Women Sexual Harassment on Public Transport in Dhaka City

Introduction 

Ninety-four percent (94%) women commuting on public transport in Bangladesh have experienced sexual harassment in verbal, physical and other forms (BRAC, 2018). Women in Bangladesh not only facing harassment at house or workplace, rather maximum number of women face some sort of harassment in public transport. This study aims to find out the harassment’s women face in public bus in Dhaka. Women are facing verbal or nonverbal harassment, unwelcoming touches, sometimes direct contact with the sexual parts by co- passengers or conductor that is hindering personal and social growth. This research aims to investigate the actual reason and address the solution of woman harassment on the public bus.

Background

Ninety-four percent (94%) women commuting on public transport in Bangladesh have experienced sexual harassment in verbal, physical and other forms (BRAC, 2018). Women in Bangladesh not only facing harassment at house or workplace, rather maximum number of women face some sort of harassment in public transport. Travelling into public transports became a nightmare for the women, especially the young girls who regularly use public transport like bus as it’s the cheaper option to move from one place to another.

Having said that, due to lack of safety, fear of harassment and limited space of sitting arrangement-many women started avoiding bus for their mode of transport. 13% women avoid using public transport due to sexual harassment (2016). In Dhaka, many women may have to restrict their movements or activities because they feel unsafe. The fear or threat of violence is an effective way of controlling women's activities. Fear and feeling unsafe are major obstacles to the empowerment of women. According to Dhaka Urban Transport Development Study, 20.7% women travel on public transport (bus). But they started avoid public transport in fear of suffering and sexual harassment. 41% women are the victim of sexual harassment in public transport; often the male passengers occupy the reserved seats (2016). Dhaka-a highly populated city with completely unplanned rapid urban growth. In this dense city, the transport system is at its worst and when it comes to women, they are at the most vulnerable condition facing all the possible problems. The number of working women in Bangladesh is increasing (35.6% in 2016) and it will keep increasing. But with the continuous harassment's in the daily transport system is making their life miserable Newspaper NEWAGE Bangladesh reports that a girl named “Rupa” was brutally killed after gang rape in a moving bus at Madhupur in Tangail by transport workers who also dumped her body on roadside on August 25, 2017.

On January 23, 2017, a female Dhaka University student jumped off a running bus in Uttar Badda at 10:00am to escape sexual assault attempt. The report of the Bangladesh Jatri Kalyan Samiti in 2018 shows that 21 women were either raped or gang raped in the last 13 months on public transport. Not only public transport, public place is also unsafe for women.

According to the research “Public services in the context of violence against women in public places,” At least 42.5 percent women service seekers face rude behavior at hospitals by service providers. while 50 percent women face inappropriate touch at market places, 30 percent women said they had experienced eve-teasing at police stations while 35 percent said they had suffered physical torture in incidents involving law enforcers (2017). This research will show the current state of women harassment in public transport and will also try to figure out why this is happening and increasing day by day. Also, it will try to give some recommendations to control this issue.

Research Objective

·        To identify why the harassment against women in bus is increasing in Dhaka city

·        To suggest recommendations to control the harassment.

Significance of the study

·        This issue is one of the most important issues as women are also taking great part contributing the national development. If their safety is not assured properly, how they will do their work properly? This paper will help to know about the current situation and will find out the way to prevent it.

·        It will lighten up the people to raise their voice about violence and harassment against women.

·        It can be use as secondary data further if someone wants to do a research based on this issue.

Scopes and Limitations

This topic is a very important issue and already many researchers have done based on this, but yet as it’s a crucial issue, so there are a lot of research to do about it. However, due to time constraint and resources, this research will be mainly based on secondary data and a small survey sampling.

Literature Review

Women facing harassment in public transport are a burning issue not only in Bangladesh but also in the world. Many countries alongside Bangladesh facing this issue extremely, for example-Delhi, Manila, Lima, Mexico City.

Having said that, at least it’s been found that Bangladesh is not in the top 10 list for “The World’s Most Dangerous Country for Women 2018”. Being harassed not only includes physical harassment, it can be both mental (verbal-nonverbal) and physical or harassment as well. The mental harassment includes teasing, using abusive words, pointing fingers to the women’s clothing, starring, doing bad body language gesture. It’s very uncomfortable for a female. Physical harassment includes touching intentionally, sexually abuse, touching their private parts. This type of situation is a nightmare for the women. Many women like to choose their educational institute or job nearer at their house so that they don’t need to ride by bus. Based on BRAC’s study which was done in 2018 shows that 94% of women face some sort of physical, sexual or verbal harassment in public transport.

Following harassment, about 46 per cent of them were influenced to wear hijab, about 21 per cent reduced using of public transports and about 8 per cent quit jobs or outside work. This result is alarming. Because 94% means only 6% of the women doesn’t face any harassment but the rest 94% are the victims. But why the number is so huge? Who are people doing this? The shocking result of the BRAC study shown that 41-60 years male have been identified as offenders.

