好英语网宵禁、不能喝酒、不带异性回家：印度单身女性的租房困境
When Ruchita Chandrashekar decided to move to Bengaluru in November for a new job, she thought she had the perfect plan for avoiding the problems that come with house hunting as a single woman in India. She would find an apartment with a married friend whose husband was working in Paris — and they would say they were sisters.
去年11月，鲁奇塔·钱德拉谢卡决定为一份新工作搬到班加卢鲁，她觉得自己有一个完美的计划，可以避免印度单身女性找房子时的问题。她将和一个丈夫在巴黎工作的已婚朋友一起找公寓——她们会自称是姐妹。
They were both professionals, in their 30s, with a sizable budget. Alas, they were still women unattached to men.
她们都是30多岁的专业人士，预算可观。可惜，她们依然是没有男人可以依靠的女人。
梅拉·尚卡尔（中）把她班加罗尔的公寓房间租给女性，没有宵禁或探视规定。和她一起做饭的是纳福雅 V.P（左）以及凡达纳·瑙加因。
Brokers asked if they could promise to never bring men over. To never drink. To never, really, have a room of one’s own. Several places they thought they’d secured fell through — into the arms of families.
中介问她们是否可以承诺永远不带男人回来。永远不喝酒。以及——永远不独自居住在一个房子里。有几个她们认为已经谈成的公寓最终没有到手——被出租给了家庭。
“Sometimes, this is a nice life,” Ms. Chandrashekar said over a light lunch in Bengaluru, also known as Bangalore, where she works in organizational development for a tech company. “But then you meet all of these structures, like your landlords.”
“有时候，这是一种很好的生活，”中午，钱德拉谢卡在班加卢鲁（又称班加罗尔）吃便餐的时候说，她在一家科技公司从事组织发展工作。“但随后你会遇到这些制度问题，比如你的房东。”
“There is always something to fight for,” she added.
“总有一些东西需要争取，”她还说。
As they delay or reject marriage and live on their own, single working women like Ms. Chandrashekar are making their case for greater freedom from India’s conservative norms. While they are a sliver of the country’s total population, they still number in the tens of millions, and their often infuriating quest for housing is a barometer for the country’s promises of modernization and rapid economic growth.
随着钱德拉谢卡这样的单身职业女性推迟或拒绝结婚并独居，她们正在努力从印度的保守规范中获得更大自由。尽管她们只占该国总人口的一小部分，但人数仍达数千万之多，她们对住房的强烈追求是该国现代化和经济快速增长的晴雨表。
For years now, Indian women have been racing into higher education, with government figures from 2020 showing they now enroll at higher rates than men. And yet India is still one of the most male-dominated economies in the world.
多年来，印度女性一直在努力接受高等教育，2020年的政府数据显示，现在她们的入学率高于男性。然而，印度仍然是世界上男性主导程度最高的经济体之一。
Just under 20 percent of Indian women engage in paid work, compared with 62 percent of women in China and 55 percent in the United States, according to World Bank figures. Many women work in informal jobs in an economy that has failed to produce enough formal work for a growing population of 1.4 billion people. The unemployment rate is currently above 8 percent, according to data released this month.
根据世界银行的数据，只有不到20%的印度女性从事有偿工作，而中国和美国的这一比例分别为62%和55%。印度的经济体未能为不断增长的14亿人口提供足够的正式工作，许多女性从事非正式工作。根据本月公布的数据，该国失业率目前高于8%。
But if women were represented in the formal work force at the same rate as men, filling some jobs and creating others, India’s economy could expand by an additional 60 percent by 2025, according to some estimates.
但据一些估计，如果女性在正式劳动力中的比例与男性相同，填补一些工作岗位，并创造新的工作机会，到2025年，印度经济可能会再增长60%。
With this in mind, Prime Minister Narendra Modi asked state labor ministers in August to come up with ideas for harnessing women’s economic potential. A good place to start, many say, would be the obstacle courses of life that exist for women outside the office or factory.
鉴于此，总理纳伦德拉·莫迪于8月要求各邦劳工部长提出发掘女性经济潜力的想法。许多人说，一个好的起点是想办法先解决女性在办公室或工厂之外的生活中存在的障碍。
Working women living independently in India’s cities — whether single, divorced, widowed or living separately from their partners — face endless sermons from strangers. They pay more for a narrower selection of housing. Worried about sexual violence, friends track one another by phone until they reach their destinations.
在印度城市独立生活的职业女性——无论是单身、离婚、丧偶还是与伴侣分居——都要面对陌生人没完没了的说教。她们的住房选择很少，却要支付更多费用。由于担心性暴力，朋友们在路上通过电话相互照应，直到她们抵达目的地。
And still, they endure men who expose themselves at bus stops or landlords who, if they don’t reject them, impose curfews and then waltz into their rented spaces unannounced.
而且，她们仍然要忍受公共汽车站男性暴露狂的骚扰，或忍受房东，他们就算不拒绝把房子租给她们，也会实施宵禁，然后不事先通知就大摇大摆地走进她们租住的地方。
“There is no lack, no dearth of aspirations in women, but still, our social and cultural shackles are so strong that they are curbing their freedom,” said Mala Bhandari, founder of the Social and Development Research and Action Group, which studies gender and conducts training for businesses.
