With all the threats of tube strikes, there’s one big concern about the looming inevitability of a 24-hour tube at the weekends that people have missed out: safety. With recent statistics showing that sex offences on London’s tube and train network soared by 32% in the past year, it’s no wonder.
Addressing this problem, Jeremy Corbyn has said that, if brought in as Labour leader, he would call for a consultation with women to find out if they’d like women-only carriages.
‘My intention would be to make public transport safer for everyone from the train platform to the bus stop to the mode of transport itself,’ he’s said. ‘However, I would consult with women and open it up to hear their views on whether women-only carriages would be welcome – and also if piloting this at times and [on] modes of transport where harassment is reported most frequently would be of interest.’
It sounds glorious, like hey, finally there’s an MP willing to listen to women and protect them and their needs. But it might also sound familiar, because women’s groups have already consulted on the idea of women-only carriages, and the move has been rejected.
Laura Bates, whose Everyday Sexism project has been working alongside other women’s groups with Project Guardian – a taskforce set up by the British Transport Police to reduce sexual assault and similar crimes on public transport – has previously said that women-only carriages would be ‘a step backward’ and that ‘it seems to accept that the problem is acceptable – that men will harass women and that all we can do is contain them’.
While a third of women told a Thomson Reuters/YouGov survey last year that they’ve been verbally abused on trains and 45% of women said women-only carriages would make them feel safer, the increase in recent reports of sexual assault on tubes is said to be down to more victims being comfortable coming forward.
This is, in part, thanks to concerted efforts from Project Guardian to show that victims will be believed. Recent high-profile convictions of transport perverts have also gone some way to show that this sort of behaviour won’t be tolerated. It seems as if a cultural change could be more revolutionary change than a physical change to the way women must travel.
More problems arise with Corbyn’s plan when it becomes clearer that women-only carriages might also be physically impossible, especially at the rate he’s looking into them.
First off, who on earth is going to police them? If someone’s happy rubbing their dick all over you on public transport, what on earth will stop them getting on a tube carriage? And what happens when only one woman is on the carriage? How vulnerable does that leave her if she’s already declared, by going in the women-only carriage, her status as vulnerable?
Secondly, according to TFL, they’ll roll out their walk-through train carriages by the mid-2020s, which is just about exactly when Corbyn, should he come to power in 2020, will be able to implement his consultation with women.
These carriages increase capacity and are also designed to prevent death and injury on the tube, but there’s also an element of added safety to them. Sitting next to a creep? It’s much easier to move on. Or for bystanders to see what’s going on and (hopefully) intervene.
Jeremy Corbyn says that it’s ‘simply unacceptable’ that women should have to change their habits in order to avoid sexual harassment or worse. However, going to a specific carriage on each tube journey, literally being boxed in because certain – some – men feel they can get away with disgusting behaviour, doesn’t seem like the way to solve that problem.
Tory MP Sarah Wollaston basically echoes Laura Bates’s concerns – and ours – with women-only carriages, telling the BBC: ‘In countries where women are segregated on public transport, this is a marker for disempowerment, not safety.’
If anything needs to change, it’s a culture where assailants think their bad behaviour will go un-checked. And that needs to happen quickly.
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Follow Sophie on Twitter @sophwilkinson
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.