Male Trainers & Tailors Under Scanner In UP - Will It Help Women's Safety Cause?

Babita Chouhan, chief of the Uttar Pradesh Women's Commission, recently said that gyms catering to female clients must employ female trainers. If any woman wishes to train with a male trainer, she must submit a consent letter. She also proposed that men should neither tailor clothes for women nor cut their hair as part of an initiative to protect women from "bad touch" and avoid any "ill intentions" by male workers in these professions.

Patriarchy: How About Nipping The Rot In Its Bud?

This definitely on the surface seems like a brilliant way to ensure the safety of women. The bright side is that this will also provide more employment opportunities for women. But the question that remains unanswered is that, given a hypothetical situation wherein a woman has found merit in a male trainer, tailor or hairdresser over a female counterpart and at some point faces harassment or sexual assault, if she musters the courage to register a complaint, will she be told by the authorities that “you signed up for it?"

This decision may be a need of the hour in Uttar Pradesh as its reputation precedes. The state tops the list of complaints with the National Commission for Women. 

Across India the categories of crimes against women are concerned, the highest number of 3,567 complaints were received in the “right to dignity”. There is another category that involves harassment other than domestic violence. This was followed by 3,213 complaints of domestic violence. The complaints of dowry harassment stood at 1,963, molestation at 821, police apathy against women complaints at 524, and rape and attempt to rape complaints at 658, the data showed.

Looking at other crime details there were 495 complaints of sexual harassment, 339 of cybercrime, 345 of stalking and 206 of honour crimes. In 2023, a total of 28,811 complaints related to women were registered by the NCW. Given these alarming numbers and the fact that there are too many unaccounted cases that go unreported, India needs to have stringent laws to sensitise men towards women and equality. 

The root of these problems remains entrenched in patriarchy which is equally bad for women as it is for men. As a young girl, if she happens to be less feminine than the given standard of how a girl should be, she is labelled as being a tomboy. For boys who cry, they are called a sissy. The school playground has an unspoken code of conduct that each child subconsciously abides by. 

Herein lay the faulty foundation of discrimination against genders. 

It is still a far-fetched idea/dream for equality, but maybe what India must start is to nip the rot in its bud. The education syllabus needs to include chapters on gender equality, identity and sexuality even in remote areas. 

For girls, once they attain puberty and get their periods, it’s considered a rite of passage to womanhood in the same light for men it is about being able to finish a fight in school and only then he will be able to join the group of being a “macho man.” 

This warped sense of being “male” needs to be addressed in society. The entitlement based on physical strength needs to be replaced with stringent standards of introducing social interaction and respect for women. 

The question that suffocates, is who will bell the cat? Many at home have highly aggressive fathers or patriarchal mothers who raise and endorse values for their male child with an entitled sense of being the more important one in the family versus the daughter. 

To weed out all of this isn’t an easy task. But surely to decrease the number of men from these job opportunities and categories where dealing with women is prohibited, won’t stop the molester on the road, the sexual assaulter or the local eve teaser. It may, in fact, increase the frustration within the family members of tailors and gym owners who may have sons and not daughters to take their family business mantle ahead. 

Well, we all know a frustrated regressive male can be a dangerous social animal, given his sense of entitlement in the world. 

Views expressed are the author's own.

Mohua Chinappa is an author, and a poet and runs a podcast called The Mohua Show and The Literature Lounge. She is also a member of the London-based non-profit award-winning think tank Bridge India.