22 August 2010

All Women Train Carriages -- Jakarta...

PT Kereta Api (State Rail Company) has commenced an "all women" service. This service sees a couple of carriages set aside exclusively for women to travel in. These carriages have security guards who are presumably policing who enters the relevant carriages.

This is not such a bad idea. It is not such a bad idea because recently Jakartan public transportation system has been subject to a number of sexual assaults. These have taken the form of men groping women and in some cases getting their hands inside shirts and down skirts. This has been attributed to men finding themselves in close proximity to women and not being able to control their urges to touch what is not theirs.

This has led to arguments suggesting that all women services are required. If women still wish to travel in the ordinary carriages of the train, then they can. However, if they feel the need to squeeze into an all female carriage then they probably will be able to do that. Nevertheless, this might be a supply and demand problem. It would seem that demand from women to sit in the relative safe environment of an all female carriage might outstrip the number of carriages available.

3 comments:

tere616.blogspot.com said...

Well Rob, for me it is not a effective.

This will efective if Indonesian woman reported that "sexual harasment" to the police.

Rob Baiton said...

@ Tere...

See, I think that sexual harassment and assault must be reported to the police as well.

However, that said, the recent groping on the Busway suggests that reporting this conduct / crime to the police receives an underwhelming response from the police.

So, until the police and law enforcement takes the problem of sexual harassment and sexual assault more seriously a segregated train carriage is not such a bad idea.

Thanks for commenting...it has been a while between comments ;)

muebles en barcelona said...

What exactly you're writing is a horrible mistake.