28 Gender and Negotiation of Spaces

Anurekha Chari Wagh

Introduction

This module discusses about the contested nature of spaces. This discussion would initially start with developing an understanding about how spaces are constructed and later would analyse how spaces are contested. Through this analysis the aim would be to highlight that everyone one of us, in context of our identity, location and perception by society, occupy spaces differently. As discussed in detail in the module on Gendered Citizenship1, our rights are differentiated and contested we need to recognize that our spaces too are differentiated and contested. Not everyone one of us is considered to be ‘full legitimate citizens’; groups such as minorities, immigrants, poor, people with alternative sexualities, sex workers are considered different, and evoke a feeling of difference. These different processes of ‘othering’, limit the usage of spaces. These groups, in their everyday lives, have to deal to stigma, violence, and harassment, oppression to use the spaces and experience their rights.

In this module, based on the analysis of the two different groups who have to deal everyday within the public spaces, either as location of work or as general usage of space we would examine the negotiation and strategies developed by them. We would initially focus on how the sex workers who considered as marginal citizens deal with everyday violence, stigma and humiliation in the public spaces and then we would analyse how women deal with public transport system in their everyday life. The objective in this module is to focus on how groups negotiate the constricted spaces and how the spaces are not only gendered but are also organized around, structures of caste, class, ethnicity, normative sexuality and morality.

Certain groups of citizens, are pushed to the margins, because they are made to feel that these spaces does not ‘belong’ to them and they do not have any right to the space socially, culturally and in some cases morally. Though they may have political rights, the social, cultural and moral conventions do not allow them the rights to make use of the spaces freely. Though women and other marginal groups face issues of exclusion and violence on everyday basis as they negotiate spaces in both public and private, in this module the focus is on negotiation in public spaces.

In this module we shall focus on different ways women negotiate their spaces in public. This module is developed in three sections. The first section titled: Gender, Space and Negotiation where the discussion is based on interlinking gender, space and negotiation conceptually. This is followed by the next section titled Negotiation of Spaces: Sex Workers as Citizens of the Margins we would discuss the various strategies used by sex workers and examine how they negotiate with the spaces and how the spaces in turn push them to the margins. In the Section 3 titled, Security, Spaces and Segregation we shall evaluate how ‘safe public spaces’ are constructed for women in order to provide them secure ‘spaces’ within the larger insecure public spaces. In doing so we shall focus on Delhi Metro rail’s special women’s coach and platforms, and link it with the larger questions of accessibility, public transport and security in public spaces. This is followed by the conclusion.

Section 1: Gender, Space and Negotiation

Niranjana, drawing up on the work of Masey (1992: 70) argues that space is fundamentally a social construct. It is made by social relations and practices and that the spatial organization of society makes a difference to how spatial construction of social works (Niranjana, 2001:36). Thus the relations between temporal and spatial perspective should be studied (Niranjana, 2001:36) and the socio-spatial contexts enables a perspective on gender (and other social relations) as constructed and negotiated spatially and (as) embedded in the spatial organization of places (Duncan, 1996:4). This negotiation of spatial organization raises not only issues of identity, and belonging but also as to who are pushed to negotiate. The question is the process of negotiation similar for all or some groups are pushed to negotiate more even for their basic rights within these spaces.

As Thapan and Raoul (2010:1) argue, one needs to refer to the complex nature of ‘belonging’ to a space and a culture in contemporary times. There are dilemmas related to acceptance and exclusion experienced by individuals and groups in their everyday lives. They argue that we should recognize that the state, which accords citizenship by birth or naturalization, is not experienced by migrant/marginal inhabitants as impersonal and impartial. State has a recognizable presence in the lives of those who would be citizens (or in some case would rather have their own state) the spaces they inhabit belong to multitude of governing regimes, whether political, religious or social.

