Jeans in our Genes...

Four colleges in Kanpur are only the latest educational institutions to ban female students from wearing jeans, among other western attires, on campus. Kanpur is far from the only city in India to have implemented such draconian dress codes for women. Varsities in Hyderabad and Lucknow have also put in place measures to bar women from wearing outfits of their choice because university officials believe women in western dress are more vulnerable to that peculiarly Indian phenomenon called 'eve-teasing'. This is outrageous. It goes without saying that young adults of both sexes should have the freedom to decide what they want to wear to college. The colleges that have barred their students from wearing jeans in the guise of protecting them from sexual assault are betraying their parochial mindsets. It is ridiculous that these institutions continue to use a euphemism eve-teasing to refer to crimes as serious as sexual harassment and in some cases, assault. That phrase is as anachronistic as the attitudes of the people who run these institutions. Our cities are unsafe for women, which is an aspect of the everyday discrimination that Indian women face. Why must female students be punished for the harassment they suffer at the hands of their male counterparts? Authorities at universities, whose job it is to protect their students, would rather blame women for dressing 'provocatively'. To compound the irony, many of the strictures are being imposed by colleges that are exclusively for women, with restricted entry for men. At the bottom of the draconian dress restrictions is a refusal by college authorities to treat their wards as adults, even if they have the right to vote. Studies have shown that the way women dress has no impact on how vulnerable they are to sexual assault. Yet officials persist in acting as if women and their fundamental freedoms are the cause of the problem. After this latest move by Kanpur colleges, some quarters are asking that funding for colleges that try to dictate dress codes be cut. That is a good idea, particularly if it is combined with strict punishment for men who sexually harass women. Things will only change if the perpetrators of the crime are punished, not the victims.