Don’t ask women to shrink, secure their space

As more and more women enter public life, this model of paternalism that speaks in the language of protection must make room for one that focuses on being enablers instead.

3 min readSep 25, 2026 06:00 AM IST First published on: Sep 25, 2026 at 06:00 AM IST

Nearly 14 years ago, what was meant to be an ordinary evening out for a young woman and her friend ended in a horrific ordeal — the December 16 gang rape in the Capital ignited nationwide protests, bringing the issue of women’s safety to the forefront of political and civic discourse. The alleged gang rape of a 17-year-old girl at a park in Southeast Delhi earlier this week shows that the questions raised by the 2012 incident and the anxieties it exposed have hardly receded. In the protests by students of Lady Shri Ram College and other Delhi University (DU) institutions, old concerns have resurfaced: Ill-lit streets, inadequate police presence, unsafe pedestrian routes. The latest National Crime Records Bureau data reinforces this: Delhi recorded 13,396 crimes against women in 2024, the highest among metros. It also recorded 1,058 rape cases, the highest among the 19 tracked metros. In a nation that aspires to women-led development, this is both a deeper failure and a sobering contradiction.

That these vulnerabilities persist points not to a lack of laws or schemes, but to failures of implementation, maintenance and accountability. In the aftermath of the 2012 incident, the Nirbhaya Fund was set up to finance measures, including better public infrastructure, to improve women’s safety. It has remained consistently underutilised. Following the latest incident, three men have been arrested. The Delhi L-G has ordered a safety audit of parks across the city and the deployment of pink booths — police assistance kiosks managed primarily by women personnel — measures that should have been par for the course, but remain sporadic. The fact that the accused pretended to be policemen when they apprehended the survivor and her friend also points to another failing — the moral policing routinely carried out by cops in public spaces made the deception possible.

As more and more women enter public life, this model of paternalism that speaks in the language of protection must make room for one that focuses on being enablers instead. That means functioning streetlights, usable footpaths, reliable late-evening public transport, working CCTV systems, emergency response mechanisms, and regular safety audits. That means re-examining ideas of masculinity in society. DU attracts students from all over the country. Across campuses and in other public spaces, women cannot be expected to secure themselves by shrinking their lives. They should be able to live fully — work late, travel alone, meet friends, protest or simply walk home without having to look over their shoulders. The real measure of nari shakti is not how often the phrase is invoked, but whether women can claim public spaces with the same freedom that men take for granted.