It could have happened to me: Moving women-only carriages won’t fix Jakarta’s rail system

JAKARTA – The tragic railway accident on the outskirts of Jakarta, which has taken the lives of 16 women, hit close to home for me for a few reasons.

The fact that it was a heavily used commuter train filled with tired people on their way home after a long day at work. The seeming randomness of it – how a taxi stuck at a rail crossing catastrophically triggered a chain of safety failures. The sheer devastation captured in videos and images, showing just how thoroughly the locomotive of the long-distance Argo Bromo train crushed the women-only compartment at the back of the commuter train as if it were made of cardboard.

Most of all, what stuck in my mind was how easily I could have been among those trapped in that women-only carriage.

For three years, from 2017 to 2020, I took the Jakarta commuter train almost every day. Each time, I tried to get a spot in one of the two women-only carriages located at either end of the train. During rush hour, the carriages would be packed like sardine cans, the women’s carriages even more so.

A common joke online is that the women-only compartments are where the fittest survive, because women commuters have a reputation for being more short-tempered and curt and would more fiercely force their way into an already packed carriage. I have found this to be true, if a little exaggerated. But I still preferred the women’s carriage.

For one thing, I felt more comfortable sharing cramped quarters with fellow women rather than men. Indeed, women-only carriages exist because of the prevalence of sexual harassment on commuter-line trains.

Even 10 years after the carriages were introduced in 2012, the problem remained rampant – a 2022 survey by the Coalition for Safe Public Space found that 48.9 per cent of women who used public transport had been sexually harassed.

Another more practical reason is that carriages at the end of the trains are usually closer to station exits, giving passengers a head start in tapping out of the station without getting stuck in long queues. So being in a women’s carriage could often mean getting home as much as half an hour earlier. After eight hours at work and an hour or more commuting, that extra 30 minutes felt like a luxury I could not pass up.

So the thought that 16 women, who likely followed the same line of reasoning, chose to ride in the women-only compartment only to inadvertently lose their lives on April 27, is deeply unnerving.

And it is an unease that I know resonates with many women. Many comments online have lamented the tragic irony of the accident – that a place meant to protect women became one that put them in mortal danger.

In the wake of this tragedy, what commuters are seeking is assurance that the authorities will conduct a thorough review and strengthen safety protocols to ensure such an accident never occurs again.

This is why the solution offered by Women Empowerment Minister Arifah Fauzi misses the point entirely. She said on April 28 that she had asked state-owned train operator Kereta Api Indonesia to move the women’s carriages to the middle of the train.

I was part of the press gaggle at the Bekasi Regional Public Hospital when Ms Arifah made her comments. Even in the immediate aftermath, fellow reporters were already laughing incredulously at the minister’s remarks. “Does that mean that it’s okay if guys die instead?” I overheard one woman reporter saying.

Ms Arifah’s statement has since been widely criticised and lampooned on social media.

She may have meant well, but her proposed solution is a superficial fix to a systemic problem. Rather, the focus should be on how to fix the underlying problems – the chain of safety failures that led to the accident, and the culture of impunity towards sexual harassment that created the need for the women’s carriage in the first place – so that trains can be safer for everyone, both men and women.