Global safety

This week, Mexico City rolled out women's-only buses, responding to complaints of harassment and groping from women's groups, which now compliment the city's already-in-place segregated subway cars. The new buses have pink cards in the windshield to ward off the men, and more routes will be added over the coming months. The city reports letters of gratitude from women all over town, despite some grumbling from male riders. Other countries have had separate public transit for years, including India and Japan.
Thanks for the tip, Luke.

Also this week, travel website Brave New Traveler had an informative story about women's safety abroad, prompted by this story about mob groping in the Hindustan Times. Writer Emily Hansen discusses how women have to gauge whether strange men are harmless or potential threats, and she distinguishes between fight or flight responses to harassment and violence, naming both as personally and situationally appropriate. Traveling isn't necessarily more dangerous than anything else women do alone, but being in unknown areas can change the dynamics of how we handle threat. Hansen states:

Women everywhere are victims and at the same time catalysts for change. Men can also be helpful in eradicating the violence, by supporting women in their struggle to be free.

She also recommends that female travelers use their cameras to fight back, to document harassers, because silence isn't a weapon.

When we put a lens in front of someone’s face and call harassment a crime, we are putting a name to the problem of female abuse everywhere, and bringing it out in the open where it can be mediated.

On all of these points, we couldn't agree more.