Gender-based violence against women users of public transport in Saltillo, Coahuila, Mexico

ABSTRACT

This paper details the pervasiveness of gender-based violence (GBV) that women in Saltillo, Mexico experience when using public transport. Using a mixed-method approach that included a survey (N = 611) and interviews (N = 11) with transit users and a local women’s rights activist, we explore the experiences of violence that women face as an everyday reality, together with issue of re-victimization, and the psychological effects that violent episodes can have on women who experience them. Adding to existing knowledge about GBV in spaces of transport, we argue that women can experience myriad wide-reaching effects beyond the event itself that include not only limits on their mobility, but also financial and emotional repercussions. Policy change is urgently needed in order to redress this problem.

KEYWORDS:

• Gender
• mobility
• public transport
• sexual harassment
• Mexico
• Saltillo

Acknowledgments

We greatly appreciate the support provided by Chevening Scholarships, the UK Government’s global scholarship programme, funded by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) and partner organisations. This paper stems from the work conducted by the first author to obtain the title of MSc. International Planning and Urban Design (Cardiff University), under the supervision of Dr. Kate Boyer. Special thanks to M. Berenice de la Peña, Head of the Psychology and Human Rights Department from the Autonomous University of Coahuila, for her invaluable input and psychological support throughout the process of interviews for this research. Many thanks to David Beltrán for his feedback on early drafts of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Direct translation of the official term ‘Pobreza Urbana’ used by CONEVAL.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Diana Infante-Vargas

Diana Infante-Vargas studied architecture at Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education. Her interest in cities, mobility and urban design led her to study MSc. International Planning and Urban Design with a fully funded Chevening Scholarship at Cardiff University. Her research interest includes public transportation, walkable cities, and urbanism and cities through a gender perspective.

Kate Boyer is a Senior Lecturer in Human Geography, having received her PhD from McGill University and her MA from the University of British Columbia. She is a Human Geographer with research interests in Social, Cultural and Feminist Geography. In recent years she has studied geographies of gender and care as relating to breastfeeding and new parents’ experiences of mobility and immobility.