When considering the safety of women at stations, we soon learn that women don’t experience stations as safe spaces. Since 2022 the NS (Dutch Public Transport Service) has put up cameras at stations and in trains with live feeds, following a sudden big rise in the number of notifications of sexually transgressive behavior.NS Starts Watching With Live Cameras In Trains Whether or not this will actually help remains to be seen, as the feeling of unsafety for women still remains. Unsafe situations in stations present themselves in various forms, for example, sexual intimidation and sexual violence, but also verbal violence. Catcalling is an example of this, where (most often) men shout and whistle at women, with sexual connotations.
An Australian study researched where women felt most unsafe in public by asking them to drop pins on a map, and most pins were dropped on stations.Disruption and Design: Crowdmapping Young Women’s Experience in Cities, Sophie T., Nicole K., Hayley C., Gill M., and Anthony A. (2020) Many of the women named experiences of sexual intimidation and the previously mentioned phenomenons as reasons for feeling unsafe around stations. This process of ‘crowd-mapping’ in various cities like Sydney and New Delhi shows that the feeling of unsafety is complex. Women of different backgrounds experience feelings of unsafety differently, which shows the importance of specifically researching the way the station infrastructure can contribute to feelings of safety. At Leiden Station, you walk from the station itself directly towards the buses, but the seats are just around the corner next to a large, dark bike parking space. Would women also pin this place as unsafe?