Tackling Sexual Harassment in sub-Saharan African Transport: Changing Attitudes, Meeting Needs

The EMPOWER project builds the capacity of transport professionals to deliver gender-equitable and inclusive transport to improve the personal security of female passengers. It specifically addresses the causes of sexual harassment towards women when they travel. EMPOWER has delivered an integrated programme of research in subSaharan Africa proving the prevalence of the problem and highlighting that the definition of harassment is not always understood. The project collected data on women’s mobility and levels of sexual harassment in two sub-Saharan African cities: Lagos, Nigeria and Blantyre, Malawi. This underlined the need for coordinated action by many stakeholders including transport operators, local and regional authorities, ministries, non-government organisations, community groups, police and citizens themselves. Such stakeholders were brought together in workshops in Abuja, Nigeria and Kigali, Rwanda to discuss common challenges and opportunities to tackle harassment across different sectors.

Based on the knowledge gained through research, the project has developed the SHE CAN Tool:
It is designed to help decision-makers address sexual harassment in public transport. The SHE CAN Tool makes suggestions to improve the safety and security of urban transport for the benefit of women, but ultimately for all citizens. The Tool is full of good practices from around the world to inspire users on how women’s safety can be improved through different types of interventions, including:
legal frameworks, surveillance and policing, infrastructure, campaigns, vehicle design and management. Recommended interventions are tailored to the type of organisation using the Tool, namely: Local authorities, policymakers, enforcement agencies, transport providers and NGOs.
Resources are available for all stakeholders to deliver their own research to produce data to enable them to better justify taking action locally and nationally by engaging with multi-sector stakeholders.
This publication starts with an overview of the current prevalence of sexual harassment in public transport in our research countries and beyond. It illustrates the impact that this has on mobility behaviour. Then we introduce the SHE CAN Model which responds to this challenge through stakeholder mapping and behaviour change at individual and organisational levels. The EMPOWER approach to data collection is illustrated offering a step-by-step approach that can be easily replicated. We show how we have built and tested the SHE CAN Tool and offer a taster of the resources contained within, before offering conclusions on how users can best exploit it across their organisations.