The study also talks about that due to less practice of law, huge crowed in bus and lack of monitoring system such as CC TV camera gave more chances to the offenders to do this crime. But the question is- is that only based on these lacking? Isn’t it also depends on the mindset of the men of our society? According to Rods free from sexual harassment and crash for women – “35 per cent respondents using public transport said they faced sexual harassment from males belonging to the age group of 19-35 years. Around 59 per cent respondents faced such harassment from the males who are 26-40 years old. The forms of sexual harassment experienced by the respondents include deliberate touching of victim's body with chest and other parts of the body, pinching, standing too close to the victim and pushing, touching of hair of the victims, putting hand on their shoulder, touching private parts of the victims. In response to the question 'What do women do when they are victim of such harassment's?' 81 per cent women said they have kept silent while 79 per said they moved away from the place of harassment”.

This statement gives the answers partially that why the harassment is increasing. As maximum of the number of women tend to be silent after harassments and the offenders gets the chance to do these more as they know that women will tell nothing and will remain silent. If all the women would raise their voice against the offender right after the harassment and practice proper law against them, then the harassment's incidents could be decreased.

A college going girl told her experience into the Daily Observer as mentioned- "Once I was getting down from the bus and the conductor willingly came to help me. As the bus jerked heavily, I tried to keep my balance by grabbing hold of the door of the bus and suddenly he entered his hands under my armpit and tried to squeeze my breast. I was just stunned and couldn't understand what to do. Thank God the bus stopped and finally my woe came to an end. I was able to get down from the bus; I am still frightened when I travel in buses, "Shahnaz Parvin- a student of public university also describes her experience as follows- "Sometimes men sit next to me intentionally, and stare at me as if I am a sexual object. Sometimes they try to come closer to me as if they did it by mistake. That's nothing less than to be humiliated physically, “Not only the male passenger, but also the helpers harassed the women passengers as well. The helper often touches the girl intentionally while collecting money or when the women try to get on the bus.

In 2009, the High Court issued directives on sexual harassment's but effective measures were not taken to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace and educational institutions. There are many articles based on this issue, almost every day at least an article can be found regarding women being harassed in public transport but the number of proper studies is still very less. Many NGO’s like BRAC, Action Aid has done study on this but the availability of research paper based on this issue was less. With that shortcoming, more research needs to be done so that for further research the future researcher can have more literature to review.

Methodology

For this study, the researcher used both primary and secondary data to analysis the research issue. The methodology includes qualitative method. In qualitative method, the researcher mainly did content analysis based on newspaper articles and research paper. Due to time constrain, random survey was done within 25 girls. 8 Close ended questions were asked. Also 10 interviews were done of working women from 2 different parts of Dhaka.

Primary Data:

A small survey was done among 25 women to know the point of view about harassment's in public transport as primary data. There were 8 multiple choice questions asked by the researcher to get a key idea from their perspective. Ten interviews were done of two working women from two different parts of Dhaka. It was more like a semi structured question. Both the interviewee was asked same questions. The entire interview was started with greetings and slowly getting into the questions. The interviewer conducts the interview both in Bengali and English language.

Conclusion

The “Sustainable Development Goal” number 5 is Gender Equity. The target 5.1 of this goal is to; eliminate all forms of violence against all women and girls in the public and private spheres, including trafficking and sexual and other types of exploitation. Without stopping women harassment in bus, the SDG will not accomplish as well. It’s the high time for the government and policy maker to do something against the harassment that women are facing almost every day. Seeing everyday rape news or women harassing in bus is not something that people like to read. This is the time that everybody should be aware to stop the harassment that women tolerating while they’re going to their destination.

References

1. Akhter, Shahin,“Women facing sexual harassment on city buses”, NEWAGE Bangladesh, 17 February, 2017. Available at- http://www.newagebd.net/article/34929/women-facing-sexual-harassment-on-city-buse

2. Naznin, Farhana, “Women Harassment in Public Transport”, The Daily Observer, 1 June, 2015. Available at- http://www.observerbd.com/2015/06/01/91872.php

3. Mallic, Banani, “Dhaka public transport not women-friendly: Rights activists”, The DailyObserver, 9 August, 2015. Available at- http://www.observerbd.com/2015/08/09/103983.php

4. Kabir, Rehan, “Study: 94% women victims of sexual harassment in public transport”, DhakaTribune, 7 March, 2018. Available at- https://www.dhakatribune.com/bangladesh/crime/2018/03/07/study-94-women-victims-sexual-harassment-public-transport

5. “No Public Transport for Women”, Dhaka Tribune, 17 February, 2018. Available at-https://www.dhakatribune.com/opinion/editorial/2018/02/16/no-public-transport-women