By Almas Shamim

How often have we heard a female friend or a colleague say this? You might have heard this when there was a late meeting scheduled in the office, a farewell party for a colleague or a group of students meeting to finish some group work assigned to them. The going-home-before-dark is all too common a practice, so common that it might have gone unnoticed by some.

What IS, after all, the relation between “dark” and “women”? Why do women get to hear this advice so commonly even though men/ boys find it way easier to traverse their way around the world in the dark? Do women really have some biological abnormalities that make them breathe less effectively when the sun goes down? Or do they automatically turn into statues at sunset?

The usual rhetoric that we hear is of safety. Didn’t the Nirbhaya tragedy strike in the dark? Aren’t the women who stay out at night, usually “those loose charactered women” and so it’s okay to harass and abuse them? Women who choose to be out on the streets at night, whether for work or for leisure are, in a way, accepting that they DON’T want to feel safe. They are admitting that they have a “loose character”, whatever it means.  In a way, any woman out at night is “asking for it” and hence all other women who “do not want to ask for it” should remain indoors.Of course, no such warped logic exists for boys/ men.

Just as we educate our girls, even though there are still pockets in our society which believe that education can corrupt girls’ minds; just as we have begun to embrace our daughters choice in marriage, even though it is still not acceptable by all- why aren’t we also telling our girls to go out freely and walk the streets at night? Women being out after dark will continue to be taboo as long as we keep it as an exception. One girl seen out after 8 pm may be targeted, two girls seen out after 8 pm may be looked down upon, but just go on increasing the number of girls out on the street…at point it would become absolutely normal.…

Women are half of this world population. They should also be half of the street population- in all places, at all times. The best way in which streets, nights and darkness can be made safe for women is by “reclaiming the street”- by keeping the presence of women on the roads a norm and not an exception. Of course, police patrolling, cctv cameras are all legit and absolutely essential demands. But, it goes without saying that no change is truly possible without a change in mindset. To realize, understand and accept that your daughter has as much of a right on the street as your daughter, that your female students have as much a right to return to the hostel at any time as your male students, that girls are only as desirous of being “attacked” as boys- is a change that we need to see. It is this collective change of mindset alone that can bring women out on the streets- thus, enabling many more to join them.

“Reclaiming the street” should be more than just an event, more than just a movement of a few- it should be the way things are every day, everywhere. 

Almas Shamim is a public health specialist with a great interest in sexual and reproductive health and rights, and feminism among Muslim women. She currently works for an international humanitarian aid organization in New Delhi