Jeremy Corbyn is far from the first person to have floated the idea of women-only train carriages.

Segregated areas on public transport are in use in several countries around the world - mostly those where women face institutional discrimination, severe sexual harassment, or both.

The measures have met with mixed success, sometimes welcomed by women as a safe haven, sometimes resented as symptomatic of wider mistreatment, and in other places deemed irrelevant because they are often used by men who ignore the rules.

Iran

Iran separates men and women entirely in city commuter buses, with even married couples required to sit or stand apart. The metro has women-only carriages but their use is optional. Long-distance buses and trains are mixed.

Women wait for a bus in central Tehran. Photograph: Darren Staples/Reuters

Women face restrictions in many areas of their lives in Iran, from an effective ban on running for president and divorce laws slanted against them, to the requirement that they cover their heads in public and a bar on female spectators attending some male sports events. But women outnumber men in university enrolment, make up a third of doctors and a majority of civil servants and teachers, and the country has a progressive and effective birth control programme.

Japan

Japan brought in women-only carriages on nine metro and suburban train lines a decade ago after reports that more than half of female passengers had been groped on trains around Tokyo.

Female passengers wait to leave Tokyo’s Shinjuku station. Photograph: Yoshikazu Tsuno/AFP

Japan has been accused of “institutionalised inequality” in its workplaces. There is an unofficial ban on female sushi chefs “because women menstruate”. And on average women take home 70% of men’s pay for the same job. More than two-thirds leave permanent employment after having children. Married working women are sometimes demonised as oniyome, or “devil wives”.

Less than 10% of MPs in the powerful lower house of parliament are women. Japan is ranked 104th in a gender gap rating drawn up by the World Economic Forum, well below far poorer countries, from Zimbabwe to El Salvador and the Kyrgyz Republic.

The gap has been deemed so damaging to Japan’s economy and demographics that the conservative prime minister, Shinzo Abe, last year promised to address it with “womenomics”.

India

India has women-only carriages on its metro to deal with persistent sexual harassment and in 2009 introduced “ladies’ specials”, entire trains reserved for female passengers in Delhi, Mumbai, Calcutta and Madras, though some staff are male.

A ‘ladies’ special’ train in Mumbai. Photograph: Navesh Chitrakar/Reuters

Harassment, euphemistically known as “Eve teasing”, is ubiquitous, but some Indian women see the separate carriages as a step back rather than a way to solve matters. The country’s problem with sexual abuse came to worldwide attention in 2012 with the gang rape and murder of a 23-year-old woman on a moving bus, but despite a wave of education and activism the statistics on sexual violence are still grim. Every day 93 women report rapes, and thousands of others are thought to go uncounted.

India has one of the lowest rates of female participation in the labour force among emerging markets and developing countries, only around two-thirds of women are literate and a preference for sons has skewed the country’s gender ratio, from infanticide of young girls to sex-selective abortion.

UAE

Dubai has women-only carriages on its metro during rush hours, the front seats on buses are reserved for women, and there are fleets of pink taxis driven by women for female-only passengers in several cities.



According to Human Rights Watch, women in the United Arab Emirates are effectively second-class citizens. Among the restrictions they face are the need for permission from a male guardian to marry. Once married they are expected to be “obedient” to their husband and in most cases need his consent to take on paid employment outside the home.

Women cannot pass citizenship on to their children, have more restricted access to divorce than men and can only have one husband while men can marry up to four women. Those who report rape or sexual assault risk being prosecuted for illicit relations.

Egypt

Egypt introduced women-only carriages on its metro in 2007, as women sought to escape a tide of harassment. UN research suggests 99% of women and girls interviewed for a UN survey reported that they had experienced some form of abuse on the streets.



In the turmoil following the Arab Spring there have been a series of high-profile public attacks on Egyptian and foreign women, ranging from the 19 year-old stripped and attacked during an election victory rally last year, to the 2011 assault on reporter Lara Logan in Tahrir square.

Sexual harrassment was only criminalised in Egypt last year, and the military under now-president Abdel Fatah al-Sisi forced female detainees to take virginity tests, which many saw as a form of institutionalised abuse. Female genital mutiliation is also practiced in Egypt.

Around a third of Egyptian women are illiterate, and only around a quarter work outside the home.

Indonesia

Jakarta introduced women-only carriages on commuter trains in 2010, and in 2013 considered devoting entire trains to women passengers before dropping the system and reconverting the trains into mixed-sex travel.

Brazil

Rio de Janeiro brought in women-only carriages for rush hour on the city’s metro in 2006, after concerns about widespread sexual harassment, but they are widely ignored and enforcement is sporadic.

Mexico

Mexico City also brought in women-only areas of platforms and carriages for rush hour, but enforcement is weak and there has been no survey of whether it has made any difference.

Other countries

Malaysia in 2010 launched pink women-only buses and trains, and in the capital of the Philippines there are also women-only compartments. Taiwan experimented briefly with women-only carriages in 2006, but dropped the idea after a three-month trial. Kathmandu in Nepal is trialling women-only minibuses.