Work From Home May Be a Way to Cage Women: Public Space, Safety

Source: Original editorial ↗ The Indian Express

The Lift Line

“We should be careful that technology does not become a more sophisticated way of putting women back in a way that looks less like confinement because the door is not visibly locked.”

Why This Editorial Matters for Your Exam

Ekta Chauhan, assistant professor at the Jindal School of Design and Architecture, O.P. Jindal Global University, writes in The Indian Express (posted 3 October 2026) after Lady Shri Ram College moved classes online following the rape of a minor in Aastha Kunj Park, about a kilometre away. Her argument, that work from home and online education have become a way to confine women while appearing to free them, is a GS1 essay on women and public space and a GS4 question on institutional responsibility.

GS Paper 1: Role of women and women’s organisations; urbanisation and its problems. GS Paper 4: Ethics in public institutions; attitude.

Background and Context

Element	Detail
The trigger	Rape of a minor in Aastha Kunj Park, south Delhi; Lady Shri Ram College (Delhi University) shifted classes online after student protests about safety
Pinjra Tod	Movement begun in 2015 by Delhi University students against discriminatory hostel curfews for women; “break the cage”; night walks to reclaim public space
The BPO decade	The 2000s business-process outsourcing boom normalised night shifts for young women and gave many a first taste of financial independence and mobility
The pandemic default	Online classes and remote work adopted in 2020 became the standard response to pollution, heat, disruption and now safety
The marriage market	The writer’s cousin was told at a “rishta meeting” that she may work from home “if she likes” because “aajkal ka mahaul kharab hai”

Data that bear on the argument (not cited in the column; Ujiyari’s additions). Time Use Survey 2024 (MoSPI): women spend 289 minutes a day on unpaid domestic services for household members against 88 minutes for men. PLFS 2023-24: female labour force participation rate 41.7 per cent (15 and above, usual status), up from 23.3 per cent in 2017-18, with much of the rise in self-employment and home-based work. NFHS-5 (2019-21): about 29 per cent of ever-married women aged 18 to 49 report spousal violence.

The Analysis

1. Protection as restriction. From hostel curfews to online classes, the instinct is the same: remove women from the risk rather than remove the risk. The writer names this a lockdown enabled by technology.

2. The home is not safe by assumption. For many women the domestic space carries violence, surveillance and unequal power; moving work there does not remove risk, it hides it.

3. The double shift. When a woman works from home she is rarely only working. The Time Use Survey numbers support the writer’s point: flexibility is a euphemism when care work is not shared.

4. What a campus is for. A university is where young men and women learn independence and negotiate citizenship. A feed of lectures delivers information, not that.

5. Institutional abdication. The deeper charge is that institutions use the online option to shake off their responsibility to make spaces safe. The pandemic “made us comfortable with this”, she writes.

Data and Institutions Vault

Prelims-grade facts:

Data:

• Time Use Survey 2024 (NSO, MoSPI): unpaid domestic services 289 minutes a day for women, 88 for men.
• PLFS 2023-24: female LFPR 41.7 per cent (15+, usual status), from 23.3 per cent in 2017-18.
• NFHS-5 (2019-21): about 29 per cent of ever-married women 18 to 49 report spousal violence.

Law and schemes:

• Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013: Internal Committee mandatory where there are 10 or more employees.
• Under Section 2(o) of the 2013 Act, “workplace” includes places visited in the course of employment and a dwelling place or house, so home-based work is covered.
• Nirbhaya Fund (2013): finances Safe City projects, One Stop Centres and the Emergency Response Support System (112).
• Safe City cities (eight): Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Lucknow.
• Article 15(3): special provisions for women; Vishaka v State of Rajasthan (1997) laid down workplace harassment guidelines.

Movements:

• Pinjra Tod (2015): Delhi hostel curfews; Blank Noise (2003, Bengaluru) against street harassment; Why Loiter? (2011, Mumbai) on women’s right to public space.

⚠️ Watch the trap: The rise in female LFPR to 41.7 per cent (PLFS 2023-24) is driven largely by self-employment and unpaid family work in rural areas, not by salaried urban jobs; the writer’s point about home-based work shows up inside the headline number.

The Debate

For the writer’s view. Each online shift is a transfer of the cost of unsafe public space onto women; the home is not safe by default; flexibility without shared care work is a double shift; campuses and offices are where citizenship is learnt.

The other side. Remote options have brought many women into work and study who would otherwise have been excluded; a specific threat near a campus justifies a temporary response; flexibility helps mothers stay employed.

The balanced verdict. Treat remote work as a right women can choose, not a default imposed on them; respond to threats by securing the space (lighting, transport, policing, campus security), and measure institutions by how many women they keep in public, not how safely they send them home.

How to Think About This

Ask who bears the cost of a safety measure. Closing a park, a campus or an office shifts the cost from the perpetrator and the State to the potential victim. A good safety policy puts the cost where the fault is.

Diagram-in-Words

Takeaway Box

• Trigger: LSR shifts online after a rape in Aastha Kunj Park.
• Thesis: online work and study have become a confinement that does not look like one.
• Data (Ujiyari’s additions): TUS 2024 (289 vs 88 minutes), PLFS 2023-24 (FLFPR 41.7 per cent), NFHS-5 (29 per cent spousal violence).
• Way forward: secure the space; make remote work a choice; count care work.

Sources: The Indian Express, MoSPI, Time Use Survey 2024, PLFS Annual Report 2023-24

Source: Work From Home May Be a Way to Cage Women: Public Space, Safety — Ujiyari.com | Free UPSC & State PCS Editorial Analysis

Key Arguments at a Glance

Ekta Chauhan argues that institutions now answer every problem, an unsafe neighbourhood, pollution, heat, by moving women’s work and education online, and that this digital lockdown, normalised by the pandemic, puts women back indoors in a form that looks less like confinement because the door is not visibly locked.

✓ Supporting

• After a minor was raped in Aastha Kunj Park, Lady Shri Ram College, a kilometre away, moved classes online in response to students’ safety protests; once again the solution to a woman’s concern was to lock her indoors.
• The Pinjra Tod movement and night walks sought to reclaim streets and reject the idea that women’s safety means restricting women’s mobility; in the 2000s the BPO boom, with night shifts, gave young women financial independence and a place in public space as equal citizens.
• Moving online assumes the home is safe and productive; for many women it is a site of violence, surveillance and unequal power, and paid work blurs into unpaid domestic labour; a university is a social and intellectual space where young people learn independence, not a feed of information.
• The expectation that women can “simply work from home” shows up in families preferring daughters to study close to home and in marriage negotiations where a bride is told she may work from home “if she likes” because “the situation isn’t good”.

⚠ Counter

Online options expanded access for many women who would otherwise have been kept out of work or college altogether, especially in conservative households and small towns; flexibility also helps mothers stay in the workforce. The problem is the default, not the tool, and institutions do have a duty to act when a specific threat exists nearby.

→ Way Forward

The writer asks that technology not become a more sophisticated confinement. Ujiyari’s synthesis: make public spaces safe rather than emptying them of women (lighting, transport, policing, Safe City infrastructure), keep campuses open with security measures, treat remote work as a choice women make and not a condition imposed, and count unpaid care work so that “flexibility” is not a euphemism for a double shift.