Redefining Women's Safety in India | Up for Discussion with Priya Varadarajan

As the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women we are thrilled to be joined by Priya Varadarajan, a dedicated advocate for gender justice and the founder of Durga. With over 23 years of experience in governmental affairs and civil society, Priya shares her insights on empowering women and girls to build agency and combat sexual violence in public spaces.

In this episode, we discuss:

• The inspiration behind Durga and its mission to prevent sexual harassment.
• The normalization of inappropriate behaviour and the need to shift societal narratives around women's safety.
• The importance of education and awareness in preventing violence against women, particularly focusing on sensitivity building among men.
• How Durga addresses intersectionality by working with the most vulnerable members of society.
• The role of corporate environments in safeguarding against violence and promoting awareness.

Join us for a thought-provoking conversation about advocacy, community engagement, and the essential steps needed to create safer public spaces for everyone!

[Introduction] (0:00 - 0:27)

This is CB Up for Discussion, a podcast series from Community Business, where we tackle DE&I and wellbeing hot topics with special guests from across Asia.

[Bhavya]

Today we are delighted to be up for discussion with Priya. Priya is a dedicated advocate for gender justice with over 23 years of experience including 15 years in governmental affairs, trade relations and civic societies where she has driven strategy, programme development, funding and regulatory initiatives. She has spent over eight to nine years in grant making in organisations like Azeem Premji Foundation and more recently at Co-Impact.

Thank you for being here Priya and it's a pleasure to have you. So let's dive in. Priya, I would love to know that I know that you are a founder of Durga, an initiative that empowers women and girls to build agency and address sexual crimes.

Could you tell us a little bit more about this and what was your inspiration behind Durga given your years of commitment to gender justice?

[Priya]

Thank you so much Bhavya and team for having me. It's really really important to have these discussions and I'm glad you're doing it. So what we do really in Durga is working on prevention of sexual harassment that women, girls and vulnerable people face in public spaces and so what we mean by prevention is for us not to be a part of the statistics of I too am one among the million women who get stared at, glared at, whistled at, touched, groped etc.

in a public space and today a lot of that culture is normalising such behaviour because staring, glaring or whistling even if you go to anybody with authority would say, chua toh nahi hai na, so why are you complaining, right? So it's a normalised culture so one is we want to break that and we believe that if we don't address this inappropriate behaviour at the first stage then what we do is all the other women empowerment programmes are a farce and what we truly are doing is empowering men to keep doing this repeatedly and what leads to a stare and glare today becomes touch, grope, severe molestation, abuse, gang rape etc and then murder, right? So that's really what we want to stop and third is we also want to shift the narrative around this because today there's a lot of victim blaming and shaming if you go tell someone that I was groped in a public place the first thing you're asked is why were you in that public space, what time of the day was it, what were you wearing, why did you even have to think you should be there, you know? So there's a lot of the onus on us as women, girls and people and we want to shift that narrative to say that a woman's safety is not a woman's problem, it's everybody's problem, right?

And therefore a large part of our work is focused on getting everyone to be responsible and accountable for our safety particularly men because public spaces are designed by men for them and getting men to understand their entitlements and know how to really sort of co-occupy these spaces becomes critical. So that's one part of your question. The other part was why Durga, right?

And I wish there needn't have been a Durga but however I think it's a lot of personal experiences, a lot of bottled emotions, a lot of spaces that I would have loved to belong at and be myself at. I haven't done consistently over a period of time like from my earliest memory of say class 7-8, I remember holding on to my school bag and clutching on to it so that nobody sees my chest and therefore I don't get touched in a bus, right? And why should girls live that life?

And I very, like I thought I completely got moved when my daughter who was I think five years then told me and this was really the sort of we need to do something now was she told me when she saw a school bus full of boys come in and I mean pass on the road and she said oh okay there's a boys school bus and I don't want to name the schools and she said now I need to look down. So I said why do you need to look down when you see a boys school bus and she said no that's what our bus teacher has said because otherwise the boys will stare at us. So you see at the age of four and five girls are forced to lose their space, right?

Looking down means I've lost that ability and space to look around me, right? It means I don't belong. So these were some of the instances in any number.

I'm sure you have enough and more experiences yourself. So I just felt like armchair activism won't do and getting on the ground and really shifting and having uncomfortable conversations with people who will stop wanting to be my friends for the rest of their lives is fine but this needs to get done.

[Bhavya]

That's amazing honestly and that's so inspirational because like you said I think there are million instances which I know which has happened with me and happened with my friends where we are so uncomfortable in these spaces and we have taken the onus on ourselves to ensure that our protection is there without understanding and realising that it is a societal problem also and with that I would like to ask my second question which is knowing how important education and awareness is in preventing violence against women, what role does Durga play in that area especially when we need to educate men or making men more aware?

