Mexico City Launches Grope-Free, Women-Only Buses
Sustainable Transport, Mexico City, Mexico, buses, Women, Sexual Harrasment Add comments
Photo by y-cart.
Following the lead of Tokyo, where the subway has implemented female-only cars so that women can avoid the unwanted gaze or grope of overly-aggressive men, Mexico City has now introduced buses reserved exclusively for women. “One time a man stuck his hand up my skirt. They grab your butt … It’s gross,” Lourdes Zendejas, a female bus-commuter told Reuters. The new buses are emblazoned with pink “women only” signs on the exterior to warred off any confused man who wants to hitch ride. According to Carlos Cervantes, the spokesman for Mexico City’s bus system, sexual harassment has been an ongoing problem for female passengers who have suffered a variety of indignities merely for having an extra X chromosome while riding the bus. “We were constantly receiving complaints of women being leered at, kissed or followed,” he told Reuters.
It’s a nice step, especially for making public transportation accessible to everyone in a city where over 60 percent of the population travels by some type of bus.
For more information in Spanish, check out this article in El Tiempo.
And Univision has a nice photo essay here.
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January 23rd, 2008 at 4:56 pm
Thanks for the post, Ethan. I was wondering if there were any negative responses to these buses, though. In Brazil, for example, women’s groups viewed single-sex transit as tacitly condoning the groping that occurs on regular buses. More globally, many laws that actually restrict women’s rights are ostensibly passed “for their protection.” Are there concerns about this in Mexico City?
January 24th, 2008 at 12:11 pm
It’s an interesting point, Amy. I suppose that it’s possible that having separated buses is just an excuse for not cracking down on sexual harassment. What would be nice is to see an effort to better police buses so that this type of thing doesn’t have to happen. But in the mean time, its probably good that women have a choice about which bus to get on.
January 25th, 2008 at 12:07 pm
Quality transport might not come by providing buses or rail cars for each type of user… but by bringing occupation standards to acceptable levels. This is not easy, as more buses are required (implying more fare) but we have to come with ingienous solutions: why not charging automobilist their external costs via congestion charging (like London and Singapur) and using the revenues to improve transit service quality?
February 5th, 2008 at 1:20 am
I think Amy makes a very important point: “(that) women’s groups viewed single-sex transit as tacitly condoning the groping that occurs on regular buses.”
better policing is a way to temporarily stop the groping. but the long term solution is for men to understand that the behavior is wrong. Services are provided with the understanding that people inherently know how to use them. However, the more I observe human behavior the more impressed I am with our ignorance/selfishness. For example, having people on the platform step asinde to let people off the vehicle…Maybe we need to pay more attention to educating the public transit user.