Unsafe by design: Bad infrastructure keeps women watching their backs – fixing this would be a start

Imagine in a hospital there is an on-call room for doctors. Imagine that it is next to the nurse’s station where there is usually a lot of activity and people awake even through the night. Imagine now that this on-call room has about six to eight beds and two or three clean toilets and changing rooms. There are lights and one dim light is on at all times. Imagine that the door of this on-call room has a clear glass window on the top half of the room creating cross visibility. Imagine that there are such on-call rooms on each floor near the nurses station, and there are separate such on-call rooms for women, men and a gender neutral one for those who would like to use it – one may as well dream big.

Now, imagine that such on-call rooms had existed at the RG Kar Medical College and Hospital.

The last few days since the August 9 rape and murder made headlines, there is a renewed debate on rape culture and the violence that women face, and a more specific conversation on unchosen risks faced by women doctors in in India. Gender inequality and its concomitant cultures of misogyny is something that needs long-term...

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