[Priya]

The education is a very big word. I wouldn't say we're like educating anybody, right? Like who are we to educate anyone but what we really want to highlight is to build sensitivity, to build your lives with respect and empathy and so therefore a large part of our role so we work a lot with men and we work a lot with women as well and so the underlying factor in both spaces is sensitivity building to really sort of make space for other people where you are, right?

So and then to be sensitive about the experiences of other people, to be sensitive for the needs of other people and I think that's what is a very feminist way to be and yes, I'm not scared to call myself a feminist. In fact, I'm very proudly saying that I am a feminist because it's experiential, it's inclusive and it's right space, right? Right space for everybody.

So what we really do when we work with women is to build awareness around so the sensitivity element is the same for everybody but when we work with women, we build awareness in women to be able to recognise themselves as equal citizens, right? The women we work with in the informal sector first of all hesitate to even tell us their names because that's not how they're called. Their lives are very different from all our lives.

So to first build respect for yourself, understand and be aware that you are a constitutional citizen of this country and you hold all the rights as much as any other cishet man leads and holds today and so that's the first awareness and then to get them to recognise the inappropriate behaviours they've been dealing with up until now. The discrimination, the violence, the sexual harassment and get them to know that all of this is inappropriate and then finally knowing it is insufficient but knowing what to do about it. How do you address it?

How do you address it for yourself? How do you address it for others? How do you actually engage and build allyship with one another so you can take up each other's cause and finally we also do a lot of mental health support because survivors of all of what I've just spoken about need mental health support.

So that also comes from a very feminist lens of keeping it community centric, keeping it needs-based, being more proactive in it etc. So that's the kind of work we do with women. Now with men it's a little different.

The first part of our work is in the awareness side is to get men to be aware of their privileges. Privileges and entitlements that are handed over to them intergenerationally on a platter to say dude you belong, dude this place is yours, dude go and conquer. So how do you get out of all of this and say that we all belong and if I don't make space for another person then they can never belong.

So that's what we need to build as awareness in men and then we get them to start recognising how this has been playing out so negatively for the women in their lives and how patriarchy is toxic. We are not against men, we're against patriarchy and so how patriarchy leads to misogyny and how the two hand in hand is like a double-edged sword on fire and how it's so toxic for everybody. So that's the core part of what we do in our work with men and then we build allyship.

So we don't tell men that the whole world is burning and suffering because of you but we say how can we all co-create a space where we all thrive together. Today you seem to be having more power but can you use that power more positively rather than you know more rather than being a perpetrator or rather than being discriminatory. So this is the kind of thing we do and the core part of everything is to be an active bystander to intervene when you see others in similar situations like how can you advise others or how can you actually intervene in a difficult situation and so on.

So it's far from it is education but I wouldn't say that we educate them. I think we enable this and that may be a more real thing for us as well to understand and acknowledge.

[Bhavya]

Yeah no I love the fact that you said that you enable them because that is extremely extremely true. I also love the fact that you use the word we work with the community we work on the ground that's something which is extremely necessary because I think we need to acknowledge that the privilege that we have and people who are working in from the who are working on the ground who are who are coming from marginalised communities the intersectional issues are very very different. So how does Durga as an organisation include them into these awareness sessions this mental health awareness sessions how do you integrate them into your work?

[Priya]

Sure I think it's a very important question and very well thought about and that's where my point of being feminist comes in right. So every programme of ours is designed keeping the community at the centre and who is this community the way we identify the community is extremely intersectional. So the most vulnerable person in a community because of their caste and therefore class perhaps even religion, economic background, the geographies they come in within even a city like Bangalore, the opportunities they've been a part of, the kind of jobs that they hold all of these matter for us.

Their disabilities, sexuality, everything matters when you understand who this programme should be very impactful for. So if our work does not pick off all of what I'm saying then it's not being feminist right. So when we build our outcomes and say that women and girls so the outcome for us is women and girls should be able to more confidently and comfortably occupy public spaces right.

So therefore the most important thing there then is who is this woman we are talking about? Is it Bhavya and Priya? No, actually we really don't work with Bhavya and Priya.

We only work with a woman who will not be represented by anybody and will not get her voice across anywhere right. So therefore all our work is at the community and how we chose to work with the community is because we're talking about general gender justice in public spaces and interestingly women don't occupy public spaces like where does Bhavya and Priya occupy public spaces? We only navigate through those and come to work right.

The ones who actually occupy these public spaces are women in the informal sector right. So they are your construction workers, they are your street vendors, they are the women in BBMP, the power economy right. The ones who pick up dry waste.

