By Ila Ananya
After many fights and arguments being reported between male toll operators and motorists at the Kherki Dhaula toll plaza on the Delhi-Gurugram Expressway, 10 women have been employed to work at the toll plaza there. It’s the second toll plaza in Delhi-NCR to hire women.
They women started working at the Kherki Dhaula toll plaza on 24th April after Skylark group (the company that operates the expressway), decided that this was the best solution to all the arguments happening at the toll gate. Are you also wondering why? As Skylark’s Project Head Piyush reportedly pointed out, “We expect the women toll operators to be more polite. We also expect the motorists to behave more decently.”
Of course, it’s great that more women have been employed here, but we just have to point out that Skylark’s reasoning is both hilarious and ridiculous at the same time. What’s with the idea of employing more women because women are “more polite?” This is an idea we’ve heard time and again — that the best way to maintain tempers or escalating situations or peace is to have a woman in the frame. It’s the same kind of logic behind HDFC bank’s amazing idea to have a humanoid that looks like a woman to welcome customers.
The second claim that Piyush made (“We expect the motorists to behave more decently”) is also a ridiculous one. Perhaps we should remind them about what it’s like to be a woman working at the distress helpline of the Bangalore police — a helpline that was supposed to be for people to report obscene phone calls that became the helpline that men started sexually harassing women on, because they knew a woman would pick up their call.
Why was it so hard for the Skylark company to just say they wanted to employ more women because that’s a perfectly normal thing to do? Instead, they’ve just made themselves sound silly by saying it’s because they expect fights to reduce because women and more polite and men will be forced to be decent.