Tara Willoughby, Canberra, Australia, SSH Blog Correspondent

For many Australians, cars are a huge part of their lives. Around the country, you’ll find ‘Ford families’ and ‘Holden families’.  And like many other pursuits in our society, being ‘into cars’ is a strongly gendered affair – cars are for men. Car culture is perhaps most visible during large public events centred around cars. It is also at these events that more insidious aspects of car culture can be seen, including street harassment. While there is debate about whether there are increased rates of harassment around these events, I will look at two events in particular: the Clipsal 500 in Adelaide and Summernats in Canberra.

The Clipsal 500

The Clipsal 500 is a round of the V8 Supercar Championship Series and takes place over 4 days at the start of March in Adelaide. As well as the race itself, there are a large number of other ‘attractions’ during the event, and it forms part of Adelaide’s ‘Mad March’ celebrations.

In 2009 and 2014, YWCA Adelaide ran the ‘Women’s Safety Survey’ after hearing from young women members that they felt unsafe in the city while the race was in town.  Of the almost 400 respondents in 2014, 90% said they felt unsafe at the Clipsal, and 60% said they had experienced an incident around the race that made them feel unsafe.

It has however been questioned whether there truly is an issue of harassment at the Clipsal. Critics point to the lack of a spike in reports to police of harassment and assault during the event, the participants from other Mad March events being in the city at the same time, and the theory that increased numbers of people in the city would actually make it safer (although there is no evidence proposed to support this theory). It is also notable that much street harassment is not of the type people feel the need/ability to report to the police.

Summernats

Summernats is a car festival held over three and a half days in Canberra each year. Like with the Clipsal 500, many women feel unsafe during this event. A colleague of mine described her friend’s experience of being continuously harassed and yelled at to ‘take your top off’ – a shout that has been noted at the event for many years. This year alone many women used social media to complain of sexual harassment around the event.

Police regularly report low or no arrests and reports during Summernats. A further example of the shortfalls of police reports as a metric for measuring street harassment at Summernats comes from 2008, when a mob of 400 men aggressively surrounded and harassed a number of women over several hours and yet police were not involved. That year’s Summernats was described by Police as quieter than the year before. Another mobbing incident was alleged in 2011.

What can we do?

Even assuming that street harassment is no worse in and around car-specific events than in the rest of Australia, there is still an onus on organisers to make their events safe for women. Not only is it good for business, but preventing violence against women is everyone’s responsibility.

So what steps can be taken? To start with, we know that messages from society at large matter. Messages that are disrespectful towards women, messages that support inequality between men and women, messages that have strong distinctions between men’s role and women’s roles, all lead to the perpetration of violence and unhelpful responses from people who witness violence. This is a well-established fact [pdf – see especially page 18]. It’s high time that car event organisers think carefully about the messages they are sending to participants.

Activities solely devoted to appraising women’s appearance are present at both the Clipsal 500 (the bikini parade) and Summernats (the Miss Summernats Beauty Pageant). Likewise both events feature various promotional (female) models and ‘grid girls’. Meanwhile, in 2015, the vast majority of winners at Summernats and all drivers lined up at the Clipsal 500 were men. There’s so much that could be done to change this one-dimensional image of women as inactive sexualised objects and men as serious participants. Welcoming women into traditionally male-dominated arenas is a goal that has received a huge amount of support in Australia, including creation of fantastic research and practical tools. It is also important not to disregard the important place of ‘inactive’ elements like models. There is absolutely no reason why men should not also be welcomed into these areas. Indeed, they can add talent in this area just as women add talent as ‘active’ participants.

Most importantly, street harassment (and sexism and violence more broadly) is an issue that needs to be talked about inside car culture, not just by feminists and academics. These behaviours are simply unacceptable, and there is so much that can be done to change the social structures that allow them to happen. Even just starting the conversation makes a difference.

