ARCHITECTURE, AUTHORITY AND FEMALE GAZE

WOMEN'S CENTER FOR CONGREGATION AND DISPORT

City: Saugor, Madhya Pradesh

This holds for the colleges and schools in the area too where hawkers and vendors violate their boundaries with stalls of pans and beedi, creating spaces for men to gather and devoiding the women , their claim on the social space. It becomes all the more difficult to cross narrower, darker lanes imbibed with dead corners and empty plots , only to reach these institutes whose grounds and buildings remain unconnected to the city furthering the sense of segregation. Little Naira from the Mangalam Colony asks her mother to take her to the park which does not exists while Rukmani from the maid’s colony struggles to find a woman’s hospital to get her inner thigh injury checked. Reigning in chaos, the city also witnesses an abhorrent lack of spaces that can foster social and cultural engagement of women or even any public spaces over which they can claim their autonomy and express their ownership.

The prevalent status distinctions are also marked in the private realms where physical, social and cultural boundaries are first imposed. Women sit as spectators in the balconies or on the steps of the house and hide behind drying clothes while men work on the streets. Older women come to street corners , trying to chat under the trees away from the ‘male gaze’. Most women, in Sagar transgress boundaries to access workplaces or education at the minimum where their access to socially valued knowledge is often restricted and subdued and also their freedom to loiter in the city , if during day or at night, for simply enjoying is disregarded. To dilute the constructs of both the inner social segregation of space and outer ‘gendered settings’, a binomial process of inclusiveness is required to make women the active participants of the city.

How can architecture facilitate this binomial process of inclusiveness (catering to both Private and Public realm) for women to have ‘a democratic access to spaces in the city’?

[1] In ‘Why Loiter’ , a book as a result of The Gender and Space Project initiated by the authors Sameera Khan and Shilpa Phadke in 2015-2016 ,the idea of freedom of loitering in the city for women is discussed, in regard to architecture and urban spaces.

The idea of ‘neutral users of space’ in design often leads to overlooking certain ‘marginialized groups’ when architects and urban designers indulge in designing ‘spaces for all’. Disregard to questions of diversity in design for various genders, ages, sexualities give way to a ‘Patriarchal Capitalism’. In Indian cities, these marginalized groups are often women- looked upon as the passive participants of the city.

In this regard, Sameera Khan and Shilpa Phadke[1] in a study on Mumbai finely question the dynamics of women’s accessibility to public spaces pointing out aptly that it becomes important to ‘loiter’ in the city to express autonomy over space that otherwise would be held by the men who can often be witnessed having chai at the ‘pan gallas’ or sprawling on the public steps at the corner of the street extending their gaze to the passersby.

Precisely, these gendered approaches have consequences at various levels- social and physical, private and public. Gender has been seen as a socio-spatial phenomenon and physical segregation as a pressing reason behind gender stratification. Authors like Daphne Spain understand that women’s reducing access to socially valued knowledge allow men to reimpose power and subordinately lead to her lowered status and weakened sense of identity. In my opinion, this is also directly linked to women’s access to other public realms apart from their homes, educational institutes and workplaces.

In mid- sized suburban towns like Sagar, Women are not only commuters but essentially also consumers. While involved in activities of selling and buying in the ‘Shankar Bazariya’ and while at spaces like the bus stops that reek of ‘masculinity’, one can observe them negotiating for ‘space’. I observe the women putting on stalls only at the junction while deeper market lanes are occupied by the male vendors. The fear of violence prevent women from utilizing the intended equal opportunities that the city can offer.

Also, these public spaces do not specifically aid their experience. It is observed that women walk only on the edges and either in groups while shopping on the market street. Be it the 450mm footpath in rough concrete where the vendors who are mostly men sit and gaze down at women who struggle with keeping their saris and shopping bags in position, to having to cross the side walk by jumping on the sandstone pattas covering the nallas to reach the shops that sit on sloping plinths, the struggles of accessibility come to the fore.