Adarsh Women’s College in India has banned female students from wearing jeans, t-shirts and short dresses to help them avoid being verbally, physically, and sexually abused, college head, Alaka Sharma told Dawn.com.
The college enacted the new dress code on the heels of the brutal gang rape and murder of a 23-year old female university student in New Delhi this past December.
Girls attending the college, who are between 16 and 19 years old, claim that this new dress code is an unfair punishment rather than a source of protection from harassment. Each time a girl breaks the dress code, she will be fined 100 rupees (approximately 1.8 dollars).
Alaka Sharma told Dawn.com that short dresses lead to harassment from men, from verbal abuse to sexual assault.
Sex crimes against women in India are often blamed on the women themselves, usually because of their attire or behavior. According to the Globe and Mail, some Indian politicians have called on schoolgirls and insisted that they refrain from wearing skirts, to dress soberly, and to avoid venturing out at night.
“Rape is never about the clothes a person wears. Women have been getting sexually assaulted, harassed, and raped even back when they were wearing corsets and ball gowns,” social activist blogger Ainee Fatima said.
“Even in Middle Eastern countries where women dress in religious attire, such as the burqa or the hijab, they are still subjected to this treatment.”
Fatima said the proper approach to dealing with an issue like this is to hold the rapist, or potential rapists, accountable for their actions by teaching them that rape is unacceptable.
“We need to begin at the base and begin teaching concepts like why slut-shaming, misogyny, and victim-blaming is problematic and we will not make progress until those issues are properly discussed,” Fatima said.
Sharma insisted that jeans and other “western” clothes invite attraction and distract students.
According to Sami Safiullah, a Human and Organizational Development student at Vanderbilt University, violence in South Asian societies is a disastrous side effect of British rule and bureaucracy.
“South Asian societies have inherited this incredibly potent and harmful authority/subordinate complex in which the authority must constantly exercise their superiority and demean their inferiors,” Safiullah said.
“This can be seen . . . in the prevailing male chauvinism that dictates that a man is permitted to show a woman her right place in society.”