Thapan and Raoul (2010) further state that emotions also define our relationships with spaces and places. They are pushing the argument that as citizens our connection with the state is not only organized around the larger framework of legality, politics and conventions but also emotionally. There are groups who automatically belong in a national space- it is generally the majority and most often the male (of the majority) who are assumed to be ‘authentic’ citizens and legitimate occupants. There are groups whose citizenship is in question especially the minorities and immigrants, where the marginalization provokes personal, collective emotional and physical effects as well as legal, political and in some cases violent confrontations. Marginality may be experienced through differences based on gender, race, age, ability and social and economic status as well as religious and linguistic affiliations. We need to recognize that there are diverse ways in which the process of ‘othering’ takes place. Marginalized, deploy embodied and affective means to contest official boundaries and discourses, especially through space and time. The body can be effectively controlled by the state, as it literally excludes or restraints – perceived and may perceive themselves abject, rejected and denied value (Thapan and Raoul 2010).

Women in India and elsewhere clearly remain embedded in a dominant narrative of victimhood and dependence vis-à-vis the state and have yet to acquire full citizenship with equal voice, space and representation. Women thus often have been co-opted by the state to perpetuate their own oppression, marginalization and exclusion (pp 10-12). People in their everyday life have to negotiate, consciously or not with state control of their physical presence in contested spaces and cultural self-presentation (Thapan and Raoul 2010).

As Niranjana (2001: 38), argues that a spatial perspective should analyse how gendered bodies are produced with spatiality and how such embodied persons negotiate their very social spaces. Further with regard to women, it is their bodily practices that are framed within certain cultural ideas of space. There is a need to focus on space and it’s relation to body. Why? It is because body is a central material for discourses on gender and sexuality and the question as to how bodies especially female bodies and (bodies at the margins of normative sexualities negotiate space) and how such spaces are defined, how space figures in the daily lives of women need to be analysed.

Thus we need to recognize that social spaces are marked, gendered and reworked, where women herself and others give importance to scriptures of morality as to define female identity. These scriptures may be differentially defined at any given point. (Niranjana, 2001:99). While relating to space and gender (Niranjana, 2001:108), the central idea revolves around women to the formation and continuation of the domestic space in the context of material contribution. The question arises how sexuality and impurity, auspiciousness and chastity are differentially enunciated within a given space (Niranjana, 2001:109). Public domain is associated with the exercise of power and control over persons and things, whereas the domestic is a subordinated space (Niranjana, 2001:110).

What does then gender refers to? In broad terms, it refers to the social organization of differences between the sexes (Scott, 1986; Connell, 1987) and though gender is a constructed reality, the body is central to it’s delineation (Niranjana, 2001:116). Then the question is how one shall start speaking of such a lived the ‘materiality’ of the body is question. Also the idea extends to how body as given or as somehow constructed. As it is argued that the ‘grounding’ of women (and men for that matter) as a biological category tends to essentialize gendered traits and do not recognize the differences among women themselves depending upon caste, class or kinship positions (Niranjana, 2001:119). To make sense of one’s own body with the spaces and to negotiate with the perception and essentialization is challenging.

Section 2: Negotiation of Spaces: Sex Workers as Citizens of the Margins

Agnes and Ghosh (2012) argues drawing from the experiences and actual struggles of women at the fringes of normative sexualities, that they negotiate, combat, slip, deal with complex networks of surveillance, censure and active violence and necessary conditions of their everyday lives (pg xiv). They negotiate the ‘spaces’- both in terms of citizenship and community rights as they lie outside the ambit of normative, familial, communal and citizenship boundaries, where women’s claims to rights are not only bullied but also blocked (pp xiv-xv).

Thapan and Raoul (2010) further state that emotions also define our relationships with spaces and places. Seshu (2012), while discussing the experiences of women at the margins, raises the debate of sex work. Seshu argues that certain feminist argument that sex work as necessary objectification and exploitation of women, and violent- has according to her limited the understanding of it, as sex work also involves ‘consent’. According to Seshu, the issue of consent is complicated. Why? This is so because in sex work, while women give consent in order to sell their body, but they also experience rape (pp xv), which puts a question mark on the nature of ‘consent’. Further Sehsu also critiques the women’s movement for not supporting any campaigns against rape of women in sex work. Such a critique of the women’s movement, raises the question of the limited nature of the movement, where it does not always address the question of women in the margins or as Agnes and Ghosh, puts it the concerns of the ‘women at the fringes of normative sexualities’.

