A Small-scale Study on Gender-based Violence in Public Transport in Sri Lanka

Accentuated by a study done by the United Nation’s Population Fund which revealed that 90% of Sri Lankan women have experienced harassment in buses and trains this study is situated in Sri Lanka, where street harassment is rampant. In this regard, this small-scale research is conducted to uncover a glimpse of gender-based violence in public transport from the perspective of targets and to destigmatize the view that the onus of responsibility of preventing gender-based violence in public transport lies with the targets rather than the perpetrators. This is a critical discourse analysis of interviews and narratives of targets of gender-based violence in public transport in Sri Lanka, in which theoretical viewpoints of Catherine Riessman (2008), Theo van Leeuwen (2008), and Michael Bamberg and A.Georgakopoulou (2008) would be employed as the framework of analysis. It is further attempted to explore the dominant discourses and master narratives that are thus associated. In this respect, this research unravels as a small-scale study that employs a sample size of five interviewees who self-identified as victim-survivors of gender-based violence in public transport. The main findings of this study underline that the agency of the research participants was considerably at risk at the very moment that they entered a mode of transport. It was also argued that regaining targets’ agency from an incident of gender-based violence in public transport is an interdiscursive practice, which occurs as an amalgamation of varying discourses under a patriarchal master narrative. This study concludes with an emphasis on the rampancy of gender-based violence in public transport as stated at the onset, highlighting the influence of the patriarchal power structures that pervade.