So these are women with whom we work because if a public space needs to be gender just then these women who use these public spaces for their work need to feel equal and that is what our core work is. So that's how we sort of therefore we cannot design a programme if it does not mean anything to this community. So we don't design a programme and start to think of okay how does this woman get into this programme or how does this individual get into the programme but the crux of the programme is only for them.

It's about how the rest can get integrated into it.

[Bhavya]

That's amazing and that's I love the fact that you are working with different diverse backgrounds and I love the fact that you have said words like disability and intersectionality, sexuality. These are very very this in the most academic way to say it is called a double disadvantage which is something which is something that we need to actually deep dive and talk about and we need to talk very openly and talk about their problems. So I'm extremely extremely happy that about the work that you're doing and it's extremely inspiring for me too.

Thank you. Moving on to my next question. So at Community Business as an organisation we work with a lot of corporates and large organisations.

So what role does workplace play from safeguarding as well as awareness driving standpoint and is there an issue that you have seen before in the corporate environment?

[Priya]

I'm going to be very candid right. So the places where you know a lot of these issues around inclusion, diversity, lack of safety are most brushed under the carpet are corporate houses because they reek of masculinity and patriarchy and colonialism right. All like just sort of tied and braided together with the best flowers and decorated ready to go for a wedding.

That's what corporate houses essentially have become unfortunately for people and this very same people who actually bring wealth into the corporate houses right. So what I'm and I've heard so many things because we also sit in posh committees of organisations of corporate and trying to really genuinely see that the posh act or the law means something for women in the workspace because we're talking about a time when the female labour force participation rate keeps falling. It gets worse and worse.

We were discussing just before this conversation about what it means in agriculture, what the pandemic has done to people. You know many people have lost jobs with women, have lost jobs in an irreversible way right and therefore it's very important to embed corporate or workspace values around what it would mean for the most vulnerable person. Similar to the way we embed our programmes around what it means to the most vulnerable person outside of a building, corporates need to do the same on what it means for the most vulnerable person inside the building right and ensure consistently that they are well represented or they have a good idea of who are their employees and what are their backgrounds coming from and therefore gender, caste, disability, everything matters right. But do we do that right now or we don't because for me I feel very uncomfortable having a gender agenda with an inclusion right like why would you include me? I'm a woman and I've always belonged like why are you putting me in your inclusion agenda?

This place belongs to me as much as it belongs to you. However we are in an inclusion agenda or a DEI agenda of an organisation because the organisation is so right okay so we're all men here, this old boys club, let's just get some women into it to do some I don't know what balancing and most of the times that balancing means can you have a prettier smile, can you dress better and you go and give the flowers when the VIP comes or you cut the birthday cake after the birthday person has cut it or whatever right it's frills. I think till corporates change that culture we will continue to keep dropping off the female labour force like dandruff right and that should not happen. When will it not happen is when you look at us as people, when you look at us as people with potential and give us all that is required so that we can thrive because I know we can right and that's what really needs to be built and embedded in corporate.

But one of the other stumbling blocks here is it's not like I know Bhavya you and I when we get up and get ready to go to work and when you came to do this big show for you and I'm coming and sitting on the same big show for me, we need to think about 20 other things right it's not just prepping for the show and coming. I would have had to do a lot of work at home, I would have had to worry about what I'm going to wear because I would have to worry about who I'm going to come across on the way, it's about is my cleavage shown, is my legs seen, am I sounding provocative, all of that we need to battle with and then come and do the show. But most men will just get up, get dressed in whatever they would want to and come and do the show.

So unless we look at the intersectionality even there and build our workspaces to acknowledge that, we will not be able to really sort of say yes women have arrived and moved forward and moved ahead in the workspace. There will always be four examples in one company and two and a half examples in another company and then blank right and safety becomes an even more critical part. So after all of this, we hear post Me Too that corporates would say, I don't want to hire women because they will throw a dart at me.

Is it some throwing a dart at you or something or they'll take leave for pregnancy or they'll take leave for menstruation or whatever and just sort of you know put people away in margins. Then you're not creating an environment where you get the best talent to be economically sound even you know.

[Bhavya]

So yeah that's very very wonderfully put and I think the three points that you said just hit the mark. I mean I have seen it happening in so many organisations myself, it's amazing. My next question to you is what are your hopes for the future regarding gender justice in India and how can individuals and communities contribute to this vision?

[Priya]

Yeah, so I don't want to leave sounding like you know all is lost but however before I come to my hopes, just a fact check that things are not as great as they should have been right. I mean things are not going anywhere where it should be because very safe secure environments for people are also becoming unsafe, are also becoming toxic, are also becoming unhealthy and then we just constantly hear of excuses, we don't see government action. Just the place where you come from everyone knows what's happened in the hospital, nothing's really happening, cases are getting closed and this I mean anyone who reads the issue knows that this doesn't even make sense like why did this why did we even let this happen right.

