WWith a rape occurring every 16 minutes, violence is one of the biggest deterrents for women working in India. On the eve of India’s Independence Day, August 14, tens of thousands of women took to the streets of the eastern Indian state of West Bengal for a “reclaim the night” march, following the brutal rape and murder of a junior doctor in Kolkata.

But we’ve been here before – too many times. Most notably in 2012, when we protested the murder of a young paramedic in Delhi. Jyoti Singh was gang-raped by multiple men on a moving bus and left to die in the street.

The incident brought out hundreds of thousands of women to protest and demand a safer environment, forcing the central government to strengthen laws, including criminalizing stalking.

It was a turning point in many ways, we thought. But the statistics remain grim, like the rape reported every 16 minutes in 2022. And here we are again – another turning point?

Has anything changed since 2012? I covered the Delhi protests extensively for Time magazine, both as a reporter and as a woman working under the pervasive fear of violence, especially in public spaces. The collective emotions at these marches were a heady mix of fear, anxiety and disappointment.

In the intervening years, many other incidents have tested our patience. There have been some protests and more government engagement about women’s safety – and yet here we are again. Women are still angry, scared, anxious and disappointed. We are still asking for justice. We are still protesting against this culture of violence that limits our lives.

Is it this fear that keeps Indian women away from formal work? I have felt fear throughout my career – navigating predominantly male-dominated spaces; from streets to fields to shops to offices.

It haunted me from the pornographic jokes my male colleagues felt they could share in the newsroom to the sexual advances of my manager. Of course I complained. Of course nothing was done. Of course I was the one who had to resign.

Did this affect my ability to reach my full potential? Of course. Not only was no action taken on my complaint, no other media outlet would employ someone who blew the whistle on the misogynistic nature of Indian newsrooms. But I had just returned from a stint at the BBC World Service in the UK and I saw things differently.

I had unbridled hopes for my life in India as a journalist and as a woman. I was ready to stand alone and fight it out, but I was young and foolish. My perspective had changed; the country’s had not.

I could have stopped working at any point during this period, but I didn’t.

Was I being harassed again? Every time I went back to my newsroom job. That’s why I’ve had more freelance assignments in my career than full-time positions.

I survived, not because of institutional measures that provided me with a safe environment, but because of my personal perseverance, determination and – undoubtedly – ​​my social privileges and luck.

But every trip I’ve taken, every late night at work, has been accompanied by a deep sense of discomfort and vulnerability. This constant fight-or-flight instinct is exhausting, and women often choose to stay home rather than go through the hassle of finding a job with security and safety.

Is it any wonder that India’s female labor force participation rate is so alarmingly low? As I discussed in my book Lies Our Mothers Told Us, gender-blind infrastructure is a major factor keeping women out of the formal labor force.

TToday, India is enrolling more girls in schools and has the highest rates of female STEM majors in the world, but the transition from education to work remains dismal. As of 2023, women will represent just 19% of science workers and 27% of STEM workers, a stark disparity in a field that is critical to innovation and progress.

Women often choose informal but flexible jobs that they do from home and where they have some control over their environment.

At just under 33% in 2023, India’s female labor force participation will lag significantly behind the global average of 47%. If India is serious about achieving its ambitious target of 8% GDP growth, it will need to increase its female labor force participation to 43.4% by 2030.

Deloitte’s Women @ Work 2024 report found that 46% of Indian women are concerned about safety at work or on the road.

A 2021 report examining the role of safety in women’s decisions to work found that “an additional crime per 1,000 women in a district reduces the expected probability of employment by 6.3 percentage points among women aged 21-64. According to the 2011 census, about 50% of India’s 586 million women belong to this working-age category. This implies that for every additional crime per 1,000 women in a district, about 32 women are deterred from entering the labor force.”

Public space and workplace culture in India are built around the needs of men, and women are set up for failure at every turn.

In Kolkata, the victim was taking a nap after a tiring day at work. Government hospitals in India are often overcrowded and understaffed, so she had to sleep in a seminar room – why were there no proper rest rooms for women working night shifts?

This is not special treatment; the least a country can do is create workplaces that cater to the different needs of both genders.

Every time a woman is attacked or murdered, the story is still about what she was wearing, why she went out, who she was with. But women are not the problem. Rebuild existing workplace structures and make them work for all genders.

India has a slew of laws that protect women: the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005; the Dowry Prohibition Act, 1961; the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013; the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, 2006. Laws that loudly proclaim that India is a society that cares for its women. Amendments have been passed to strengthen the fight against sexual crimes and to impose stricter punishments, including the death penalty for rape of a child under 12.

There are other response mechanisms. There are safe city projects, forensic labs, cybercrime portals, DNA analysis units – all in the name of making women safer. And yet here we are. The violence continues unabated.

Reducing crimes against women is not just about laws and crisis centres – as crucial as they are – it is about tackling the deep-rooted misogyny in a patriarchal society like India. For social change, we need to invest in women’s organisations, because they play a key role in communities.

Efforts to get women back to work have focused on maternity and childcare benefits. These need to be addressed, as does the burden of unpaid care for women. But if we don’t address violence against women in public spaces, all these other efforts will remain ineffective.