A Train of Their Own: Women’s Only Transportation as a Feminist Infrastructure?

• In Event: Places, Spaces, and Motion

Abstract

Sexual and gendered harassment are common occurrences in public space, especially on public transportation. Recent research in major metropolitan areas around the world found that because of its prevalence, many women feel unsafe riding trains and busses in their cities (Loukaitou-Sideris and Ceccato 2020, 3, 12–13; Kehoe 2014). Equalizing women’s mobility and eliminating sexual harassment in public spaces have long been central concerns of feminist politics. Feminists disagree, however, on the extent to which infrastructural reforms, such as single-gender transportation options, can help to achieve these goals. Often, public online discussions about such reforms become mired in reductive debates over whether the infrastructure at hand is “feminist” or “antifeminist.”

This paper extends the feminist analysis of single gender transportation in two ways. First, I trouble the dichotomous thinking prevalent in popular discourse about single-gender transportation through a large scale analysis of different digital publics. Using text as data methods, I conduct word frequency analyses and topic modeling on a sample of online commentary, including blog posts, Tweets, and discussion forum threads. I use this data, together with qualitative coding, to uncover the more complex underpinnings of the “feminist” and “antifeminist” arguments about single gender transportation

Second, I argue that a more productive avenue for thinking about mobility, single gender transportation and feminism is not to ask whether this transportation infrastructure is a feminist end, but to ask what we might gain if we reframe women’s-only trains as tenuous and, at times troublesome, sites for feminist possibilities and politics. In particular, I show that discourse surrounding pink trains reveals a latent discontent for neoliberal modes of feminism, expresses a lack of faith in its ability to bring about change, and demonstrates a public willingness to look for and embrace other forms feminist politics. I further argue that single-gender trains offer a space removed from patriarchal gender relations wherein women can craft a feminist vision for equal and free mobility, while the contentious discourse surrounding infrastructural solutions insists on a feminist return to politics. I conclude by suggesting that the single-gender trains themselves, the discourse they stimulate, and the discomfort they inspire may serve as rather unexpected mechanisms to further feminist theorizing and activism.

Author

• Sarah Brown, Washington College