For ladies planning on visiting India, skirts and dresses will have to be saved for a trip elsewhere, as India's Tourism Minister, Mahesh Sharma has advised women against wearing such clothes in the country, supposedly "for their own safety".
According to Yahoo! Style, India provides foreign travelers with a welcome kit, that includes includes dos and don'ts and other safety guidelines. Introduced last year, the kit says, "Some parts of India, particularly the smaller towns and villages, still have traditional styles of dressing. Do find out about local customs and traditions or concerned authorities before visiting such places."
The kit states such advisories such as not wearing skirts and dresses in the country, or not walking alone at night.
These safety advisories follow the many cases of unreported rape in the country, as well as high profile cases like the Delhi medical student raped and murdered in 2012, and even grievances against foreigners, such as the 52 year old Danish tourist raped by five men in New Delhi, and a Japanese woman raped and held prisoner by five men, one being her tour guide.
Although the advisory is supposedly a call towards India's conservative society, Brown Girl Magazine says that the problem is "insidious and complex". Sonali Kudva says, "So every time I put clothes on my body, it's not me that makes the decision on how I should look, butsociety, the law, my religious tenets and those around me. And this is a global problem, not one specific to India."
Another supposedly liberal country on fire for such misogynistic rules is France, who banned the burkini (a burka-burkini worn by Muslim women at the beach), supposedly as a security measure.
Other countries who have been notorious for years for such dress codes are the UAE, Turkey and Oman, with an advisory via the US Bureau of Consular Affairs reading, "Be sensitive to Islamic culture and do not wear sleeveless shirts, halter-tops, or shorts. Only wear athletic clothing in public when engaged in sports activities."
The strictest by far is Iran, whose Bureau of Consular Affairs dictates what women travelers must wear a headscarf and long jacket, and even cover up the whole body at religious sites. Qatar's Islamic Culture Center has also started campaigning tourists to dress modestly, in preparation for their 2022 World Cup.
