When Harum Anjarsari’s husband finally reached her phone after the crash outside Jakarta, he did not hear her voice. Rescue workers answered instead, telling him the device had been recovered from the wreckage of one of the two trains that collided. Harum, 30, was later confirmed to be among the 16 people killed - all women - in the carriage designated for female passengers.
Her brother, Aldyansah, 25, described the consequences for the family. "She was clearly the economic backbone of the family," he said, speaking of Harum, a mother of two children aged three and nine who worked as a cosmetics salesperson in an upscale Jakarta mall. "She was a great help to the family and was a really hardworking person," Aldyansah told Reuters, while Harum’s husband remained too distraught to speak.
Relatives gathered at a police forensic unit to take custody of bodies and wait for word about loved ones. In total, 91 people were hurt in the collision, most of them women.
A concentrated toll on female commuters
Harum’s death sits within a wider pattern of female dependence on the commuter line that links Jakarta with its satellite cities to the east and west. The operator reports the system carries a daily average of more than 1.1 million passengers, making it the busiest mode of public transport in the capital region.
Commuters described routine overcrowding. Nur Aisyah, 31, who works in central Jakarta and travels from Bekasi each day, said the crush during peak hours can be suffocating. She summed up the calculus many riders face: "But why do I still ride it?" she asked rhetorically, then answered, "I have to, because I have to make a living." For many, the line remains the quickest and cheapest way to return home to family.
Authorities and data points cited in the aftermath have highlighted that more Indonesian women workers and commuters depend on public transport than men. World Bank figures noted this pattern, and Indonesia’s manpower ministry said women represented about 40% of the workforce in 2024 in the country identified in reports as the world’s largest Muslim-majority nation.
The carriage at the rear of the train is customarily reserved for women, a measure intended to reduce sexual harassment on packed services. On Monday night that arrangement, intended as a protection, became the place of greatest loss when another train struck the women’s carriage.
Fear and routine hardship
The crash occurred just before 9 p.m., at a time when the train was less crowded than during the evening peak. Still, the accident has intensified safety fears among women who use the same service even under usual testing conditions.
"After the incident, I got scared because I got to and back from work on the women’s carriage," Nur Aisyah said. Bekasi resident Dian Afridianti, 34, who works in cleaning services in Jakarta, said she has been haunted by the prospect that she might have been on the train that night. "I think about what if I’d been there," she said.
Dian described morning commutes as particularly difficult. She said the women’s carriage is packed when she boards around 7 a.m., to the point that "people were jostling each other so much that the doors couldn’t close." "You really had to push your way through," she added.
Transport analyst Hafida Fahmiasari, a doctoral candidate in civil engineering at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, offered a perspective on why more women rely on public transport. She said the reliance is partly because men in many households control more financial assets - from motorcycles to cars - making public transport the more affordable option for many women in Southeast Asia’s largest economy.
"This (accident) will affect women but only in the short term," the doctoral candidate added, reflecting on the likely duration of behavioural change following the crash.
Immediate human and economic consequences
The human cost is clear in accounts of families and the scenes at the forensic unit. Beyond that, the loss of a working mother who served as the primary earner highlights how such tragedies can have direct economic consequences for households that depend on a single income source. For the many women who rely on the commuter line as their fastest and most affordable transport option, the collision exposed vulnerabilities tied to daily travel patterns and constrained mobility choices.
As families reckon with grief and the authorities continue to process the wreckage and its victims, commuters and analysts alike are left confronting the overlap between everyday transport pressures and acute safety risks that can translate into tangible social and economic harm for those most reliant on the system.