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Estaba leyendo sobre una exposición de arte en Singapur cuando me topé, al final del todo, con una obra que me llamó mucho la atención. Se llama Gendered Strategies for Loitering y es obra de Shilpa Phadke, Shilpa Ranade y Sameera Khan. Trata de las ciudades de Singapur y Mumbai, y sobre si las mujeres pueden estar en un espacio público sin hacer nada. De la descripción que hace Priscilla Bracks:

Their basic premise was that in Mumbai whilst men regularly loitered in café’s, on the street etc, smoking, chatting and enjoying the act of doing nothing, women were generally denied this pleasure because a woman seen to be doing nothing in public was viewed suspiciously, or worse, as a prostitute. This attitude I think speaks volumes of the objectification of women when a women cannot simply ‘hang out’ without casting doubt upon her respectability. To be in public, women must be seen to be moving with a purpose. Ie she should have some reason for being there. So if a woman is waiting for a friend on the street, she would stand at a bus stop and not on the street corner, to clearly demonstrate she is waiting for something. The artists contrast this with loitering behaviour in Singapore which is apparently gender neutral. The difference in Singapore they say, is that no-one loiters. Everyone must have a purpose and move about the city in a very defined, well regulated way. Extra cold air pours out of ducts above the entrances to railway stations to discourage loitering at the doors. Little footprints painted on paths direct on which side one should walk. Even foreigners living in the city who have a culture of loitering, do so in regulated way – the Indonesians gathering in City Plaza on a Sunday, the Indian and Tamil constructions workers in Little India on a Sunday. I actually experienced this work on a Sunday and went out to Little India to test the theory. Though the streets were a sea of humanity, I was one of only 4 women I saw walking around Little India that evening – an uncomfortable, but revealing experience.

Ya era consciente de que no en todos los espacios públicos puedes estar simplemente sin hacer nada, según una combinación de circunstancias culturales y organizativas. Pero dejando de lado los problemas de seguridad pública, es fascinante comprobar las grandes diferencias entre sexos ante el simple hecho de estar sin hacer nada en un lugar público.