Gendering roads: rescripting risk, safety, and pleasure while driving in India

• In Event: Gender and Place

Abstract

In this paper, I interrogate how and why urban roads are gendered through a focus on the emotional and affective registers of driving in the city. Drawing on ethnographic research on driving (and riding) conducted episodically between 2017-2025 in the southern Indian metropolis of Hyderabad, I re-examine risk, safety, and pleasure on the move to critically examine how they shape, and are shaped by, gender relations, ideologies, expectations, and experiences. In particular, I emphasize the role of emotions as enmeshed with and produced by materiality and infrastructure – from the smooth expressway to the pervasive pothole – in the consolidation of gendered subjectivities. I first probe the circulation of thrill through masculine place-making in the city. I then move onto analyzing how the English word “confidence” consolidates the experiences and narratives of women drivers and commuters and pushes us to reconsider the very meaning of risk, safety, and pleasure on roads. Ultimately, I argue that roads are not just an inert backdrop in the cacophony of urban life but actively contribute to personal and relational emotional landscapes.

Author

• Sneha Annavarapu, National University of Singapore