NB: This is not a word for word transcript Группа Learning English: http://vkontakte.ru/club17650165 Продолжение транскрипта: http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/6minute/100826_6min_women.pdf
Alice: Hello! I’m Alice and this is 6 Minute English…. Welcome to Rob who is joining me today! Hi Rob. Rob: Hello Alice. Alice: Today we’re talking about female-only carriages on trains. Rob: These are train carriages which are only for women. We don’t have them in the UK. Alice: No we don’t – but there are quite a few countries which do have female-only carriages for commuters. It’s to help women from being bothered while they are travelling – to stop sexual harassment. Can you guess which of these countries have female-only carriages Rob? I’ll give you a choice of 4. Canada, Japan, Egypt or Germany Rob: I’ll have a think and tell you at the end of the programme. Why is this in the news? Alice: It’s in the news because women in Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia, will now be able to travel in female-only train carriages. Here’s part of a report by the BBC’s Karishma Vaswani in Jakarta. Extract 1: The trains to the suburbs are always packed with commuters trying to get from their offices in the city back to their homes. Female passengers have been complaining that some male commuters are taking advantage. By introducing women’s only carriages, the state-run rail operator wants to put a stop to sexual harassment. Alice: The company that operates the trains in this part of Jakarta say they have received lots of complaints about men taking advantage of women. Taking advantage – that’s a polite way of saying some men were touching women or banging into them on purpose on crowded trains. Rob: It is officially called sexual harassment. Alice: The state-run rail operator – the train company owned by the government – said that women were avoiding packed trains to avoid sexual harassment. So they have created women only train carriages. Rob: They have even designed the train carriages to appeal to women apparently. Alice: That’s right. The carriages are made in Japan and have brightly covered pink seats. They’re easy to spot. Rob: They’re easy to spot – they stand out, they’re easy to see from a distance. Alice: This woman, 22 year old Yanti a student in Jakarta said she hopes the carriages will help stop sexual harassment on crowded trains. Extract 2 (Voiceover in English): Hopefully this service will be able to reduce the number of women who become targets of sexual harassment on the trains. Sometimes there are men who bump and push into us on purpose, and they take advantage of the cramped conditions. But there must be other ways to stop sexual harassment. We have to try and raise awareness about the issue as well. Alice: So Yanti said the carriages are part – but not all of the solution - to prevent sexual harassment on the train. Rob: Yes – she said that it’s important to raise awareness about the issue of sexual harassment as well. Alice: to raise awareness – that’s a useful phrase – you often hear it when people want to talk about difficult issues – issues which are difficult to discuss. Rob: We also heard the phrase taking advantage again. Alice: Yanti said that some men take advantage of the cramped conditions on the train to bump or push into women on purpose. Rob: on purpose – that means you do something deliberately. The carriages are full of people – they’re very cramped. Alice: He did it on purpose, she did it on purpose – it wasn’t a mistake, they did it deliberately. Sexual harassment is a difficult issue to talk about. Some countries have laws which make sexual harassment illegal – especially in the workplace. What is the official definition of sexual harassment Rob? Rob: The United Nations Development Fund for Women defines sexual harassment as "unwelcome or unwanted verbal, non-verbal...