Fall out of Ankita Murder Case

03 Oct 2022 Fall out of Ankita Murder Case

Source: The Indian Express

News: Receptionist Ankita Bhandari’s murder allegedly by the resort owner and two of his accomplices created anxiety and fear in the minds of young women and their parents.

Reasons for small town migration of young women/ girls:

• Urban pockets are centers of hope for educated girls from rural areas.
• Upward mobility: Urban centers promise potential for socio-economic independence to young girls enabling the enhancement of social status of families.
• Lack of jobs in the local rural areas.
• Help young girls to move out of the rigid social control
• Dwindling rural household incomes making it necessary for young girls from rural areas to contribute to family incomes for survival.
• Lack of alternatives: Most girls can not migrate to big cities due to difficulty in finding jobs and places to stay and precarious  financial conditions. So, they prefer service sector jobs in small towns.
• Patriarchal control and cultural norms often prevent young women’s migration for employment.

Challenges faced by women in urban centers to gain employment:

• Multiple layers of vulnerabilities due to low number of women at work spaces, lack of support systems and inaccessible grievance redressal mechanisms along with the marginalities of caste, class, religion, region, disability, gender and sexual identity.
• Discriminatory nature of of  urban labour market: Even after greater diversification of occupations in cities, most of the women’s employment are concentrated in few occupational segments and sectors. 
• Manner of women’s exclusion/inclusion in urban employment: Age profile of the urban-bound women tilted towards younger age brackets due to increased education among girls and emergence of new services and occupations in urban centers.
• Highly unregulated nature of employment: Most of these women/girls are employed in informal services that are highly volatile in nature. 
• Social stigma due to stereotypes related to few jobs such as receptionist: Hence, women have to  fight against gendered notions both at the workplace and outside.
• Precarious work conditions and difficulty in accessing employment in urban areas due to lack of adequate information on the job profile, conditions of work including working time.
• Prevalence of non-uniform wage rates, the absence of defined working hours, incidences of violence and harassment including sexual harassment across sectors and locations.
• Challenge of working in highly-gendered or misogynist work spaces: Except few feminised occupations most of the occupations are male dominated which throws up specific challenges of its own.
• Renewed restriction on mobility of young working women and girls due to media coverage of Ankita muder case.
• Unawareness regarding women’s rights and laws around sexual harassment.
• Absence of support systems like  familial protection and lack of civil society and non-governmental organisations (NGO) working for the cause of young working women.
• Dysfunctional Local Complaints Committees and unresponsive police behavior towards women employed in informal and unorganised sector. Hence, most women do not report their complains regarding  physical and sexual violence.

Way forward:

• Coordination between state, private employers and co-workers to build institutional support systems based on empathy and shared experience both inside and outside the workplace.
• Mechanism should be built involving all stakeholders to ensure justice, job security, physical safety, mental well-being and social acceptance for women.
• Ensure proper implementation of  POSH Act 2013 for regular reporting of sexual harassment cases at workplaces.
• Local governments along with private organizations can build sufficient numbers of working women’s’ hostels.

Article:

1. A jolt to the dream(Neetha N.)
2. What Ankita Bhandari’s death reveals about patriarchy in the workplace(Somaya Gupta).

Article Link: 

1. https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/uttarakhand-ankita-bhandari-murder-8179569/ 
2. https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/what-ankita-bhandaris-death-reveals-about-patriarchy-in-the-workplace-8178485/ 

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