WHEN it comes to women’s clothing, everyone has an opinion. Recently, two separate incidents were making the rounds on social media — and everyone had an opinion to share. The first involved a woman at a private software company being asked to remove her hijab at the workplace — or resign. The second saw women being denied entry to the Punjab Civil Secretariat by security guards since they didn’t have dupattas. These events would have been seen as ‘non-issues’ had anger not been expressed on social media. In the first instance, the CEO apologised; he was later asked to step down. In the second, the guard said he had no issue with what women wore, and was simply acting on the orders of a woman politician, who denied the allegation as ‘absurd’. These may seem like disparate events, but they share a common thread: the policing of what women wear, whether by removing articles of clothing or enforcing extra layers on women simply going about their work. Each society has a set of norms, and while norms change according to practicality and the politics of the time, most women (particularly in conformist societies such as ours) make choices within the ambit of those unwritten rules.

Attempts at policing women’s sartorial choices have come up time and again, but they have always been resisted. Linked to the need to ‘comment’ is an attempt to ‘control’ half the population because of the deep-rooted belief that ‘respectable’ women should not leave their homes. When they are out in public, they become ‘public property’, for others to leer at, reprimand or harass. But women are not public property, they are private citizens with minds of their own, whose choices (insofar as they don’t harm another) must be respected. They are also not infants, and they don’t need anyone’s permission to decide how to clothe themselves as they go about their day-to-day life.

Published in Dawn, October 21st , 2018