No Place To Go: How Street Harassment Restricts Women’s Freedom

If you have been following what has been happening in the news, Reddit, X, or any other social media platform since early September, you would have heard of the road incident in Gurugram where a female biker was knocked off her bike in an incident of road rage. Her name is Shivani Chauhan. That she survived with no serious injuries is truly a miracle. Her GoPro footage from that accident was incredibly hard to watch.

What was truly impressive was not just that she survived that fall, but that when she got back up, she made sure everyone heard about it. She spoke at length about what preceded the accident: the hostility, the need to control her movement, the desire to hurt her when she was simply riding her bike on the road, and the complete lack of accountability afterward, where neither Kalyan Bainsla nor his three friends felt any need to stop and check on her.

Shivani told her story in full on Femtalkies: watch the episode.

Shivani Chauhan’s experience as a woman biker highlights the broader challenges faced by female bikers in India. Women riding motorcycles in India often feel particularly unsafe because they become targets merely for appearing to use public space differently than society expects. Women’s mobility and their usage of roads typically involve a passive-passenger experience. When women drive or ride motorcycles, they are claiming space on the road on the exact same terms as men. They are asserting their freedom to ride and demanding basic respect for boundaries. That independence often does not sit well with aggressive male drivers. In that sense, female bikers or drivers in India have a wildly different experience on the roads than men.

And that is the crux of the problem. Sure, everybody needs to exercise caution, but for women, even after taking all necessary precautions, an irresponsible driver can easily turn a routine commute into a traumatic experience. This mirrors what so many women endure across public spaces in India. Monday could be unremarkable, and on Tuesday someone could assault you with a four-wheeler, completely unprovoked. So why is women’s road safety important? Because right now, a woman's safety on Indian roads is less about what she does and more about who she has the misfortune of running into.

To address what challenges women bikers face in India and answer how women can feel safer on Indian roads, we have to look beyond individual incidents and confront the systemic hostility of our public spaces, where gender equality is a foreign concept.

Road safety in India has always been a major problem, and public space has long remained a guarded domain where female presence is unwelcome. Independence for women has always been a distant ideal. But that is now changing ever so slowly in urban environments. Yet even in major metropolitan centers, the illusion of urban security falls apart. Industry surveys across Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, and Chennai reveal that over half of women feel unsafe traveling alone, with nearly three-quarters fearing physical violence after dark. This persistent threat forces women into defensive survival strategies: a vast majority refrain from asking strangers for directions, relying instead on family networks or navigation technology simply to avoid becoming stranded in hostile territory.

Using public transit is not a reliable safety strategy either. While millions of women rely on buses, local trains, and ride-hailing services daily out of financial necessity, an overwhelming majority report feeling insecure using these modes of transportation at night. Even in cities with robust transit reputations like Mumbai, more than nine out of ten working women carry constant anxiety about their personal safety the moment they step outside their homes.

The harassment that creates this hostile environment is widespread and varied. Women are routinely subjected to catcalling, crude remarks, inappropriate touching, stalking, and outright physical assault. This persistent ambient violence breeds a deep distrust in institutional protection. A staggering majority of women have no faith in law enforcement's capacity to curb street harassment, leaving them to navigate public space entirely on their own terms.

Society attempts to resolve this crisis by teaching women to manage risk rather than dismantling male aggression. Women are socialized to map their movements around safe and unsafe zones, carefully justifying their presence in public through acceptable motives like employment or education. When safety is framed strictly as risk minimization, any woman who steps outside these arbitrary boundaries is blamed for her own victimization. A male taking risks is viewed as adventurous, while a female taking the same risks is looked at as reckless.

This social surveillance extends heavily into private life. Concerns over reputation and community judgment dictate how women navigate their daily routes, as public visibility is constantly linked to moral character and marital prospects. It obviously goes without saying that using public spaces for pleasure, rest, or self-expression is strictly prohibited, especially after dusk.

There is also a financial and developmental cost to this problem. Research demonstrates that female students routinely sacrifice educational quality and future earning potential just to secure safer transit routes. Young women will choose lower-ranked academic institutions or pay double the standard tuition in travel costs simply to minimize exposure to street harassment. This spatial tax not only limits individual career trajectories, peer networks, and lifelong economic security, but it also creates broad productivity losses across the economy.

This financial and psychological tax is a burden borne almost exclusively by women, an invisible cost built into the fabric of their daily survival. Ask yourself: How many men do you know who take even half as many precautions before leaving the house after sundown? What is keeping men safe on the streets at night where women aren't?

These are not rhetorical; they are urgent, foundational questions that demand honest answers. If the private home remains statistically the most dangerous place for a woman to be, and stepping into the public sphere means knowingly courting violence, then where exactly are women meant to go?

Cover: Femtalkies Season 2, Episode 1, with Shivani Chauhan.

References

• Bharucha, J., & Khatri, R. (2018). The sexual street harassment battle: Perceptions of women in urban India. The Journal of Adult Protection, 20(2), 101–109. https://doi.org/10.1108/jap-12-2017-0038
• Girija Borker. (2018). Safety first: Perceived risk of street harassment and educational choices of women. 15 January 2018.
• GTO. (2011, December 9). Over 50% of Indian women feel unsafe on Indian roads.
• Mahale, A. (2019, March 13). 9% Of urban Indian women feel safe in public transport: Study. The Hindu.
• Phadke, S. (2005). ‘You can be lonely in a crowd’. Indian Journal of Gender Studies, 12(1), 41–62. https://doi.org/10.1177/097152150401200102
• Sethi, R. (2018). “Out of place” women: Exploring gendered spatiality in Delhi. Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 54(3), 398–410. https://doi.org/10.1080/17449855.2018.1461983
• Tech, T. (2011, December 9). 51% Women feel unsafe on Indian roads: Survey. Times Of India. The Times of India.