研究性别问题并对企业进行培训的“社会与发展研究与行动小组”创始人马拉·班达里说：“女性不是没有抱负，也不缺乏抱负，但我们的社会和文化枷锁仍然如此强大，以至于限制了她们的自由。”
“Women know their rights,” she added. “But when women become assertive for their rights, then the patriarchy, which is still so dominant in our society, plays its role — its spoiled role.”
“女性知道自己的权利，”她还说。“但是，当女性开始主张自己的权利时，在我们社会中仍然占主导地位的父权制就会发挥它的功能——它被滥用的功能。”
Amartya Sen, the first Indian to win the Nobel in economic science, has called India “the country of first boys.” He argues that the nation has made high-achieving men a cultural obsession, at the expense of nearly everyone else.
第一位获得诺贝尔经济学奖的印度人阿玛蒂亚·森称印度为“头名男孩之国”。他认为，这个国家的文化迷恋取得卓著成就的男性，而这几乎是以牺牲其他所有人为代价的。
Women have only recently entered the fray in large numbers. The economic liberalization that started in 1991 led both to more female university students and more encouragement for them to study away from home.
直到最近才有大量女性加入竞争。1991年开始的经济自由化使更多女性有机会上大学，也更加鼓励她们离家学习。
Many started out in single-sex “paying guest,” or PG, hostels loosely attached to colleges — private or government housing with shared rooms and food provided by adults seen as secondary parents.
许多人开始住在单一性别的“付费房客”招待所，这是松散地附属于大学的私有住房或公屋，由被视为代理家长的成人提供公共食宿。
Often, women like Ms. Chandrashekar’s mother — who set aside a law degree when she graduated and quickly married — pushed their daughters away from rigid ideas of gender. As birthrates have fallen to two children per woman in India, fathers have also invested more in girls’ education, with a mix of pride and fear.
钱德拉谢卡的母亲在毕业后没有将法律学位派上用场，很快就结婚了，通常，这样的女性会敦促女儿摆脱僵化的性别观念。随着印度的生育率下降到每名女性生育两个孩子，父亲们也对女孩的教育投入了更多资金，这其中混杂着自豪与担忧。
The 2012 gang rape and murder of Jyoti Singh, a 23-year-old physiotherapy student in Delhi, led to new laws and programs for protecting women. But by the rawest of measures, they have had little effect: In 2021, the last year for which data is available, India recorded 31,677 rape cases, up from 24,923 in 2012 — a per capita rate below some countries, though sexual assaults tend to be underreported, complicating comparisons.
2012年，德里23岁的物理治疗专业学生乔蒂·辛格遭到轮奸和谋杀，这一事件促进了保护女性的新法律和计划。但从最基本的衡量标准来看，这些法律和计划收效甚微：在可获得数据的最后一年，即2021年，印度录得31677起强奸案，高于2012年的24923起——人均比率低于一些国家，但性侵犯往往举报不足，使对照变得困难。
In interviews with more than a dozen unmarried working women in greater Delhi, Bengaluru and Mumbai, safety emerged as the top concern in choosing jobs and housing. They did everything possible to shrink the distance from home to work. And they all had torments to share: being slapped on the rear by a man on a motorbike; fleeing a drunk taxi driver; running away from men howling for attention.
在对大德里地区、班加卢鲁和孟买十几名未婚职业女性的采访中，安全成为选择工作和住房时最关心的问题。她们尽一切可能缩短通勤距离。她们都有相似的痛苦遭遇：被骑摩托车的人拍打臀部；逃离醉酒的出租车司机；逃离那些为了引起她们注意而嚎叫的男人。
The mean age for a woman to marry is around 21 in India. Single professionals from 23 to 53 said they felt more vulnerable because men saw them as sexually available, if not immoral.
在印度，女性结婚的平均年龄约为21岁。23岁到53岁的单身专业人士表示，她们觉得自己更容易受到伤害，因为男性把她们看作是不道德的，是可以发生性关系的。
“They think women should live according to a certain way,” said Nayla Khwaja, 28, who works in communications in Delhi. “And if somebody is doing something out of that way, then that is something to notice.”
“他们认为女性应该按照某种方式生活，”28岁的内拉·赫瓦贾在德里在通讯领域工作，她说。“如果有人不按照这种方式做事，那就值得注意了。”
Many landlords see renting to single women alone or in groups (and single men, to a lesser extent) as a risk — to the stability of families, to the reputations of neighborhoods.
许多房东认为，租房给独居或合住的单身女性（甚至有时也包括单身男性）是一种风险——对家庭稳定和社区声誉的风险。
Dinesh Arora, 52, a broker in middle-class South Delhi, said few landlords rent to single women because they oppose their separation from family, or fear judgment if something goes wrong. India’s rental market is more personal than transactional: Owners tend to see their property — even apartments they rent out — as their responsibility. Neighbors and the authorities tend to feel the same way.
