Fighting sexism, India's police ask: When is 'women only' good for women?

For Tanvi Tamwar, a college senior in this northwest Indian city famous for its pink sandstone monuments, getting to school used to mean running a daily gantlet.

“Often there were suspicious men on the bus who made all kinds of remarks to you. Right up to the school entrance there would be groups of boys hanging around, Eve-teasing,” she recalls, using the local expression for India’s rampant sexual harassment.

Then last May the Jaipur police introduced all-female police units: two women per motorbike to patrol hotspots such as bus stops, shopping malls, parks – and the gates of female schools and colleges like Ms. Tamwar’s.

“We feel safer and a little more free when these patrols are here” the sociology major says, standing with friends in the courtyard of Pareek PG Girls College. “It’s true that when the lady police are gone some of those boys come back.