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| Sunday, 03 August 2003 |
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| News Business Features Editorial
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by Carol Aloysius Whatever happened to the 'Women Only' buses that were running around the busy streets of Colombo sometime ago? It appears they have a habit of disappearing as suddenly and mysteriously as they appeared on our roads for some reason or another. One can only surmise that the male drivers found they had taken on more than they could chew. Or perhaps they felt intimidated by their all female crew of passengers who make them the target of their collective grouse against males in general. Or could it be that the transport authorities simply decided to bow to the more vociferous male chauvinists who have repeatedly pointed out the folly of reserving buses only for women at a time when our buses were packed to capacity? Whatever the reason, the 'Women Only' bus service doesn't seem to exist any more. And not because there are no takers either. The question is do women really need to have a 'women only' bus? The Sunday Observer Woman posed this question to a wide range of women. Here are some of the responses: Hemali a 23 -year -old working girl who travels to the Free Trade Zone at Katunayake every day was quite emphatic in her insistence on having a separate bus for women- especially when travelling home at late evening. "At that time, especially after six p.m, most of the male passengers are drunk and make a nuisance of themselves in the bus. Even the conductors have no control over them when they try to fondle a woman or call her names when she refuses to respond. It is all we can do to make sure we arrive home in one piece having had to ward off these male predators", she says citing several incidents in which both she and her female colleagues had been sexually harassed by drunk male passengers in the same bus. Ranjani, a 25- year- old stenographer working in a firm in the Pettah says she had a similar experience while returning home in a crowded bus one late evening. "I had to stay after office hours to finish some urgent work and it was around 6.45 p.m when I boarded the bus from the Pettah bus stand. As there were no seats I had to stand all the way to Battaramulla." Wedged between two men this young woman soon found her back being squeezed by the man behind her while her breasts were being fondled by the man directly in front of her. " I couldn't move because the bus was so packed. But I managed to trample the man behind me with my high heeled shoe and dig the sharp point of my parasol into the stomach of the man in front of me. I also shouted for help and the two men jumped off at the next stop when everyone started staring at them." Bus commuters are not the only victims of sexual harassment,lewd remarks, open hostility by male passengers, and pick pocketing. Train commuters also have their share of troubles, says Lilanthi who travels to Veyangoda by train every day. " I have been pick pocketed twice and harassed by male passengers almost daily. I wish the transport authorities find a way to end this unnecessary harassment of women passengers," she says tearfully. As Marisa a school teacher sees it, the solution lies in separate buses and a separate train compartment for women. "If the authorities can't give us an entire bus, they should at least give us separate seats at the front row of the bus like those reserved for pregnant women, she suggests. "Or even on the left or right hand side of the bus as they now do in some countries", she adds. Which might work out well if we take India as a role model. On a recent visit to the sub-continent, I was impressed with the orderly fashion in which women and men segregated themselves in the buses. The left row was for women in a bus I travelled in Chennei, while the right side was for the men. No man in his right senses dared to sit on the women's side of the bus if a woman was standing." If he did, the women passengers would collectively yell at him and ask him to get off the bus or give up his seat", Mary Jacob a young university student told me." The same is true of some of the trains I travelled in this vast sub continent. Here there were whole compartments reserved for women. " Whether we had to stand or found seats doesn't really matter as long as we don't get molested, harassed or robbed by men', said a bank executive who travelled from one end of Chennai to the other every day by train. I couldn't help agreeing. A woman activist who has also suffered harassment by males in buses sums it up by saying, " It is not as if we women are tacitly agreeing that we are the weaker sex when we ask for separate buses. The fact that we have to resort to this extreme step merely endorses the fact that we are living in a violent male dominated society which requires taking radical measures to protect ourselves". Should or shouldn't we have Women Only buses and Women Only compartments in trains? We invite our readers to send in their views. |
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