Stop Street Harassment

Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming

The UK’s First National Street Harassment Study

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EVAWstudy3.8.16End Violence Against Women Coalition, our allies in the UK, commissioned YouGov to conduct the first national poll on street harassment. The results were released today, for International Women’s Day.

Prevalence:

64% of women of all ages have experienced unwanted sexual harassment in public places. (This is almost the same as the USA, our 2014 study found that 65% of women had been harassed.) Additionally, 35% of women had experienced unwanted sexual touching.

Age:

When they looked at just young women ages 18-24, however, the percentages increased significantly: 85% had faced sexual harassment in public spaces and 45% had experienced unwanted sexual touching.

Related, across all ages of women, most said it began at a young age. More than 1 in 4 said it happened before age 16, and more than 3 in 4 said it happened by age 21.

Bystanders/Upstanders:

Sadly, only 11% of women said anyone had intervened when they were harassed though 81% said they wished someone had.

Changing Their Life:

When it comes to feeling safe, 63% of women (versus 45% of men) said they generally feel unsafe in public spaces and almost half do conscious “safety planning” when they go out in the evenings.

What Can We Do:

When asked what should be done, many said “they supported more police (53%), better street lighting (38%), more transport staff (38%) and public awareness campaigns encouraging others to intervene (35%). No women we asked believed this problem should be ignored and no measures taken.”

Racialized Sexual Harassment:

Because women of color may also face racialized sexual harassment, EVAW partnered with Imkaan to produce a five minute film featuring young women of color talking about their experiences.

In discussing what it feels like to experience racist sexual harassment one woman in the film says:

“My experiences are different as a Black woman than they are for my white friends. I should be ‘up for it’ or I am ‘fair game’, or I shouldn’t care if my body is touched in a specific way.

And another woman says:

“After me ignoring them, that’s when it turns racial, so that’s when it might be ‘you black this’ or ‘you black that…how dare you ignore me’.”

In a press release for the film and survey, Lia Latchford, Policy and Campaigns Coordinator at Imkaan said:

“Our film tells a powerful story of young black women’s everyday experience of racialised sexual harassment. For us, we cannot ‘leave race out of it’ because the way we are treated is based on how our whole identities are perceived as black women. This harassment and abuse often uses racist stereotypes and insults as an attempt to put black women in our place. Everyone, adults and young people alike, need to talk about it and it needs to stop.”

Sarah Green, Acting Director at the End Violence Against Women Coalition said:

“Sexual harassment is an everyday experience which women and girls learn to deal with, but it’s time to hold a mirror up to it and challenge it. We did this survey to find out about the scale of sexual harassment and the impact it has on the way women live. If women are planning their lives around not being harassed or assaulted, they are not free. Women should be free to live their lives without the threat of harassment and violence, not having to plan and limit their choices to make sure they’re safe.”

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Will D.C. Become the First U.S. City to have a Taskforce on Street Harassment?

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After the District of Columbia (D.C.) city council hearing on street harassment in December, Councilmember Brianne Nadeau introduced legislation this week to form a D.C. Task Force on Street Harassment – and five council members have already signed on! This means D.C. is poised to be the first city in the USA to have such a taskforce.
 
Kudos to our partners Collective Action for Safe Spaces for working hard to make this possible. And we’re excited that when/if the taskforce is formed, Stop Street Harassment will be part of it!
Via Washington City Paper:
“The bill states the task force would be spearheaded by the D.C. Office on Human Rights and made up of representatives from several other city agencies as well as from community-based organizations. These members would prepare a report within a year on the possible collection of data on the prevalence of street harassment, strategies to address it in “high-risk areas,” bystander intervention training, and potential statutory changes. Still, Nadeau said the goal of the report is not to lock harassers up.“We need to create this change while being sensitive to the fact that young people, members of the LGBTQ community, people from communities of color, and people from low-income communities experience more frequent and severe harassment,” she said in a statement. “Any solution to the problem shouldn’t be an excuse to disproportionately target those same communities through criminalization.”

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Soliciting Minneapolis Street Harassment Stories

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I’m sharing this for our ally Cards Against Harassment:

“Have you ever experienced street harassment in Minnesota? A Minneapolis-based activist is gathering stories (however brief, however general) to help inform upcoming anti-harassment initiatives in Minneapolis.

If you can, please take a minute and either in the comments on this post, or in an email to cardsagainstharassment@gmail.com, describe your experience(s) with street harassment in or around Minneapolis. If you want to share details of your experiences, please do, but your post or email does not need to be specific, dramatic, or seem notable to you; a simple “this has happened to me and here is how it affected my me or my behavior” will suffice.  The preliminary goal is to simply gather samples of experiences, and ideally some detail on street harassment’s impact on people who live, work, or have visited Minneapolis.  

If you do share details, please don’t include narrative concerning perceptions concerning the economic status or racial or ethnic identity of your harasser, or coded language accomplishing the same. The goal is to help increase respect, not prejudice.”

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Street Harassment Curriculum

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SHcurriculumHere’s a new resource from Hollaback.

Via their Facebook page:

“Today we released our new anti-street harassment curriculum that we have been working hard on! HOLLA 101 features 19 lesson plans, videos, role-play exercises and more. The curriculum also features our vlog series, With Love and Revolution. To view the curriculum visit the link!”

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Video: Push My Button

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Here’s a new video about street harassment by Heather Arnett, her latest in a series called the Cat Call Choir.  She writes that the series is “a somewhat sardonic, slightly scornful, but non-violent, songful response to street harassment.”

Push My Button from Heather Arnett on Vimeo.

“In this week’s Cat Call Choir experiment we added the Staples Easy Button with “sing” written on it to encourage people to stick around to listen for a verse and perhaps engage in a conversation about street harassment.

What do you think? Should we just sing to people so there’s no option to get away from unwanted attention very much like when women are harassed on the streets, in parks, on trains and at work? Or is there value in encouraging the conversation?”

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