Indian culture, but I didn’t see any Indian women respond to it.

The dress code is different in India for women than it is in the U.S., but that is being challenged in big cities by younger women.  Traditionally, women wear saris (long cloth wrapped around her body) or kurtas and tights or some pants under them.  Their legs were generally fully covered, and often, with kurtas, so were their arms.  And this is in temperatures above 100 degrees F.  Licia and I generally wore dresses with tights under them, so not as fully covered, but still more than either of us would like to wear if we had the choice.  Pulling up tights in 100 degree weather is far from easy or comfortable.  So we felt like we were doing our part to not have our bodies exposed.

And I think the heat made my frustration with staring men worse.  Since it’s difficult to feel any power in the face of the threat of violence and potential lack of shared language, we often felt unable to express anything to the men who were being offensive.  Put that in a steamy oven of 115 degrees that is Delhi in the summer and it feels pretty ugly.