Inspired by the Safe Delhi Campaign for women’s safety at public spaces, the Savitribai Phule Gender Resource Center (SPGRC) has initiated an audit to gauge the relative safety of women in Mumbai.
Such an audit, which is being conducted in the city for the first time, is limited to two wards of the city: F and G. The SPGRC hopes to expand the scope of the audit gradually.
“The safety audit is an attempt to make the primary stakeholders—the women—empowered to make the government accountable for providing necessary infrastructure on which women’s safety depends,” said Anisha Padhee, the programme officer for the audit at the SPGRC.
“Things such as street lighting and car parkings on both sides of the roads may not seem related to women’s safety to the administrators, but they are. We hope that the data generated from this audit will help policy makers, students and researchers understand such issues,” she added.
The audit involves three components: focused group discussions with women, safety walks across specific areas at specific hours and interviews of women. Recently, the SPGRC had its first ‘focused group discussion’ with 20 women.
Incidentally, the SPGRC is run a group of BMC employees who came together to start the first ever gender resource centre.
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