Some women leave their jobs because of the street harassment they face during their commute, according to a new article about sexual harassment on public transportation in Islamabad, Pakistan.
“This single issue is directly damaging the careers of working women,” reads the article in Pakistan Today.
I’m not surprised. I know street harassment can significantly impact women’s lives. When I conducted an informal study of more than 800 women in 23 countries and 45 US states for my book research, 9 percent of women said they had changed jobs because of harassers along their commute and, related, street harassment had caused nearly 20 percent of the respondents to move neighborhoods.
What does the harassment in Pakistan look like?
Via Pakistan Today:
“Street sexual harassment for a woman in public transport is similar to claustrophobia because she feels trapped in a small place with fear of no escape until she reaches her destination.
If a bus or train is crowded or if a woman is sitting by the window and the man harassing or assaulting her is sitting behind her, she cannot scream or raise her voice since most of the women do not want to get people’s attention in cases like these.
Faiza Bibi is a resident of Bhara Kahu which is a suburban area of the city and she has to travel daily using public transport to reach her workplace. She said most of the drivers harass female passengers; sometimes they even touch the female passenger sitting next to them on the front seats while pretending as if they were merely shifting the gear.
She complained that the behaviour of drivers, especially of the vans plying on the Route Number 127, was unbearable.
“Women have no other option since they have to sit on the front seats, next to the driver, because they are the only seats meant for women,” she explained.
She lamented that the drivers took advantage of the situation by harassing women; sometimes by touching, staring or playing loud vulgar songs but the women commuters usually avoided complaining to anyone because they felt too embarrassed to tell anybody.”
Of course Pakistan is not the only country with this problem. New York City, Boston, and Chicago all have PSA campaigns focused on sexual harassment on the buses and subways because studies showed more than 60 percent of riders faced harassment.
Many countries like Japan, India, and Brazil have women-only subway cars offered during rush hour because of the problem of sexual harassment and this is a “solution” Islamabad may turn to as well if they can get the finances for it. 92 percent of women surveyed there said they want to have women-only public transportation. But actually, what they probably want is just no harassment, not necessarily segregation. Since no one in the government seems to care about actually ending the harassment, segregation probably sounds appealing and certainly could be a short-term solution to offer them relief. But it will not fix the problem in the long run.
Fortunately, there are people speaking out against street harassment in Pakistan whose efforts may lead to more long-term change. One example is in Karachi, Pakistan, where a new NGO called Gawaahi creates media for awareness and advocacy. They recently produced two short video clips about street harassment in Pakistan as a way to start raising awareness about the problem.
Twenty years
