Women-Only Carriages Won't Stop Harassment
A Leeds charity says introducing women-only train carriages wouldn’t help guard against sex attacks.
It’s after Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn said he was considering the idea - after women told him they believed it could be the answer to a rise in harassment on public transport.
The plan - part of Mr Corbyn's street harassment policy - comes after police revealed the number of sex offences on UK railways rose by a quarter last year.
Women-only carriages are already used in countries including Japan, Brazil and India and Transport Minister Claire Perry has previously indicated she would explore introducing them in the UK.
"This could include taking longer routes to work, having self-imposed curfews, or avoiding certain means of transport.
"My intention would be to make public transport safer for everyone from the train platform, to the bus stop, on the mode of transport itself."
SARSVYL (Support After Rape & Sexual Violence Leeds) says it could be impractical.
Katrina Palin Is from the charity, she says “It seems like too often that it’s ideas around women changing their behaviour, policing themselves and somehow segregating themselves.
‘We feel the best way to prevent assault and harassment would be to tackle the root causes – which would be to look at education, not just children and young people in schools but generally challenging and changing public attitudes to how women are treated and what’s acceptable or unacceptable behaviour.’
She feels that it wouldn’t stop the harassment from happening elsewhere.
“If we were looking at sexual harassment as a whole – that happens in a variety of different areas and women can’t be excluded from all those public spaces. Anecdotally, I know of people who have had sexual harassment on public transport, on buses, on trains, in the street… It really seems to happen – unfortunately – anywhere.”