For decades, women’s access to factory work was restricted by Section 66(1)(b) of the Factories Act, 1948. This section stated that no woman was allowed (yes, ‘allowed’) to work after 7:00 PM. In 2001, a woman named Vasantha, working in a Tamil Nadu textile mill, decided to challenge this in court. She wanted to work nights, and her employer was willing, but the law said no. The Madras High Court disagreed, finding that the restriction actively infringed upon her economic freedom.
She wasn’t the only one; it took over 50 years and dozens of legal challenges to finally bring about India’s new Labour Codes, which have been in effect since November 2025. The new law has since dismantled that restriction, allowing women to work night shifts across all sectors, nationwide. A feminist victory, one might think. Well, not when you read the fine print.
Protection is a word the Indian state liberally uses with regard to women, because that word justifies treating women as a separate class of workers, requiring management.
The Haryana notification, one of the many state-based clauses issued ahead of the new labour codes, can paint us a clearer picture. Even though the word ‘allowed’ might have been removed, conditions and restrictions prevail. Imagine a woman, now legally entitled to work the night shift, heading to a factory. She must travel in a group of at least four women. Her vehicle must have CCTV cameras, GPS tracking, and a security guard. And all this at the expense of her employer. The reasoning behind these conditions, and the reasoning behind women not being allowed to work nights in the first place, are still the same — ‘protection’. Protection is a word the Indian state liberally uses with regard to women because that word justifies treating women as a separate class of workers, requiring management.
Women wanted to work the night shift. However, what did they get in return? A conditional right to work, surveillance rather than freedom, protection rather than agency. These conditions explain why the new labour laws feel like one step forward but two steps back. Yes, women might be safer, but safer is not the same as freer. The law changed, but the assumption behind the law didn’t. English political philosopher John Stuart Mill saw this coming in 1859.
Mill’s harm principle and the Indian state
JS Mill’s harm principle, simply put, claims that states only have the right to restrict an individual’s freedom if they believe this is done to prevent harm to others. That is the sole reason for state intervention: to stop a citizen from hurting another. This might sound similar to the idea of ‘protection’ as justification for restricting citizens, and the two concepts may look identical from the outside. But here’s the catch: Mills’ intervention focuses on the perpetrators of the harm, instead of the victims of the harm.
According to Mill’s logic, to ensure women’s safety, the correct intervention is to act against the men who can and do harm women, or create conditions that deter such harm, rather than to restrict the movement of women. Using protection as an excuse to impose further conditions on women workers implies women are the source of risk.
However, nobody is arguing against precautions for women’s safety. Rather, we must aim to understand whether the state is using protection as the main logic to justify restrictions on women’s freedom, and whether, in such conditions, women’s empowerment can simultaneously coexist.
Same campus, different rules
The same logic of protection has been applied across various contexts. For instance, in many hostels across India, boys are allowed to move freely without time restrictions, whereas girls’ hostels often impose curfews. In fact, a girls’ hostel in Mumbai went so far as to install biometric identification that sends parents real-time notifications every time a woman leaves or enters the building. It is about time we begin to question whether these restrictions, concealed in the idea of safety and protection, are truly contributing to the progress of women. Same campus, same city, same streets, but different rules and different liberties.
In 2022, the Kerala High Court was asked to rule on a 9:30 PM curfew imposed on women students at a government medical college hostel in Kozhikode. To emphasise, these are medical students, adults in one of the most demanding academic environments, training to make life and death decisions. The hostel curfew essentially said: We trust you to learn how to operate on a person, but we do not trust you to decide when to come home. The court, to its credit, disagreed. In Fiona Joseph & Ors v. the State of Kerala, the judge struck down the curfew and made an observation that was close to Mill’s reasoning: If safety is genuinely the concern, it is the men who should have a curfew.
In both cases, the night shift law and campus curfews, courts struck these rules down. You might read about these rulings and think of it as a feminist victory. Mill, however, would argue that there is no real change in the assumptions behind making these rules in the first place. Yes, an individual curfew might be struck down, but the assumption that the best way to ensure women’s safety is by restricting women’s movements remains intact. The perpetrator’s behaviour is never the target. The woman’s freedom always is.
The question that remains
The question that remains is what is to be done about the perpetrator’s behaviour? Women need to be both safe and free. If the only path to freedom puts them in danger, that does not lead us anywhere. We already know that restricting a person’s right to move, to work, to exist in public spaces after dark, is not the answer.
So the question that remains is not about women at all, it is about men. How do we correct the behaviour of perpetrators? A good example of legislation that’s perpetrator-focused is the Vishaka Guidelines, which focuses on women’s safety through accountability and placing the burden on employers and perpetrators, not on victims. The framework exists; the mindsets just need to catch up.
A woman walking back to her hostel at 10 PM is not a threat to anyone. A woman working the night shift is not a threat to anyone. The danger, where it exists, comes from elsewhere. The solution is not pushing women back into their homes, back into their hostels, or pushing them to find loopholes in the system. Mill would say that we need to move towards a more perpetrator-based approach because women’s safety is a man’s issue, and it always has been.
About the author(s)
Shohrah is a Politics and International Relations graduate from the University of Bristol, with research interests in public policy, governance, technology regulation, and gender. Her research experience includes qualitative research on gender and representation, as well as comparative policy research. She is currently pursuing a master’s degree in Diplomacy, Law and Business, and is particularly interested in using research to develop evidence-based policy solutions.
