On 8 March 2023, the Initiative for Gender Equity and Sensitisation (IGES) at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (IIT Delhi) organised a “Women’s Night Walk”. The explicit goal was to get everyone to “think about the gendered experience of space.”
The silences and commotions of the walk were recorded by Khushdeep Kaur Malhotra, a geographer and researcher at STEMtheGap, a project based at IITD that aims to understand the experiences of women in STEM institutions through a multidisciplinary approach. Khushdeep was studying the effects of campus layout on the experiences of male and female students. An excerpt from her field notes reads as follows:
The walk began a little after 9:30 pm opposite the popular Amul tea and snack shop near the library, where students often congregate in their free time and after hours. A handful of students and faculty joined, carrying a large banner and some smaller posters in support.
About ten minutes into the walk, as the group marched towards the institute’s only co-ed student hostel, raising slogans of “azadi” (freedom), three male students – casually joined in, chatting amongst themselves. Rohan whispered, “Jao azaadi maango” (go ask for freedom). Abhay replied, “abbe bol mat bhai” (don’t say anything brother), to which Mihul added, “Galat jagah pe bol raha hai” (you’re speaking at the wrong place). Then, the trio sniggered.
The procession then reached the co-ed hostel lawns, and paused for reflection and dialogue among the participants. As students, both male and female, shared their experiences, several boys from the men’s hostel opposite these lawns watched in amusement from their hostel balcony, occasionally catcalling and hooting at the group. When the walkers glanced at them, they hid. Eventually, a woman from the group retorted, “Come join us!”.
For several women who exchanged knowing smiles afterward, this interaction was the perfect demonstration of the necessity of “walking the night” to reclaim the campus. Moments later, Purvi, one of the student organisers, remarked in her speech about the male gaze that follows women everywhere on campus: “It’s the eyes, it’s not the crowd”.
This vignette is an example of how mobility in elite engineering institutions like the IITs is gendered. Such experiences, however, are not limited to IIT Delhi alone. Gender segregation is often in-built into the design of science institutes, particularly in student residential areas, as Chayanika Shah notes in her book Space, Segregation and Discrimination (2021). Chayanika and her co-author Chinmay Shidhore use the example of IIT Bombay, where one woman hostel stands alone at one end of the institute, distant from the rest of the men’s residences, to underscore how “isolating [women] from the larger student community in the way that campus geography does, marginalises them even further.”
A photograph from the 2023 night walk that shows both male and female students congregating. Credits: Initiative for Gender Equity and Sensitisation, IIT Delhi
As a student goes through their everyday life, the infrastructural design of the campus contours a student’s social world — facilitating some conversations, while constraining others. At IIT Delhi, Project STEMtheGap undertook a study in 2023 to understand how the space, layout and infrastructure of the engineering campus produced different experiences for its male and female students.
Our study found that the design of the campus space inhibited its full use by women. It also imposed limits and challenges to their social and intellectual lives on campus.
Polarities of the premises
…while a male student can attend a sporting event or a student club at his ease, a female student must trek for a kilometer and a half to do so.
The IIT Delhi campus spans 320 acres. The primarily residential campus consists of about 12,000 students across its undergraduate, Master’s, and research programmes. About 30 percent of the student body comprises students enrolled in the four-year-long Bachelors of Technology (B.Tech) program. They reside in 13 hostels, two of which are for women, and the remainder for men.
The hostels for men and women are located more than a mile away from each other. The women’s hostels are closer to the academic block, while the men’s residences enjoy proximity to both sporting and recreational facilities. In other words, while a male student can attend a sporting event or a student club at his ease, a female student must trek for a kilometer and a half to do so.
As a result, the built environment of the institute nudges women to keep to academic practices, even as it lets the men flit between academics, recreation, and sports. The result: a holistic experience–readily available to men–is harder to come by for women.
Layout of IIT Delhi campus depicting the distance between male hostels (left end) and female hostels (right end). Source: Project STEMtheGap
To understand how this distance and contrast manifests in their lives, we asked 80 students to sketch their everyday movement on a map of IITD, and mark the sites they frequented for work, leisure, studying, socialising, and meals.
Comparisons between the markings of male and female students emphasised the expanse of the men’s movements and the limits of the women. Barring work and formal interactions that require all students to assemble at the academic area, male students tended to use more of campus space for everyday activities.
Representative sketch by a male student; cross denotes areas where a student doesn’t typically go, here: girl’s hostel to the right. Source: Project STEMtheGap
Representative sketch by a female student; cross denotes areas where a student doesn’t typically go; here, most areas to the left of academic area. Source: Project STEMtheGap
The patterns of leisure and socialisation, which included both organised and unplanned conversations, were particularly telling. Men reported using various sites, including their hostels, the student activity centre, and sporting facilities. Female students on the other hand reported using only their hostels and a handful of adjoining common spaces. This meant a large part of campus remained out of their footing.
Similarly, when we asked female students to highlight spaces used for networking, we found that most female students ventured only within a radius of 500 metres from their hostels – a boundary that did not apply to their male peers. This suggested the role gender played in determining where a student would go on campus.
Networking (left) and leisure (right) patterns of male and female students. Shades of green (spread out) represents higher proportion of males. Shades of red (limited to women’s hostels and adjoining areas) represents higher proportion of females. Source: Project STEMtheGap
The patterns of movement we observed can be traced back to the setting up of IIT Delhi 65 years ago, when concerns of ‘safety’ of women on campus dictated infrastructural decisions. As an institute engineer told us: “[…]when [the IITs] started, we wanted girls to be in a very safe kind of environment. We used to keep girls’ [hostels] close to administrative authority because we will have, by default, some security in that area.”
