A heaven for women

On the occasion of Women's Day, Close the Gap, an Oxfam initiative, posed some interesting questions in the social media: "Can women feel safe in Delhi when 95 per cent of police are men? Why do women make up less than 12 per cent of the Lok Sabha? Why are only five per cent of women in India's corporate a part of the top management?"

Just as I was pondering over these, my cleaner Anita walked in. I decided to pose Close the Gap's big questions to her. "How would it make any difference to women like me, if some upper-class women became heads of rich companies?" she asked doubtfully. "What would really make a difference to women like me is the inclusion of women in fields that concern us!"
 

Her first suggestion was that there should be lady bus conductors in all public buses. "Only women who have to travel in buses everyday will understand what an improvement this would make to our daily lives." She said fixed working hours made women like her easy prey for men on the prowl. "Every evening, I take the same bus at the same time after work to return to my R K Puram house. So many times, I've found the same men following me day after day." After the Delhi gang-rape case, she felt doubly nervous when she found herself to be the only woman in the bus. "But I can't afford any other conveyance, so I grit my teeth and wait for my stop." Anita said she'd recently turned down a lucrative job in Gurgaon, since it would have entailed too much travel. "I reckoned it was better to earn a little less, but stay safe," she added.

Delhi would feel safer to women like her, she said, if there were more women in the police force. "And while it will be great to see a lady judge bossing around male lawyers in courts, what would really help poor women is more female lawyers." Women in trouble often feel intimidated by male lawyers, she said. "For example, my husband is a drunkard and often forgets himself after he's had a few too many. I need advice about my rights; what recourse I can take if and when he gets violent - and about my custody rights in case I find the courage to leave him. I tried talking to a male lawyer once, but just couldn't tell him everything. If only I could speak to a woman lawyer..."

The last item on Anita's wishlist was more female doctors. "Every time I go to the free clinic, I end up seeing a male doctor. How can I discuss intimate things about my body with a strange man? So, I just say I've a vague ache somewhere and getting treated with a generic painkiller," she said. The last time she went there, she'd had the good fortune of landing a lady doctor. "It was such a relief to tell her that the weakness and aches I was experiencing were because of menstrual problems." As she finally managed to talk about her symptoms, the doctor diagnosed her as anaemic and treated her accordingly. "If I were to think of a heaven for women, it would have lots of women doctors," she said.

There was a silence in which we both mused upon our different ideas of what a heaven for women would be like. Then she smiled: "Thank you for asking me these questions. They've made me think about a lot of things. And even though I know these are all pipe dreams, they've suddenly made me feel a little optimistic about my future..."