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Step up, step in: Anti-harassment campaigns urge bystander intervention
A UN-Indonesia initiative and a coalition on providing safe public spaces for women are taking up the fight against sexual harassment with those who are best placed to offer help: Bystanders.
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Passengers wait to board the women-only Transjakarta bus at the Harmoni busway shelter in Central Jakarta on Nov. 11, 2016. The bus is intended to prevent sexual harassment, which primarily occurs on the streets and public transportation in major Indonesian cities. (JP/Seto Wardhana)
Aprilia Resdini was taking the train from Bogor to Jakarta when she saw a man rubbing his crotch against the back of a female passenger, who looked uncomfortable and helpless. Aprilia moved by her side and started asking her about the train routes.
On seeing that his victim was no longer alone, the man stopped.
“The victim was aware of [what I had done] and thanked me, saying that worse things would have happened if I had not intervened,” said Aprilia, who is studying at Jakarta State University.
Nadia was not as fortunate as the woman on the train. No one came to help her when she was walking home in the upscale South Jakarta neighborhood of Kebayoran Baru, one night in 2018 after work. A man on a motorcycle rode by her, grabbed her breast and sped off laughing. Even though other people around her had witnessed the incident, they just looked on, despite of Nadia’s call for help.
“A [private] security guard was right there, but he did nothing. I just cried,” she recalled.
Aprilia is the type of woman described as a “female warrior”, a bystander who will not hold back when she witnesses harassment. The female warrior is but one of four female personas that is identified in a new report titled After Dark by Pulse Lab Jakarta, a joint initiative between the United Nations and the Indonesian government that combines big data and social research.
