Why does a woman need a separate bus to feel safe in Dhaka?

Ramisa (a pseudonym) is coming back from a family gathering on a bus from Khilgaon, heading towards Mirpur through the evening traffic. It is getting late, late enough that a small clock has started ticking somewhere behind her ribs, the one every woman in this city seems to be born with.

She keeps her phone pressed to her ear the whole way, talking to a friend about nothing much — the price of instant noodles, a professor who cancelled class, whatever comes to mind. The subject barely matters. What matters is that somebody on the other end of that line knows exactly where she is, minute by minute, and will notice the moment she goes quiet.

That night, Ramisa reaches home safely. But there are thousands of women like her all over this city, doing the same quiet arithmetic every day, watching buses and posters glow past the streetlights, waiting for the particular relief that comes with finally reaching home.

For a woman travelling from Mohammadpur to Badda or from Mirpur to Mohakhali twice a day, the difficulty is not always one particular incident. Sometimes it is the accumulation of small discomforts: the crowded bus, the unwanted touch, the long wait and the uncertainty of getting a seat.

Some women leave home 20 minutes early simply to reach the bus stop before the rush, hoping to find a less crowded bus or a seat. None of these things may seem significant on their own. But when they are repeated twice a day, every working day, they become part of what it means to move around the city as a woman.

This is not new information to anyone who has lived in this city as a woman. Harassment on Dhaka's public transport has become so common that it barely registers as an event anymore. Many women have simply learned to expect it as part of the journey, rather than expect anything to change.

They move seats, get off early, avoid certain buses or simply try not to react. And when a woman does speak up, the response rarely focuses on where it should.

A woman recently shared her experience on social media, describing what happened to her on a crowded bus. Instead of sympathy, she found herself being cross-examined in the comments. Almost nobody asked the important question: why did a man feel entitled to touch her in the first place?

The questions keep circling back to her.

The problem starts before the bus

For many women, the difficulty begins before they even get on the bus. They may wait at a stop for 30 or 40 minutes, watching buses pass without stopping for them.

Sometimes there is clearly space inside, but the conductor still blocks the doorway and says, "Won't take any woman."

During office hours, even finding enough space to get on can become a struggle. Once inside a crowded bus, the lack of space and constant pushing can also make women more vulnerable to unwanted touching and other forms of harassment, particularly when it is difficult to identify who was responsible in the middle of a crowd.

When Dhaka introduced its pink bus service yesterday, it was presented as a practical measure to make public transport safer and more comfortable for women.

Yet the reaction on social media also revealed another part of the problem.

Some comments questioned why women needed a separate bus at all, while others made jokes about the women drivers and conductors operating the service, questioning whether women should be driving buses in the first place. There were also offensive remarks about the service and the women expected to use it.

That resentment did not begin with the pink bus. It was always there, waiting for something to attach itself to.

A useful step, but only a step

It would be unfair, though, to talk about the initiative only in terms of its limitations.

The fact that the government has chosen to invest in a service specifically aimed at making women's daily journeys safer does matter. Those may sound like small changes, but when they are part of someone's everyday life, they are not small at all.

For a number of women, it likely means a little less waiting, a little less fear and a few more evenings that pass without incident.

Still, a question keeps returning, quiet but persistent: is this the actual solution, or is it a very good bandage placed carefully over a wound that keeps opening somewhere else?

The pink bus addresses one part of the problem, and that part is important. But women's sense of safety does not begin and end with public transport.

A woman can feel unsafe at the bus stop, on the way to a rickshaw or while walking the last few hundred metres home. If those spaces remain unsafe, the pink bus can only solve part of what she experiences every day.

Safety has to exist beyond the bus, too.

You do not end harassment simply by moving women away from it. The harder work is making sure that harassment is taken seriously when it happens, that complaints are heard and that there are consequences for those responsible.

That has less to do with where women are sitting and more to do with whether the system around them is willing and able to protect them.

The numbers are difficult to ignore

The numbers, when you sit with them for a moment, are difficult to take in.

Between January and April of this year, in just four months, 178 women were reported as rape victims across Bangladesh. Nearly 200 cases of child abuse were documented during the same period.

Think of Nusrat on her long ride home, of Ramisa on the phone with her friend, and of every woman left standing at a bus stop. It becomes difficult to understand how a country can have this many laws, this many organisations and this many years of advocacy, yet still arrive at numbers like these year after year, without the line ever really bending downwards.

If we look at the countries that consistently rank near the top of the Global Gender Gap Index, many of them in the Nordic region, their progress did not come from creating separate spaces for women.

It came gradually through stronger institutions, better enforcement, greater political participation and policies that made gender equality part of the wider system.

Beyond the pink bus

The pink bus is a useful step, and it should stay. It should have more routes, better frequency and enough capacity to become a dependable option for women who need it.

But it should also be seen for what it is: one part of a much bigger transport and safety problem.

Women need to feel safe not only inside a pink bus, but while travelling on regular buses, getting off, taking a rickshaw and walking home.

That requires better enforcement of existing laws, safer public spaces, accountability in public transport and a wider change in how we treat women.

So perhaps the more important question is not whether the pink bus will make women safer, but why does a woman need a separate bus to feel safe in her own city?

Mahbuba Islam Suzana is a researcher at Dacca Institute of Research and Analytics (DAIRA). She can be reached at mahbuba@dairabd.org. 

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of The Business Standard.