In Indonesia, Women Begin to Fight ‘Epidemic’ of Street Harassment While Ms. Tunggal had become used to enduring daily harassment on her way to and from classes — mostly catcalls and sexually suggestive looks and comments — when a man suddenly began gyrating against her from behind, she said, "I froze." "I didn’t know what to do — I didn’t even know that I should have screamed," said Ms. Tunggal, who now works for a women’s organization. 9, 2017 JAKARTA, Indonesia — Tunggal Pawestri says she’ll never forget being groped on a public bus while traveling to her high school in Jakarta, the Indonesian capital, when she was 14. By comparison, more than 200 women in the Jakarta region alone posted accounts in the past 12 months, both under their name and anonymously, of harassment or groping on the streets or on public transportation to the Indonesia website of Hollaback, an international initiative against street harassment. Yuniyanti Chuzaifah said that It’s an epidemic, and, unfortunately, at the moment, Indonesia has no legal protection for sexual harassment, A 19-year-old student at the University of Indonesia, who asked not to be named because she feared publicly confronting her attacker, had anonymously posted two stories of harassment on the Hollaback Jakarta website, one about being molested twice by a close family friend while she was in elementary school, and the other about recent catcalling on the street. Wulan Danoekoesoemo, a clinical psychologist and co-founder of Lentera Sintas Indonesia, which counsels sexual violence victims, said the country’s street harassment problem stemmed from its patriarchal society, in which men traditionally hold authority over women.
