Gender Segregated Public Transport: Reimagining Public Space in South Asia

The role of gendered experiences in public space has received considerable attention from Eurocentric feminist geography in the last century. However, gendered experiences in many cities of South Asia reveal a more complex interplay between gender, race, class and public space. This paper uses public transport as a form of ‘mobile’ public space and analyzes the experiences of low-income women (cisgender and transgender) using this space. It uses data from 37 interviews conducted with cisgender women and 4 transgender women, in Islamabad, Pakistan to understand their experiences with various modes of public transport, along with the fear and safety concerns that affect the way they plan their commute. I use public transport as a landscape for understanding social segregation in public space. Using the data from these interviews and participant observation, I argue that a safer and more meaningful experience of public space is possible with the help of some form of gender segregation. The data reveals that women feel safer in segregated modes of transport and these modes have increased their access of the city. In the case of urban Pakistan, this segregation may look like enforcing the gender binary via physical infrastructure instead of blurring it. Using Ananya Roy’s call for situating all theory in a particular time and place, I argue that imagining better public spaces in cities of the Global South means centering the lived experiences of the most vulnerable who live there. By centering the experiences of low-income women from Pakistan, I challenge Eurocentric ideas about “urban throwntogetherness” which have may not always yield safer, more accessible and vibrant public spaces for people in the Global South.