Right to a Feminist City

Women are negotiators of their real lives, voyeuristically regulated by the society. On some days, we must buy our safety; on some days we must trade it with our freedom. Society tells us that “being a woman” is innate, but unfortunately, we see how structural and systematic ‘safety of all spaces isn’t. Women standing up for women in huge numbers at protest sites in the capital is a sight of urban feminist mobilization in this country. The anti-rape movements during the Mathura case, to Nirbhaya to the Pinjra tod campaigns and the Night Walks- feminist discourse in Delhi has always made this one assertion, that is, women shall not police themselves or be policed in the name safety. Delhi’s recent Park restriction after sunset, a reputed college in the vicinity of the scene of crime shifting lectures in online mode for safety of students, days after a 17-year-old is raped- these measures only mock in the face of questions of women’s agency, autonomy and freedom in a city. There is a larger question before us if the most urban and developed cities in the country are culturally and socially designed, planned and architectured in ways that accommodate women and if unconditionally. The continuance of pepper sprays in our bags, preference of costly private transportation over public, hyper vigilant gated societies, etc. are evidence of cities that lack structural safety for women in public spaces. Feminist scholarship has emphasized enough on feminist re-designing of cities. They begin with challenging the gendered designs which suits the male norms of work, mobility, and public life, while proposing alternatives centred on care, safety, accessibility, intersectionality, and the right to the city for women and other marginalized groups. As observed, cities are also managed and divided into binaries of service-commercial areas and suburban/residential areas to suit the male idea of the work and life or public and private divide. Cultural perceptions of spaces in cities like parks are essentially gendered denoting “indecency” and “immorality” as they are flocked with couples and young lovers. But these perceptions ignore how the cities do not accommodate people’s right to choice, intimacy and dignity without being moral policed. Each time, people, especially women face violence and harassment- the Jamui, Bihar incident is disturbing enough; not to mention the illegal raids and vigilantism which some so called keepers of culture practice on Valentine’s day, etc. Countries like Colombia, Canada amongst others who have been known to have taken up feminist redesigning of some of their cities emphasised on “women’s safety audits”. Delhi undertook it too some years ago as well. But how informed are these audits in keeping all kinds of class, caste and disability intersectionality in mind?

Theres the “right to city” and city is a site of contestation. Property dealers, brokers, landlords, gated societies which prefer “cultured and decent women” among there desired tenets- are all complacent in the kind of city’s uncontested cultural structure we are currently putting up with. Brahmanical patriarchy simultaneously organizes the city by gender and caste. In the public space, there is groping, catcalling, moral policing and slut shaming and peaceful solitude in the private comes with an economic as well as social cost. Unfortunately, for women, both the Public and the Personal spaces are never ending battles. What do city and space exactly mean to women- Indian society needs to sincerely think. It’s interesting how black feminist Katherine McKittrick helps complicate the idea of space arguing that women do not experience space uniformly or symmetrically. To borrow from her work Demonic Grounds: Black Women and the Cartographies of Struggle (2006), women in the city continue to exist as if they lack legitimate place, knowledge, or spatial agency; spaces of women are dynamic cartographies of struggle.  A city needs a feminist cultural design where in women can claim and find places to be themselves, replenish themselves. Migrant women more often are at war with a regressive world. Some migrant women are forced to gulp it down even more depending on their caste identity or sexuality. But what we all need is the coziness of an accepting apartment, without any bargains and a city that does not invalidate.

© [2026] [Radhika Jagtap]