Based on the work of SANGRAM (Sampada Grameen Mahila Sanstha), Sangli Maharashtra, Seshu states that the issues that are crucial for the sex workers include:

–         Questioning as to why health care needs are invariably structured around HIV/AIDS

–         Dealing with social stigma, where these women are considered shameless

–         Deal and face public violence on a day to day basis

–         Have to constantly negotiate for their rights- by dealing with police, local politicians and goons and also handling the law, lawyers and courts.

These women are always considered as ‘less than full citizens’, thus have to constantly negotiate the spaces that were more often than not unavailable to them. Sheshu (2012) states that the narratives of sex worker includes visions of the future of their children, struggle for their rights and dreams of love, life and dignity.

According to Seshu (2012), in order to conceptualise the manner in which sex workers negotiate their spaces, both within their family and public, we need to change our perception of prostitution as exploitation, victimization, oppression, immoral and illegal is shallow and limited. Further we need to question the language used to describe the women who perform sex work- ‘whore’, ‘harlot’, ‘veshya’ and ‘fallen women’, these words were not only derogatory but was rooted firmly in the realm of morality and notions of sacredness. The organization through its campaign made an attempt to reclaim the language and assert more positive identities of women engaging in sex work. The agenda was to erase and remove the words that reinforce stigmatization and marginalization. An option that is now being used is ‘people in sex work’ (PPS) so as to include all persons who as adults exchange consensual sexual services for benefit or money (pp 30).

In the context of sex work the sex worker reduces the female body to an object of sexual pleasure. As women are perceived to be upholders of societal norms, the society finds it challenging to accept any women who consensually engage in multiple sex partnerships. Further the behavior of women usually was closely connected with concepts of ‘shame’ and ‘honour‘. While shame is ‘individual’ centered feeling, honour is ‘familial and organized around groups and community, with its reputations’ hinged on it and therefore it is necessary to have institutionalized boundaries for women (Niranjana 2001), which I believe would control women.

In this context Niranjana’s argument that rules of spaces remind girls and women about proper behaviour and speech, where postures, dress and voice also has importance. For example, women are not encouraged to sit with legs spread. Why? I believe that this is so as it reflects ‘uncontrolled sexuality’, and further they cannot speak loudly to male, which I analyse as reflecting independence, overt sexuality and a desire to attract men, which is not encouraged among women, as mentioned above they represent the honour of the family, community and the nation at large. Thus it is the society and the community that decides how girl/women should lead their lives (Niranjana, 2001:62).

Women are given a frame (this is designed in the context of caste, religion, or community that the women belongs to), and then women structures herself in the said frame and mould herself according to societal norms and values in order to achieve ‘good character’ defined by community itself. Here Chakravarthi’s argument about the ‘ideology of consent’, is relevant, where women practice self control and restrict themselves, so as to be respected within the society. In this connection there seems to be a general consensus that early marriages are best so that the emergent female sexuality is not only controlled and channelized and helps to guard and foster female chastity and virtue. Delay to send off a grown up girl to other home is considered damaging to the family’s reputations, as it increases the chances of her becoming independent and take control of her life.

In such a social cultural milieu sex worker represents a body that challenges the moral frame of reference institutionalized by the community. Within such a moral frame of reference the sex worker is organised within a strict patriarchal framework, thereby labeling her as immoral. It follows that these patriarchal norms and value structures seek to render female sexuality as invisible, and therefore those women who are confident and project an independent identity in terms of their sexual desires, such as the sex workers are labeled as whore, immoral, decadent and debauched. Premarital sexuality is a taboo and procreation is culturally spaced and ‘a good women is one who prefers to stay at home only and shall not cross boundary (Niranjana, 2001: 65). Sex workers who challenge moral boundaries, are out of the familial structures and are confident of their sexuality pose a moral aberration to the society.

