PhD student draws on lived experience to investigate public transit safety for women

Ashartuz Zavin Asha, who was born and raised in Bangladesh, knows all about safety concerns for women using public transit.

Even before she started travelling on her own in college, she knew she needed to be careful.

“More than 90 per cent of women in Dhaka, Bangladesh, experience harassment and abuse when they are using public transportation,” Asha, a PhD candidate in computer science, says in an interview.

Her paper, Shotitwo First! Unravelling Global South Women’s Challenges in Public Transport to Inform Autonomous Vehicle Design, received an honorable mention award at a conference in Denmark in July.

Asha says it’s one of the most impactful works she did during her PhD study.

“I wanted to highlight this to show the difference between the Global South, or South Asian countries like Bangladesh versus Western countries,” she says. “In the Western countries, transportation systems are being improved and they have zero tolerance against women’s harassment.”

Her research explores the challenges and looks at how autonomous vehicles could enhance mobility for female passengers.

“Women are always facing these challenges and fears of getting harassed. They want to prevent it because once something happens, it’s hard to get justice … and there’s victim blaming. Women just normalize it.”

As part of her study, she talked to 23 women in Bangladesh about the challenges, the safety mechanisms and how they might resolve the issues.

“All of them were somehow exposed to those incidents,” she notes. “Mostly they saw someone else going through a situation, including me.”

They all saw verbal and physical abuse, including unwanted touching and groping.

“Women sometimes feel that maybe these are minor incidents, so I should not raise my voice because if I raise my voice, other people will try to victim blame me,” she says. “Most are just trying to cope with preventive solutions.”

Some solutions include getting out of danger, travelling with family members or connecting with friends during travel. “They want to save their modesty – once they lose it, they don’t feel that any justice can help,” says Asha.

She wanted to know how autonomous vehicles could help to alleviate the concerns. “Are (manufacturers) considering the unique needs that women may have and the challenges they face?” she asks. “We’re trying to bring attention to the industry practice that when designing that technology, it is important we consider marginalized communities.”

A self-driving vehicle could help, she says, but many young women cannot afford the cost to travel on their own and a co-passenger could still behave badly. “Then there’s no driver to help,” she notes.

Asha says the solution appears to be a self-driving vehicle for six to eight people that has seat dividers preventing close contact from other passengers.

Some women also suggested emergency trigger buttons and automated monitoring in those vehicles, she adds.

Any solutions, Asha concluded, need to consider the social and cultural context of the specific group through collaborative safety frameworks. 

“It shouldn’t always be the responsibility of the women to save themselves,” says Asha, adding “it should also be the responsibility of society.”