52岁的迪内什·阿罗拉是遍布中产阶级的南德里的一名中介，他说很少有房东将房子租给单身女性，因为房东们反对她们同家庭分离，或者担心出了问题会受到指责。印度的租赁市场更注重个人而非交易：业主倾向于将他们的财产——甚至是已经租出去的公寓——视为自己的责任。邻居和当局往往也有同感。
“When you live in a small community, everyone worries about what’s happening next door,” Mr. Arora said between calls in his two-room office with an open door to the street. “When you see on the news all the crimes taking place, you worry.”
“当你住在一个小社区时，每个人都会担心隔壁发生的事情，”阿罗拉在他的两室办公室里说，办公室开着一扇通向街道的门，时不时有电话打来。“在新闻里看到那么多犯罪行为的时候，你会担心。”
Among those who lease to women, higher rents, surveillance and paternalism are often the urban norm. Even if they rise at work, many women end up back in paying guest hostels, with curfews at 9 or 9:30 p.m. and bans on drinking, smoking and male guests. A renter’s religion, sexual orientation or caste can limit options even further.
在城市里，在那些将房屋租给女性的房东中，收取更高租金、进行监视和家长式作风是一种常态。即使在工作中获得晋升，许多女性最终还是回到了付费房客招待所，那里的宵禁时间是晚上九点或九点半，并且禁止饮酒、吸烟和接待男性访客。租房者的宗教、性取向或种姓会进一步限制选择。
Ms. Khwaja, who is Muslim, recalled a night when she was out late filming an event and the hostel where she was living in Delhi wouldn’t let her back in.
身为穆斯林的赫瓦贾回忆起一个晚上，她外出拍摄一个活动到很晚，而她在德里住宿的招待所不让她进门。
“It was just 10:30,” she said.
“当时才10点半，”她说。
After Susmita Kandadai, 27, paid for an apartment in Pune, a city southwest of Mumbai, the landlord’s lawyers sent her a lengthy agreement demanding that she never allow visitors, including relatives, and always be home by 9 p.m.
27岁的苏斯米塔·坎达代在孟买西南的城市浦那租下一套公寓后，房东的律师给她发送了一份冗长的协议，要求她永远不允许访客进门，包括亲戚，而且必须在晚上九点之前回家。
She refused and found herself in the landlord’s kitchen — he lived downstairs — receiving a lecture from his wife about clothing choices and missing values. She fled a few days later, after the landlord grabbed her by the arm during another harangue.
她拒绝了，结果发现自己在房东的厨房里——他住在楼下——接受他妻子关于服装选择和价值观缺失的说教。几天后，她逃走了，因为房东一边唠叨，一边抓住她的胳膊。
“I just got so scared,” she said. “I moved right out of there and slept on a friend’s couch.”
“我太害怕了，”她说。“我就搬了出去，睡在朋友家的沙发上。”
When women find a place that works, they hunker down. Meera Shankar, 59, the daughter of a female novelist known as Triveni, rents rooms, with no curfew or visiting rules, in her Bengaluru apartment to women in finance and education who have stayed for years.
如果女人们能找到一个合适的地方，她们就会蜷缩在那里。59岁的梅拉·尚卡尔是一位名叫特里韦尼的女性小说家的女儿，她把自己班加罗尔公寓的房间租给金融和教育领域的女性，没有宵禁或探视规定，这些人都已居住多年。
Farther south in Bengaluru, Ms. Chandrashekar, who worked as a therapist before switching to tech, eventually got lucky, too: She found a tiny one-bedroom through a builder who had put up his sign on a complex still under construction. He was in his 20s and seemed to understand the challenge singles face.
钱德拉谢卡曾是理疗师，后来转行从事科技行业。在班加罗尔更南部的地方，她最终也幸运地通过一名建筑商找到了一套小小的单卧室公寓，这名建筑商在一栋仍在施工的楼盘上贴了招牌。他20多岁，似乎很明白单身人士面临的挑战。
The apartment is a 20-minute commute from work, and a friend lives a block away. As Ms. Chandrashekar unpacked on a recent Sunday, her face brightened with anticipation.
公寓距离公司约有20分钟的通勤路程，一个朋友住在一个街区之外。在最近的一个周日，钱德拉谢卡打开行李，脸上充满期待。
“I want to put, like, a nice three-seater couch there,” she said, pointing to a wall by a window. “I want some new light fixtures, maybe from Ikea.”
“我想在那里放一张漂亮的三座沙发，”她指着窗边的一面墙说。“我想要一些新灯具，也许去宜家买。”
Her eyes darted toward the door as construction workers could be heard clomping up the outer stairs — men who would notice a woman living alone.
她的眼睛飞快地瞟向门口，这时可以听到建筑工人们噔噔噔地走上外面的楼梯——男人们会注意那些独自生活的女人。
When the building quieted down again, she relaxed, willing herself to positivity.
当大楼再次安静下来时，她放松了，努力振作起来。
“I don’t know what this space, for me, looks like yet,” she said. “I’m excited.”
“我还不知道这个空间能被我弄成什么样子，”她说。“我很兴奋。”