After 100 percent of women surveyed in the French capital said they’d been subjected to unwelcome comments or touching on the Métro, the government decided to crack down.
http://www.takepart.com/article/2015/07/16/paris-bid-adieu-sexual-harassment-public-transportation
By Liz Dwyer, July 16, 2015

Paris subway.
Inappropriate touching, intimidating behavior, catcalling, wolf whistling, or rape. In April, a shocking survey conducted by France’s High
Council for Equality between Women and Men found that 100 percent of
women respondents who ride public transportation in Paris reported
experiencing one of those forms of sexual harassment
or assault. Now the French government is making good on a promise it
made to crack down on the offensive behavior and make buses and trains
safer for women.
So, Why Should You Care? Some
men who engage in harassing behavior might think that as long as
they’re not being violent, there’s nothing wrong with their actions—or
that women secretly enjoy the attention. But according to the results of an international survey
released in May by Cornell University and anti–street harassment group
Hollaback!, 72 percent of women who responded said they had altered
their transportation plans because of harassment on buses and trains.
The survey found an overwhelming number of women experience
feelings of fear, anger, and anxiety because of unwanted attention from
men. Sixty percent of women in the Parisian study reported feeling
afraid of being attacked while riding a bus or train—something no one
should have to deal with while trying to get to work or school.
“The problem is that harassment on public transport has basically been trivialized. The figures are shocking. It exists everywhere, but it’s something young foreign women notice when they come to Paris,” Margaux Collet, a spokesperson for the advocacy group Dare Feminism, told The Local following the report’s release.
To
help curb the behavior, awareness posters are being put up in subway
cars, buses, and stations informing offenders that they can be thrown in
jail for five years or be fined more than $82,000 for harassing another
citizen.
The
government is holding focus groups to help determine the stops on the
Métro where riders feel most vulnerable to harassment. Officials will
use that information to install additional lighting or boost the
presence of law enforcement officers. Plans for expanding night bus
service so that women don’t have to walk as far by themselves are also
in the works. To empower bystanders who may observe women being harassed but are too afraid to speak up, a text message alert system has also been launched.