On paper, the launch of the “Pink Bus” service is a good idea. Studies and reports have repeatedly shown how unsafe public transport can feel for women in Bangladesh, with harassment, overcrowding, and unwanted touching among the reasons many avoid local buses altogether. A 2022 survey found that 87 percent of women surveyed had experienced harassment at least once, while 36 percent said they regularly faced sexual harassment on public transport. A women-only bus, operated by women drivers and conductors, could, in theory, give women who routinely face harassment a safer and more comfortable way to travel. But there is a bigger question that needs to be asked here. What happens to the buses that are not pink?
The number of Pink Buses being introduced—10 in Dhaka and adjoining areas, while two each in Bogura and Chattogram—is nowhere near enough to serve the growing number of women who have to leave home every day and depend on public transport. Women have to travel to work, universities, schools, hospitals, markets, and countless other destinations, along several routes. Even with a women-only service, therefore, most women will continue to have to rely on ordinary buses. That makes the discussion about the treatment of women across the wider public transport system just as important.
In a deeply patriarchal society like ours, the introduction of a women-only bus could unintentionally create a new social expectation that if a bus is not designated exclusively for women, it is for men. It is not difficult to imagine how this could play out. A woman boards an ordinary bus, and a male driver, helper, or passenger tells her, “What are you doing on this bus? Go take the Pink Bus.” That may sound absurd, but we already have a version of this mentality. On ordinary public buses, men frequently treat seats not reserved for women as if they automatically belong to men. Even when a woman has every right to sit there, she can be made to feel as though she is occupying someone else’s space. We saw a similar mindset recently when a Dhaka University teacher described the compartments of the metro rail other than the women’s ones as “men’s coaches” on a Facebook post before editing it out following massive backlash. If even an educated person casually frames public transport in such explicitly gendered terms, it is not difficult to imagine how the idea could spread among ordinary commuters.
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According to the BRTC, the buses will start regular passenger services on designated routes in Dhaka, Narayanganj, Gazipur, Bogura and Chattogram from tomorrow. Photo: Anisur Rahman
This is where the Pink Bus could become counterproductive if it is treated as a solution rather than an additional measure. Women-only transport can provide an immediate sense of safety for women who would otherwise avoid public transport, and this is not the first time that this option has been pursued. BRTC has introduced and withdrawn women-only bus services several times since the 1980s. The most recent attempt, Dolonchapa, was launched in 2018 with plans to eventually operate dozens of buses, but it too struggled with limited routes, long waiting times, and sustained losses before being discontinued. That history makes one wonder whether the latest initiative is based on a serious reassessment of why previous initiatives failed or whether launching a visibly marketable “Pink Bus” is simply a coverage-friendly gesture.
Furthermore, a Pink Bus can protect a woman from harassment on that particular bus, but it cannot change the behaviour of men on the buses next to it, nor does a woman’s journey begin or end when she steps onto a bus. She has to reach the stop, wait there, board the vehicle, disembark when her desired stop comes, and eventually reach her destination. At any of these stages, she can face harassment or feel unsafe. A women-only service, therefore, needs to sit alongside broader reforms.
There is another danger. Once women-only spaces exist, some people may begin shifting the burden of avoiding harassment onto women themselves: why did she take the ordinary bus when there was a Pink Bus for her? That would be a particularly damaging change in attitude because the responsibility for preventing harassment belongs to the harasser, not the person being harassed. Still, if women are increasingly told that they have been “given” their own buses, addressing harassment on ordinary buses could become less of a priority. The existence of an alternative could allow the ordinary transport system to avoid confronting the behaviour that made women seek an alternative in the first place.
Many women already avoid buses because they do not feel safe. Some instead pay substantially more for CNGs, rickshaws, and ride-sharing services. Research has found that safety concerns and negative experiences on public transport can push women towards more expensive modes of transport and affect their ability to move around the city freely. This is not merely a question of comfort but of economic participation. If a woman has to choose between an overcrowded bus where she fears harassment and a ride-sharing service that costs several times more, her mobility is already unequal. If ordinary buses become even more socially hostile to women because a separate “women’s bus” now exists, that inequality could become more expensive.
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The buses will be operated by women drivers and conductors. Photo: Anisur Rahman
None of this means the Pink Bus should not exist. It should. But it must be presented as an additional choice, not as a separate system women are expected to use by default. The government also needs to fix the issues surrounding ordinary buses by diligently enforcing laws against harassment, strengthening complaint mechanisms, holding drivers and helpers accountable, improving lighting and CCTV coverage, and providing gender-sensitivity training for all transport workers.
There is also a larger question about how we design public transport. If women make up a substantial share of the city’s commuters, transport systems should be designed around their actual experiences rather than treating them as an afterthought. That means consulting women about routes, bus stops, boarding arrangements and vehicle design, collecting and acting on data on where and when harassment occurs, and making complaint mechanisms credible enough that women believe action will follow. It also means recognising that women’s mobility is not a special-interest issue.
A women-only bus can certainly be part of the solution, particularly while the broader transport environment remains unsafe. But it cannot substitute for making the system itself work. The ultimate objective should be to make all public transport safe enough that women do not need special services. The fact is, Pink Buses cannot accommodate every woman who needs to commute, and they must not be the reason ordinary buses become even less welcoming to women. If that happens, Bangladesh will not have solved the problem of women’s mobility; it will simply have painted one small part of the problem pink.
Jannatul Naym Pieal is a writer, researcher, and journalist. He can be reached at [email protected].
Views expressed in this article are the author's own.
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