In the context of the community female sexuality then gains legitimacy only in the context of marriage and childbearing and therefore, divorced, unmarried, widows, deserted- single women are perceived negatively as they represent not only independence and but also are potential candidates for ‘uncontrolled sexuality’. The community and society has institutionalized ‘legitimate sexuality’; where sexual desires are to be expressed only with the institution of marriage and in the context of procreation. Therefore sex workers, who through consent engage in sexual activity, and are located on the margins of the institution of marriage challenge the patriarchal constructs of good women. Therefore such a framework pushes the sex worker to the margins where they have to negotiate socio-cultural spaces organized around norms of morality, stigma, shame, honour and patriarchal values. Thus sex work is considered problematic and unnatural as it not only projects independent sexuality of women, which challenges the ‘bourgeois’ notion of controlled sexuality but that women willingly offer her body as a service for monetary gain- shows women are judged by the society to be ‘debased’.

What is interesting to note is that men operate under different values and normative structures. As Seshu (2012) argues what is problematic is that the same society while rejecting sexual independence among women, accepts and endorses multiple sexual partnerships among male. Such double standards are structured within the frames of patriarchy that renders sex work a moral issue, where women are framed within binaries of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ women.

The sex workers organized under Veshya Anyay Multi Parishad (VAMP), Sangli, challenge this moralistic position of the community. They state that they have to negotiate and deal with public perception of them as debased individuals on everyday basis and thus demand that there should be:

•   Recognition of sex work as work, thereby making it decriminalized. Such a perception would help them claim their rights as ‘workers’. For the sex workers, sex work is ‘dhanda’- that is business where they exchange sexual service for monetary benefit. The perception of sex work in terms of livelihood would provide a basis for organizing them for their very existence (Seshu 2012: 38).
•   Legalization of this business will not help women involved in this business. This is because through such laws the state would have more control over sex workers (through the power to issue licenses). Further it would increase their vulnerability to police violence.
•  According to the sex workers of the VAMP collective, one needs to question the attempt of mainstream patriarchal society to control, regulate and abolish the institution of sex work. In doing so they seek to; question the hegemonic notions of sex and sexuality, and displace it from the moral and reproductive paradigm.
• A brief reading of the statement of the VAMP collective gives us more sense of what the sex workers organisation demand. According to VAMP (VAMP Statement, pp 36),

‘We believe that a women’s sexuality is an integral part of her as a woman, as varied as her mothering, domestic and such other skills. We do not believe that sex has a sacred place and who would have sex for reasons other than its reproductive importance are violating this space…or that if they choose to make money from the transaction they are immoral or debauched’.

The above analysis clearly states that people who challenge the normative notions of sexuality such as sexual minorities, sex workers, HIV positive people, especially AIDS affected women and children are being pushed to the margins by a society that has questioned and negated their very presence. The lives of these people living in the margins often involve living and dealing with poor health, financial exploitation, physical and sexual abuse, but as Seshu (2012) states that these abuses are not particular to sex workers, but it is the result of the stigmatization and marginalization of sex workers in Indian society. Thus sex workers experience the institution of prostitution in complex ways, negotiating spaces and struggles for survival.

Section 3: Security, Spaces and Segregation

In the discussion on gender and negotiation of public space, an interesting study is that of Shelly (2011), where she locates gender in public transport through an ethnographic study of the Delhi Metro services. The discussion of women’s safety in public spaces, and the challenge that women face in accessing public transport services has been long drawn out. Studies have clearly shown that insecurity in accessing public transport is one of the major challenges that women face. Such insecurity hampers women’s access to public spaces and they have to constantly negotiate such insecurity. In this context the question of to what extent does having a special ladies coach in Delhi metro service provides space to women passengers is an interesting question.

