Shova Shrestha of Tarkeshwor in Kathmandu felt uncomfortable during her maths classes. For some reason her teacher always found a way to pat her back and on occasions his hand brushed her thigh.

“I saw him smile every time his hands brushed my thigh and I don’t know whether I dread his smile or him caressing my thigh the most,” said 13-year-old Shrestha, while talking to a group of local volunteers who had come to collect the status women’s safety in the village.

Women’s safety audit is a study carried out by local people to find out places where women feel unsafe and reasons behind it.

The audit conducted in Tarkeshwor revealed that women felt unsafe in public places like open ground, local health post, temples, bus station and schools.

In order to raise awareness in the locality about women feeling unsafe in their own surrounding, a safety walk was organised in four wards of Tarkeshwor Municipality. Women carried banners stating that it was their right to walk without out fear in their locality and names of places they felt insecure at.

Safety walk was organised after a weeklong data collection, organised by Women for Single Women Group in association with UN Women, where women revealed their experiences of sexual harassment and eve teasing in public places.

Twenty-three-year-old Sanjita Timilsena, a participant in the safety walk, shared a similar story. She said she has to cross Radha Krishna Temple on her way to

college every day and that there were always a group of men hanging around ready to make sexual remarks on young girls.

Unaware of whom to turn to for help and the stigma attached with sexual assault, girls in Tarkeshwor had silently suffered these plights. They, however, found a collective voice through the women’s safety audit held this week, where they learned that many women in the village had undergone similar

sufferings.

“It is not just young girls but women in their forties and fifties also feel unsecure in such public places. But all were afraid to speak about it in public until they were interviewed by trained people from their own community,” said Uma Thapa of Single Women Group, adding they require massive awareness programme and  gender friendly policies to enhance women’s mobility and make them secure.

These public places have come under radar after a similar study conducted by a non-profit organisation, working in the field of women rights in the six Tarai districts, also indicated that women feel unsafe in such places. The study was carried out over a year in one VDC each of Kailali, Kanchanpur, Banke, Bardiya, Bara and Parsa. According to the study, 70 percent of women who were interviewed stated morning and evening were the time when they felt most unsafe. Similarly, a large number of women said they felt unsafe and were abused while travelling in public vehicles.