Air India seat reservation for women: Why we want respect not reverence

Funny story – national carrier Air India now apparently has a full row reserved for women passengers in all its domestic flights. The third row from front i.e., 6 seats in Air India flights will now be reserved for females travelling alone. This move by the Airline to make their customers feel safer was announced earlier this week, by its virtue of its sheer lunacy got international attention. The Guardian in its report published on 17 January said “Country’s national airline acts after recent incidents of men allegedly groping passengers and cabin staff.” The USA Today report published on the same day said “Air India is adding a female-only row of seats on its domestic flights, though company officials insist the move is not in response to alleged groping incidents”.

Sure, it is unfortunate that because of few perverts, even at the sky men and women cannot be at ease in close proximity to each other. Whether this move is progressive or regressive is another question altogether. However, just segregating seats seems like a rather bizarre way of addressing the issue that women are not feeling at ease when sitting next to men. This way just the symptoms are being treated and not the cause of the disease. When airline companies are going to silly heights in order to cater to the needs of their customers, it’s high time we focus and bring change to where it actually matter.

Gender bias

Frivolous instances where unnecessary gender based differences were brought out by companies are many. Consider the case of Bharatiya Mahila Bank. Opened in 2013, this bank was initially reported as a bank exclusively for women. However, the bank allows deposits to flow from everyone, but lending will be predominantly for women. Whatever the intentions maybe, the segregationist approach to gender equality by this bank was bashed thoroughly.

The most obvious difference between genders is in their physical attributes. But for some strange reason, when it comes to health insurance, the necessary differentiation of having separate health plans cannot be seen in the offers given by most in the market. Except for a few like TATA AIG insurance’s Wellsurance Woman Policy or Bajaj Allianz’s Women Specific Critical Illness Insurance, hardly any insurer is providing gender specific insurance.

Unlike a flight where the purpose of all the people is to travel to a particular destination, the concerns a man and a woman taking a health insurance cover are very different. Women are susceptible to mainly eight critical illnesses during their lives’ course – breast cancer, cervical cancer, burns, paralysis, fallopian tube cancer, uterine cancer, vaginal cancer and ovarian cancer. Women’s bodies are as complex as their minds but the unfortunate fact remains that when it comes to addressing the areas where gender sensitivity is lacking, we are yet to fill in those gaps.

The inequality of pricing exists even in case of life insurance, where for the same age and risk profile, women are charged lower premiums than men. The argument in this case: women have a longer life expectancy over men. The one financial product which seems to be only for women, rather girl child is the Sukanya Samriddhi Scheme, which was introduced in 2014 and is tuned more as a savings tool for girls till they turn 18.The interest rate for SSA is 8.6% compounded annually. Apart from being the best interest rate among other savings scheme, it also provides tax benefits to the parents making the deposit is an added help.

Then there are credit cards that are women-specific. These retain all features of any other credit card, but throw in a few additional features such as more discounts on shopping at select stores that cater to fashion for women and other such girly-shopping discounts. There is no idea why some of these cards are pink in colour or are designed with shopping mnemonics. For those who recollect, until a few years ago, the tax rates for women taxpayers were lower than that for men. This was at a time when several banks were headed by women and corporate India was breaking the glass ceiling with more women at the top.

Right approach

Treating women differently by protecting them or even revering them, only promotes gender based stereotyping. In certain cases there is a need to treat women different than men —not because they are vulnerable, but merely because their needs are different. But for that, we as a society should learn that empowerment does not at all mean over-protection but rather sensitive treatment. As for financial equality – everyone needs to be educated about money and there should be no differentiation in that. And, this is no promotion for Dangal, but in recent times films are showcasing how well or better women are than men in their chosen field and why that should be the basis on which they should be offered products and services.

taenaz@outlookindia.com