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Book Review
Creating a space for herself
CAVERY BOPAIAH
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Examination of the role of women as consumers and creators of the built space in India and South Asia
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GENDER AND THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT IN INDIA: Madhavi Desai — Editor; Zubaan, an imprint of Kali for Women, K-92, I Floor, Hauz Kaus Enclave, New Delhi-110016.
Rs. 545.
Many of us talk sentimentally about our homes and homemaker mothers, yet we forget that often our mothers have no legal right over their homes. Their claim to the place is through their service to the family and sometimes they are turned out with few consequences to the usurpers, be they husbands or sons. Disowning of women, in terms of place and space starts right from their childhood, when girls are reminded of their transitory place in their natal homes. Needless to say
, a large part of this is the legacy of our inheritance laws that were, till recently, biased against women.
Women’s space
Madhavi Desai, a senior adjunct faculty at the School of Architecture, Ahmedabad, has attempted to bring the feminist consciousness to the built environment. She looks at women as both the designers and users of space. Here, women’s space is defined as a voluntarily created “enclosure for support, relaxation, freedom, and self-expression”; and, the places that women are confined to represent “mechanisms of control in the domination of women.” Gender and the Built Environment is a broad compilation of articles dealing with gender and the built environment in terms of homes, public spaces, historical spaces, design pedagogy, women construction workers, and the liberation women feel in spaces they can be free in.
Both men and women enjoy, find religious significance or political meaning in spaces, but these understandings can be different for women. According to this book, a space that does not support gender equality is a gendered space. By that definition many of our public spaces are gendered, because women often feel unwelcome or have to tolerate some form of harassment in many of these places. To add insult to the injury, even by acknowledging a lack of safety we risk inviting more “restrictions, surveillance and control” from our patriarchal families. In its reach, the book has not neglected to mention the appropriation of spaces by men through urinating, a common occurrence in many public spaces. No amount of complaining on this score dissuades men from exercising their ‘right’, yet it constrains a woman’s freedom.
This book obliquely touches upon a pet peeve of mine. It suggests that women are more comfortable in an urban setting. Perhaps one reason for this is because, in rural areas, a woman cannot easily really relax outside her home. If she wants to enjoy the open air, or some leisure time, there are few places she can go to even if she is accompanied by her children or her husband. Unfortunately, in this regard, men do not fare much better except for access to the local arrack shop. Is this partly why there is so much alcoholism in rural areas, or why the young like to leave their villages and migrate to towns? Where, on an evening, can a woman relax, play or watch a film with her family outside her home?
Imposed hierarchies
The book states that the hierarchies that spaces impose are not just about power relations and the status of the users, but also about transitions from inside to outside, from public to private, from freedom to confinement, and such like. These hierarchies may change over time even within a house. For example, the kitchen which was undoubtedly considered a woman’s domain, in many middle class and well off homes, used to be located at the rear of the main house. Yet now, it has made its way to the living room in many modern flats where couples cook together, making it a less gendered and less private space.
Claim to space
According to Girija Shrestha, findings from a study in Nepal show that households with less gender disparity had more comfortable spaces in their homes. Perhaps, men should move over and leave the design decisions to their wives. I wonder then, if the matrilineal Kerala Nair house is more woman friendly? And, in a different vein, does the purdah system with its Zenana offer women a greater claim to space?
This is a nicely written book with a thought-provoking introduction and interesting pieces, but I wish it had a concluding chapter to tie up the different strands of thought. To me this would have made the book more coherent and given me more to take away. Notwithstanding this, the book should get planners, architects and designers of spaces thinking about how women can be made more comfortable in the places that are created for both private and public use.
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