Assédio sexual contra mulheres em transporte público: das usuárias à empresa

Abstract

Much has been said about sexual harassment, mainly by the media and more coverage has been given recently to harassment in public spaces. This is a problem that affects the health and safety domains, as sexual violence has harmful consequences to victims. The objectives of the present theses was to review the literature on sexual harassment in public spaces, and as a consequence to analyze the approach researchers around the world give to the topic, and subsequently to conduct a survey with female users of public transportation in the city of São Paulo regarding sexual harassment in transportation identifying how they consider their own safety and compare their position with data resulting from an interview with an employee of the company responsible for the Sao Paulo subway system. The literature review identified 9 empirical studies, mainly in Asia on the incidence of sexual harassment in public spaces, and zero studies form Brazil on the subject, especially sexual harassment in public transport. Thus, the empirical study from this thesis is a pioneer one in the area in such country. The survey results carried out with users of the public transport in São Paulo showed that 43.8% of the women said they knew how to proceed if they suffered or witnessed episodes of sexual harassment in transportation. High rates appeared when asked if they had already witnessed sexual harassment of women on public transport (65.5%) and if they had suffered harassment (75.6%). The scientific community needs to enhance empirical research on the subject, especially in Brazil, so that there is more discussion about the vulnerability of women when they occupy public spaces and about the lack of punishment when crimes like these occur.