Modernity in Transit: Sexual Harassment, Public Transportation and Urban Mobility in Bandung, Indonesia

Safe travel and mobility in public space is critical for the emergence of women’s autonomy and confidence, and is linked to greater economic independence and enhanced freedoms, and yet, safe public travel remains tenuous for most women in the global south. This dissertation investigates the relationship between urban mobility and violence against women in public space. In Indonesia, the fourth most populous country in the world, public transportation systems are a powerful symbol of modernity and scientific progress and are tied to nationalist visions of economic development. Yet, the daily travels of urban women elicit a different set of imaginaries, ones defined by fear and anxiety from sexual assault. This dissertation interrogates increasing incidents of sexual harassment in public transportation against women, amid rapid urbanization in the capital city of West Java, Bandung. The dissertation reveals how urban women employ multiple social and cognitive practices to avoid risk and danger from assault in public space. It argues that an increasingly precarious urban landscape produces unique forms of “spatial feminist knowledge,” amongst urban women. These women develop individualized coping strategies and techniques in order to travel safely in public space. In doing so, public transportation is littered with multiple social and cultural meanings of inclusion and exclusion, of mobility and of constraint. As sexual violence becomes endemic to the urban terrain, private mobility is seen as the only solution for safe travel, rendering public transportation a site of naturalized violence. Global attempts to design out fear and reduce violent crimes against women, with “women only” transportation systems yield to traditional yet popular forms of gender segregation. The dissertation concludes that despite such popularity, these emergent designs serve as red herring solutions to the deeper more complicated question of the role of women in a rapidly changing society