A Labour Party shadow minister has suggested that trains should have ‘women-only’ carriages to cut down on sex attacks on female commuters.
Shadow Fire Minister Chris Williamson told website Politics Home that the move would create a “safe space” for women on public transport.
“It would be worth consulting about it. It was pooh-poohed (when Jeremy Corbyn suggested it), but these statistics seem to indicate there is some merit in examining that.
“Complemented with having more guards on trains, it would be a way of combating these attacks, which have seen a very worrying increase in the past few years,” the Derby North MP said.
Mr. Williamson had retweeted a graphic from pro-Labour website Skwawkbox which suggested the far-left party leader was correct when he recommended female-only carriages, implying that women should adjust to the threat of sexual attacks by sitting in segregated sections of trains.
Politics Home references a 2014 report by Middlesex University for the Department of Transport which said that said bringing women-only carriages would be a “retrograde step” that “could be thought of as insulting, patronising and shaming to both men and women”.
Introducing women-only train carriages would put the United Kingdom in a class of nations that segregate their passengers by gender including Iran, India, United Arab Emirates, Malaysia, Japan, Brazil, Mexico, and Germany.
In 2016, Germany, which absorbed a million migrants from the Middle East and North Africa during the migrant crisis, introduced train carriages for women and children only – but the train company denied the move had anything to do with sexual harassment.
Following the Cologne New Year’s Eve mass sex attacks, which saw around one thousand women sexually molested, raped, and mugged by men predominantly of a migrant background, the city’s mayor likewise suggested women alter their behaviour or routines to avoid sex attacks.
Mayor Henriette Reker told the media that women and young girls “need to be better prepared” when they go out and that they should make an effort to keep strangers “at arm’s length“.
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