So there's one at the institute government level, there's one at the institutional level which we spoke about earlier and then at the individual level like what do we do as individuals when we see inappropriate behaviour because we always say okay we saw this but let the police do something or we saw this let somebody else do something or we saw two people having a fight or maybe it's a personal issue but no the moment it's coming to a public space it's become your issue as much so how much of ownership and responsibility are we taking is really really critical and the moment we take that I think many of the other things will fall in place but addressing your question of how I feel I think I feel very hopeful not hopeful about my generation or even the generation's after mine but of the youth now you know because they we've given them I'm sure my generation given them such a insane horrible shitty world to inherit and put so much of you know burden on them whether it's about behaviour whether it's about patriarchy or the planet we've just given them lots of shit to deal with but they seem to be in this what's there to lose mode right whether you and all the most wonderful movements of questioning governance questioning protocol questioning policy are all anchored by youth so I feel very hopeful and because they have very limited things to lose it's my generation that had everything that we built for ourselves and we're so scared to lose everything and our reputations but youngsters have very little that they've got from us and therefore they feel they have very little to lose and they're so woke about knowing things about knowing right from wrong not shying away from talking about it and not shying away from being torchbearers as well right so I feel very hopeful therefore that all is not lost and we are letting the new generation of people who are in their early 20s right now to really sort of take on something of course they don't have much of a choice but yeah it still leaves me with hope

[Bhavya]

yeah when you say hope also it just reminds me of how the RJ Kar case like I'm a person who is who's born and brought up in Calcutta and I know that how the full city came in a standstill to actually make sure that the government was doing something like there were protests every day all the doctors went on strike it just showed that how much like even if like how much we can do when we come together so just wanted to like know your perspective also like what are like one of some of the pressing issues against violence against women in the workplace especially in

[Priya]

of the RJ Kar case yeah I think fundamentally it's the idea of do women belong in the workplace right if if corporates and CEOs of corporate realise that women actually contribute equally if not more to their organisations just as much and I'm not commodifying women here but I'm actually throwing it back at the leadership if they felt that women were important equal contributors they will treat us well they will put every single policy rule in the planet and follow everything in the rule book to make sure our lives are good and they will encourage us today because patriarchy perpetuates across all boardrooms they don't see that value right and also because all of these boardrooms are flushed with men they don't want to see the value right there's one thing about genuinely not knowing and the other thing is acting like you don't know and the latter can never be corrected right it's an attitudinal problem so till people are okay with women leading women everywhere they're not going to do things that make it comfortable for us to thrive right so even if you take out the way judges are elected in our country it's a collegium system right and that system basically has only men in it so how do you then expect um chief justices and others to be women when only men keep hiring and they only hire each other so that system if it's if it's that way in the most superior system which is judiciary for every single law and human rights in the country then how do we see anything you know sort of having a rippling effect at any other level i think the acceptance of women becomes really critical and then the safety or the opportunity or the growth path or breaking the glass ceiling or everything is going to happen automatically it need not it didn't have to get done for men it was just there right nobody had to make these very specific roles for men because knew exactly what to do so the men are not dumb but they're just playing dumb because of this whole thriving thing right and then the second thing is also about the women who actually gets to these leadership roles like there'll be just one off woman in this or any board meeting that you like 15 men and one woman it becomes her responsibility to advocate more like you have got that seat of privilege so what are you doing with it like why do you come back to control in a masculine way why can't you change your style and be more nurturing to listen more um to take the voices that are not in that boardroom be that advocate for those voices i think that also is not happening enough you know we talk a lot about it we know it's the right thing to do but when we go into that room we know we need to hold our seat and so we just end up like listening and nodding and that needs to change as well so these two attitudes need to change and i feel largely

[Bhavya]

the rest can follow absolutely that's actually very insightful and thought-provoking i mean just as you were saying it i was just like running it in my own head and i was thinking of how how i think of at least three to four examples and it is just so hidden and ingrained that it is like we will never think that it is that it is away from the normal right it has just been so normalised and so conditioned in us and i think that is fine part of the problem so thank you so much for that insight honestly it has been pretty thought-provoking so finally a question that i would like to ask our guest what do you think is the biggest way that we can make a ripple of change throughout the

[Priya]

society i think i would say embody that change right and in our work in the context of safety it would be be an active bystander intervene when you see something inappropriate whether it's in your workspace whether it's at home or in a public space it all starts with us thank you

[Bhavya]

that's amazing now i would like to throw this question out to all our audience if you have something that you would like to add please do share with us

 Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.

Thank you.