Shelly states that while making the policy, the concentration was on how transportation infrastructure can be made cost effective. She cites that work of Fernando and Porter (2002), who studied transport with gender perspective and argued that gender concerns was not fully debated in discourses in the context of transport, particularly public transport. Further even within the debates on gender and development, issues of mobility and access were missing. Such an absence was problematic as Iga (2002) argues that as culture and transport are closely related with each other it is futile to separate the two while initiating a debate on accessibility to transport. It has been observed that the cultural constructed values with regard to ‘superiority’ (comes with freedom) of men and ‘inferiority’ (comes with restrictions) of women, which can be seen while travelling. One also needs to recognize that rural and urban women have different transport experiences. When it comes to travel to city, women find it difficult to travel freely to new area or if alone as her spatial range was limited and thus, one need to look at such gender inequalities (Desai, 2007).

Drawing from the works of Jagori, a NGO in Delhi working on issues of gender and violence, Shelly (2011) mentions that before train services, women travelled via DTC (Delhi Transport Corporation) buses or blue line buses. These journeys were filled with challenges as they were harassed, (mostly sexually) by men either verbally, or silently (through the stare, the gaze) or physically by brushing or inappropriately touching them. Buses generally were not safe for them, raising question on gender and harassment. An attempt was made by the NGO to conduct training to conductors, bus drivers to fight against violence (Jagori, 2007), but still the question of accessibility to public transport remained a major question for women.

In such a context of insecurity the Delhi Metro which was inaugurated on December 24, 2002, becomes crucial. Where were then the various ways through which a semblance of security was initiated for women? Shelly (2011) argues that in the metro services special sections of the platform was marked where women coach stops. This ‘women only’ section of the platform became a secured space for women as compared to buses, where such separation was not there. Further the women’s coach also became a space for organizing awareness of health issues (particularly reproductive) through advertisements. What was crucial was that women now could get liberation from dependency on the other (male), by being able to travel on their own safely to city using the Delhi metro. Additionally the situation was improved by hiring women staff in metro transportation such as drivers, security guards, and so on. This reinforces one of the claims of gender and space discourse that people and social identities are determined by the physical or spatial environment (Desai, 2005, cited in Shelly 2011).

Drawing on Bourdieu’s concept of habitus, Shelly (2011) argues that one needs to be aware of how a spatial classification is fundamental to one’s social and cognitive map, providing individuals with a set of parameters within which to deal with everyday lives and situations. Thus in Delhi metro’s special, women coach that prohibits entry of men, allows women the freedom to wear clothes and accessories of their choice (including shorts). Feminist scholars and geographers have stated that power dynamics gives importance to two things-one access to and two control over space (Paul ,2001, cited in Shelly 2011). As the coach has a majority of women, they get power with the capacity to protest vocally. Further the train is controlled space and therefore gives women more security than bus as offender cannot run out of the train.

As women have a separate platform to stand and a separate coach for themselves, they do not have to worry about how to deal the crowds. Because of this it is not necessary for women to be constantly worried about security. Thus one could observe a visible transformation in their conduct, decorum and even in physical looks including the attire, to fit their own notion of expressivity in this new space. Also cultural rules that structure the gathering of women are not applicable here and they talk, laugh, sit and express themselves within any inhibition as they engage with each other in public spaces (Dube 2001; Shelly 2011).

The above discussion reveals that one way in which the state deals with women’s access to safe places is by ‘segregating them’. The convention that gets institutionalised is that if women have to feel safe and secure then they require ‘special women spaces’. As a result it is accepted that feelings of insecurity and experiences of harassment is a natural aspect of public spaces, which are not segregated. Though having special spaces in the public transport system is a welcome intervention, it does not address the larger question of security of women in public spaces in general. Women still have to negotiate the spaces, with great deal of ingenuity and struggle.

Conclusion

In this module one could observe that access and use of spaces is a contested arena. Our use and experience of spaces is organized around not only our identities, but also how these identities are perceived by others. The perception, attitudes and anxieties with regard to people’s conception of ourselves, renders the usage of the public spaces fragmentary for many. In this our bodies, clothes, language, accessories, and body language are few among many other things that play an important role. This process of ‘othering’ as mentioned above is also structured around caste, class, ethnicity, normative sexuality, race, gender, religion, region and many others. The overall idea that seem to emerging is that citizens at the margins have to fight and negotiate to belong to the spaces, because the larger trend is to push them to their ghettos and question their ‘very belonging’ in the spaces.

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