Are women in Delhi feeling safer?

- Manika Premsingh

Women are important contributors to the world, and indeed the Indian economy, but face challenges at multiple levels. These include lack of adequate social and infrastructural support for education and skill development, entry to the workplace, holding on to jobs, adequate representation at senior level in the work place, equal pay to male counterparts among others.

While much progress has been made over the past decades, there is much more that needs to be done, especially for developing economies like India. In this post, we look at how women feel about one specific factor that has been top of mind in the recent past for India - travel safety of women.

Six months after a horrific and fatal gang rape of a 23 year old student rocked the capital, we asked 30 women in Delhi and the National Capital Region (NCR) about their view on safety while travelling. The initial results of the Orbis Economics survey reveal that 70% of women in Delhi and NCR do not feel safe travelling in the city at all or do not feel safe a major part of the time. 

However, half the women do feel that some measures have been put in place to improve the safety standards on Delhi's roads. The other half, feels unequivocally, that there is absolutely no change. At any rate, the upshot seems to be - while majority of women do feel unsafe travelling in and around Delhi, a significantly lower proportion feels that nothing is being done about it. This is a positive development, even to a small degree. But it needs to continue to make a real change. 

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