NEW DELHI // Female students need curfews to protect them from their “hormonal outbursts”, India’s women’s minister has said, sparking ridicule on social media.
Many Indian universities impose curfews on women while allowing male students to stay out at night, a policy critics called sexist and outdated.
Asked about the matter on a television talk show broadcast on Monday, Manekha Gandhi said it was necessary to protect young women from their hormones.
"To protect you from your own hormonal outbursts, perhaps a certain protection, a lakshman rekha [red line] is drawn," she said.
“You can make it 6pm, 7pm or 8pm, that depends on college to college, but it really is for your own safety,” she told the studio audience of college students during a special show to mark International Women’s Day on Wednesday.
Mrs Gandhi said a similar deadline should be put in place for male students, but many social media users ridiculed her comments.
“You know what would be safest? Lock hormonal men in, instead of denying women the right to lead a full life,” wrote one critic on Twitter.
Mrs Gandhi, who is the sister-in-law of opposition leader Sonia Gandhi, is no stranger to controversy.
Last year, she angered women’s rights campaigners arguing for a law against marital rape by saying that could not apply in India because society viewed marriage as sacrosanct.
She has also said schizophrenia sufferers should not work, and called for mandatory tests to determine the sex of unborn children – a practice illegal in India due to the risk of female foeticide.
In 2015, women students in Delhi launched a campaign called Pinjra Tod, or Break the Cage, against the curfews.
University residences generally justify the rules by saying they are concerned for the safety of young women in a country where sexual violence is common.
* Agence France-Presse