Gendered Spaces in City Improbable
About the Map
Khushwant Singh's City Improbable is a collection of short stories about the city of Delhi, written between 1190 and 2010. This map is based on 32 such stories and tells a story of these stories through the lens of gender and spaces. As you scroll down, click on the specific layer on the box beside this console for each section. Each section presents a picture of the presence of males and females in the public sphere through different layers. The map is based on the data collected for the places seen and mentioned by each gender inside and outside Delhi. A strong depiction of the society and the relationship between public and private spaces in relation to gender is revealed through this mapping of literature. You may choose to unselect the layers you do not wish to see as you go along.
Note: All inferences made in this project are entirely based on data collected from City Improbable only.
Places Seen In Delhi
The first glance at this map tells the gender-biased story of public spaces in Delhi. The city is largely “seen” by males. If you use the timeline slider, you will notice that the stories only have males seeing Delhi until 1938. The public landscape becomes visible through the narratives of women writers only after 1938.
Area Spanned
While the area spanned by the females is broader than males, males clearly write about more spaces. The females are few, and only scattered. Such a distortion is metaphorical of the society today. Even though it may seem as if the laws of the land are changing with regards to gender equality, somehow a patriarchal structure still seems to be upheld.
Places Seen Outside Delhi
If you now view the places seen outside Delhi, you will immediately notice that over a span of 820 years, not even one of these female writers has seen a place outside Delhi. This seems to be the case because women have always been tied to the private spaces of home. Even now, women are either reluctant or held back by the society to venture out in the name of security. It may be interesting to note that 32 countries (including Iran, Qatar, and Bahrain) in the world still require women to take their husband's permission to work.
Places Mentioned Outside Delhi
A similar trend is observed for places mentioned outside Delhi. The number of places even mentioned outside Delhi by males in the stories is larger in number than that mentioned by females. However, note that feamles reach further out to the West than males.
Places Mentioned in Delhi
Interestingly, the number of places mentioned in Delhi (depicted by the smaller circles) by female writers is slightly higher than that of males. It is interesting to note that even the mention of places both inside and outside Delhi by females begins only in 1939.
The Private and the Public
The map depicts that in this collection of stories, women physically occupy very little public space as compared to men. The ratio for places seen in and outside Delhi between males and females is as follows:
The data collected for places seen is where the writers were at, physically. Therefore, there may be a distortion in that the location could only be their homes. You may hover over the points to see the quotes related to each location to gauge the context. Not only this, the lesser number of females may also be due to the fact that the lack of education for women restricted them from writing before the late 20th century.
Interestingly, the number of places outside Delhi mentioned by females is much higher than places seen, but continues to remain lower than those mentioned by males.
While there are many mentions of places inside and outside Delhi by females, extremely few are seen as compared to men. It is almost as if the women see only through the men.
This gender-based distinction seems to be a clear reflection of the workforce participation rate in India released by Census 2011:
A comparison with the Census gives us a fairer understanding of this literature. The society today still has a huge gap in the number of males and females who get out of their private spaces. This anthology of short stories written by refuges, travellers, residents, and invaders of the city reflects the societal trends and structures spanning over 800 years. It gives us a deeper insight into the relation between Literature and the society. The data collected for places seen is where the writers were at, physically. Therefore, there may be a distortion in that the location could only be their homes. You may hover over the points to see the quotes related to each location to gauge the context. Not only this, the lesser number of females may also be due to the fact that the lack of education for women restricted them from writing before the late 20th century.
On a general map, it would have been difficult to understand the correlation between gender and spaces; this map clearly points out that the conventions of the public and the private with respect to gender are still very much in place even today.
Credits
This map has been created for a course on Digital Humanities at Ashoka University. The data was collected from Khushwant Singh's anthology and then visualised to come up with interesting trends and observations. I would like to extend my gratitude to Professor Joost Burgers and Teaching Assistant Saloni Bhogale without who this project would have been impossible.
References
Census of India, 2011, https://bit.ly/2wn9ONZ
Singh, Khushwant. City Improbable. Viking, 2001.
WeForum, https://bit.ly/2DDhRJN
Contact Information
Yashi Jain
yashi.jain_ug18@ashoka.edu.in