Keeping to their own
…the design of the campus space inhibited its full use by women. It also imposed limits and challenges to their social and intellectual lives on campus
To understand the effects of how male and female students in IIT Delhi are able to access campus spaces, we held in-depth conversations with five female students in the B.Tech programme. Their responses told us that many women choose to not travel the large distances required to access sporting or recreational spaces.
Women recounted feeling reluctant to travel a mile for activities such as gymming and playing sports. Anjali, a third year BTech student who held several positions of responsibility in student clubs, told us:, “The SAC [Student Activity Centre] is 200m from the boys’ hostels, and from the girls’ hostels, it’s about a kilometer apart…it takes a lot of effort [for women] to…go there and play.”
Coupled with a discomfiting masculine culture that is dominant on campus, this seems to have resulted in a siloing of peer groups. Women students pointed out that the all-pervasive male gaze made it harder for women to participate in sports and recreational activities. Sayami, a PhD student who heads one of the women’s sports teams, told us, “Once, there were men in the gym at SAC; the girls came, were very hesitant—(and) they left. There are, I’m sure, a lot of unheard incidents like this one,” she narrated.
Boys will definitely want to collaborate…amongst themselves because it’s easier to…travel amongst their hostels. They’re all nearby, and they have this notion that [women] will be a liability to the team itself. — Madhura, a B.Tech student at IIT Delhi
Further, we found that the difference in male and female students’ access to campus translates into a difference in how men and women interact amongst themselves, and with each other. Several women lamented the absence of the ‘hostel spirit’ – a sense of bonhomie – among residents of the women’s hostels while the same appeared to be prevalent amongst residents of the men’s hostels. They told us that men—with greater spaces and mobility at their disposal—cultivate much more of this collective enthusiasm.
There are more men in any given batch (~80%). This, combined with their greater access to the campus space, means that they prefer to group for academic exercises within themselves. According to Madhura, a female B.Tech student, “Boys will definitely want to collaborate…amongst themselves because it’s easier to…travel amongst their hostels. They’re all nearby, and they have this notion that [women] will be a liability to the team itself.”
We also found that the unhindered access for men and proximity of the men’s hostels to the SAC – a prominent site for student interaction – also translates into stronger relationships with senior (male) students. These relationships transcend their time at IIT and evolve into long-standing mentor-mentee equations.
In contrast, female students noted how the limits imposed by the layout impinged on the assistance and information they received. According to Anjali, she “did not know about [internship opportunities] until one of [her] friends got it.” “So that is what we as women miss out on…lack of awareness I would say and lack of interaction with seniors,” she added.
A long road behind, and ahead
Our study revealed that in IIT Delhi, two campuses unfurl within one: smaller in size and feeble in scope for women, and bigger in dimensions and richer in possibilities for men. This difference is, quite literally, set in stone.
An erstwhile Dean of Infrastructure told us how they had not realised the importance of having a gender lens in planning campus infrastructure. He averred there was no one on their earlier committees pushing for equal access to female students. There prevailed a lack of awareness of gender issues within the infrastructure unit, which comprised mainly of men. The gendered patterns we observed in our conversations with students then were a result of blindspots in the infrastructure office and its committees.
The men’s hostels are closer to the Student Activity Centre, compared to women’s hostels. Credit: Raunaq Saraswat
It is only recently that an intent to course-correct has started to emerge. In 2023, for instance, the Department of Science and Technology of the Government of India asked institutes to self-assess their performance on gender equity indicators and bring about institutional transformations to improve the “intake, advancement and retention of women in STEM at all levels.”
In IIT Delhi, two campuses unfurl within one: smaller in size and feeble in scope for women, and bigger in dimensions and richer in possibilities for men. This difference is, quite literally, set in stone.
The IIT Delhi Gender Advancement for Transforming Institutions (GATI) report explicitly underlined the institute’s male-dominated approach to campus space and infrastructure design. In addition to the concerns mentioned in this article, the report also flagged issues related to the poor quality infrastructure for women (such as toilets and hostel conditions), the lack of supportive infrastructure (such as creches and daycare facilities for working mothers), and inadequate facilities for queer and transgender students.
Two years have elapsed since the IIT Delhi GATI report was first tabled. And while the Institute has begun to rethink and remake its infrastructure, addressing gender-related concerns has been a slow process.
In 2023, project STEMtheGAP and the Office of Diversity and Inclusion (ODI), IIT-D, organised a focus group discussion with female students, staff, and faculty. In this meeting, which was attended by senior administrators from the infrastructure department, the women attendees put forth their concerns and demanded an infrastructure plan that addressed those.
Later that year, ODI and Project STEMtheGAP hosted another meeting – this time with doctoral students – to find ways of fostering a supportive and nurturing academic environment for them.
At the time of writing this report, IIT-D has hired a female architect to redesign womens’ restrooms for accessibility and for taking care of menstrual hygiene needs. Simultaneously, women’s lounges for lactating women, expectant mothers, and those requiring rest during menstruation have been conceived. These rooms are expected to be ready for use this year.
The undoing of several decades of gender entrenchment is – slowly – beginning.
Notes: This story is based on the research conducted by Khushdeep Kaur Malhotra, Ravinder Kaur, & Nandana Sengupta at IIT Delhi as a part of STEMtheGAP project. It is part of ‘HumanIITies’, a special series co-produced by the STEMTheGap team at IIT Delhi and LabHopping Science Media Forum to highlight perspectives from the humanities at STEM institutes.
All names of students have been changed to protect identity.
