Stop Street Harassment

Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming

BEST launches ladies special buses

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After surveying passengers who take the BEST (Brihanmumbai Electricity Supply and Transport) buses in Mumbai and surrounding areas in India, BEST is launching women-only “ladies special” buses during rush hour on four routes to try to cut down on the harassment women passengers experience while riding the bus.

Via Mid-Day.com:

“Sunil Shinde, chairman, BEST, said, “We will commence four ladies special buses on the four most crowded routes in the city from June 1. This is a good initiative, welcomed by most. And putting an old tried-but-failed idea to practice again, the undertaking, which caters to 42 lakh passengers every day also plans to bring back women conductors aboard these buses….

We receive a lot of complaints on a regular basis about male passengers misbehaving with women,” said a senior BEST official on the condition of anonymity.

After having initially flirted with the idea of female conductors in 1998 it was even implemented for a short window of time but the transport body did away with it following harassment complaints by conductors the body is planning to resurrect it.

“But this time, the female conductors will be assigned to ladies special buses only. Women conductors earlier pressed into service had complained of eve-teasing and lewd comments from male passengers. After their request, we divested them of the onboard job of the conductor,” added the official.”

The routes and timings of the four buses are:
Route No 169: Worli Village to Plaza Cinema (Dadar) 0845 am
Route No 55: Lower Parel station to Kurle Chowk (Worli) 0850 am
Route No 154: Mahalaxmi station to Nehru Planetarium (Worli) 0905 am
Route No 343: Goregaon east to Nagari Nivara Parishad (Goregaon) 0925 am”

As always when a country starts women-only buses or trains, I wonder why they don’t do more to address the root problems rather than segregating women in a band-aid solution fashion, and, if they did want segregation to be the solution, why they don’t offer the service comprehensively so that all women can use it.

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More Women-Only Cars in India

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from NYTimes
from NYTimes

The NYTimes reports that in India, gender-based street harassment (or eve teasing) is so bad that the government has instituted a pilot program for eight new commuter trains exclusively for female passengers in India’s four largest cities: New Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Calcutta. They are called “Ladies Specials” and offer women relief from harassing men. (view a slideshow from NYTimes)

Gender-based harassment of women on public transportation is widespread. There are many countries that have instituted women-only subway or train cars, buses, or taxi cab services because so many girls and women are groped and harassed by men.

For example, some cities in Thailand, Mexico, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan, and UAE have women-only buses.

Japan, Brazil, Egypt, Iran, Mexico, and South Korea are examples of countries with women-only subway cars in their major cities.

In some places in England, Russia, Australia, Lebanon, Iran, India, and the UAE, there are women-only taxi cabs with women drivers.

In the U.S., transit systems in NYC, Boston and Chicago are all struggling to deal with high rates of harassment. Both NYC and Boston have anti-harassment PSAs on some of their subway cars.

Women-only cars are only a band aid fix that does not fix the overall problem of men harassing women.  Men will still harass them on the platform, in mixed car trains, on streets, in parks, etc.  Separate cars can make women who can’t access women-only cars seem like fair game for harassing men.  In Tokyo, which has women-only subway cars, there were 2,000 groping cases reported last year, 30% were of teenage girls. The crime is underreported, so imagine how much higher the figure may be.  Again, Tokyo HAS women-only cars.  This is not a solution.

Men must be taught to respect women and not see them as available for comment, touching, following, and assault when they are in public simply because they are female. Check out what Blank Noise is doing to address eve teasing in India (they aren’t advocating for separate train cars for women and men).

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