RIO DE JANEIRO - Approved March 8, on International Women’s Day, in a bid to curb sexual harassment, the law was only partially observed when it was taken for a test drive on Monday.

Many men boarded the reserved cars — identified by a pink sticker on the subway cars, or by an icon depicting a woman on other trains — either by accident, to escape more crowded train cars or simply to break the rules, MetroRio noted Tuesday.

Some 500,000 passengers — 49 percent of them women and 51 percent men — ride the Rio subway each day, according to MetroRio.

On Monday, each time a man entered the reserved cars, the women would rail against the intrusion. But some, undeterred, held their ground, despite shouts and boos from other passengers.

Reaction was divided largely along gender lines.

“If they don’t respect women, how can you expect them to respect the laws?” 22-year-old student Debora Bianco told the daily O Globo.

“It’s quite simply discrimination,” a nurse fumed on television Tuesday, after a security guard asked him to leave a women-only car on a suburban route. The man claimed to have been “forcibly removed” from the train car.

“Separation (of the sexes) is a throwback to my grandmother’s era. It’s a big step backward in the fight for women’s equality,” complained Rogeria Peixoto, head of a Brazilian women’s group.

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