Tara works with AWAVA (the Australian Women Against Violence Alliance) indulging her love of social media. You can find her on Twitter as @angelbird72 or @Tash_Because or being silly as one half of the ‘slice-of-life’ podcast Heaps Funny But.

Simona-Maria Chirciu, Bucharest, Romania, SSH Blog Correspondent

This is a call for book chapter submissions. The topic: Sexual Harassment – Lived Histories & Street Harassment as a Urban Discrimination

Remembering and writing about personal experiences of sexual harassment is sometimes easy and maybe other times it is very hard. But either way, it is good to speak up for yourself and make your experiences matter!

I want to present to you two interesting projects in Romania that aim to tackle sexual harassment and urban discrimination against women.

1. One of them is an editorial project and before the 1^st May 2015, you can send your contributions, regardless of your origin country or your gender.

We all have a sexual harassment history (unpleasant, of course!) so I want to share with you some important information about a call for book chapters. I’m very pleased with this project and I’ve already submitted my contribution. I really think there is importance in sharing with others the hard and heartful experiences of sexual harassment so we can raise awareness about this problem.  As most of us know, sexual harassment comes in many forms (street harassment, workplace harassment, school harassment) and happens all the time. We are not its victims, but its survivors and need to act as such!

So, “Sexual Harassment. Lived Histories” is an editorial project that aims to gather and uncover sexual harassment experiences for women and men in Romania and the world over. The purpose of this collective volume is to enhance the visibility of sexual harassment stories and experiences worldwide and to offer a framework of its causes, effects, need for proper and viable solutions.

I really think that sexual harassment in general and street harassment in particular are invisible problems, so we need to put some light on it!  I invite you to read the call for book chapters and write down, if you want, one or some of your stories! Let your own voice be heard. Your voice matters! This is more than a reflection exercise and is emotionally healing as well.

Let’s raise awareness on sexual harassment together, despite the distances and differences between us!  Deadline for this call is 1^st May 2015.  For more important information, you can find information here.

2. The other project is “Urban Discrimination” and it was created by two feminist NGOs from Romania, Bucharest – FRONT Association and Society of Feminist Analyses AnA. The project is open to people who want to participate actively and it aims to respond problems such as “Is the Capital of Romania an European city who pays attention to gender equality problems, inclusion, diversity? Is Bucharest a sexist, homophobic or transphobic city? Is it a city safe for girls and women of all ages? Are women represented in the public-urban space? Are they finded in the collective memory of Bucharest?”

We all know urban spaces are not safe places! The Urban Discrimination site has a map where women can pin the places where they were sexually harassed and share their experiences for raising awareness and to make this problem more visible.

I only can say I am glad that in Romania feminists are present and working hard in addressing and stopping sexual harassment! We must work and fight for our right to be safe and free!

Simona is the Vice President of a feminist NGO – FILIA Center and a PhD student in Political Sciences, working on a thesis on street harassment in Bucharest. You can follow her on Facebook.

Madison Ford, Texas, USA, Blog Correspondent

Street harassment awareness is spreading. A year ago, when I talked about my research on the subject with casual acquaintances I had to explain what exactly street harassment is almost every single time. Nowadays, street harassment shows up in the media often enough that people have at least some conception of what it is.

Every once in a while, I end up having these conversations with people who have actively participated in street harassment. Most of the time these conversations end very well: we have an engaging discussion about masculinity or gender inequality and my acquaintance will express regret for ever participating in harassing behaviors. But this isn’t always how it goes down. Sometimes the people I speak with will admit they have harassed women on the street, and despite the public outcry against the act they continue to do so because they don’t see it as a problem. It’s only a game, women need to just get over it, the same old story.

Now no two people’s opinions can ever be exactly alike, but I abide by these four tips when I’m speaking with somebody who not only disagrees with my opinions on street harassment – but actively participates in harassing behaviors as well. In your discussions with friends, acquaintances, and colleagues – I hope these tips help you keep things civil and on topic.

1) Stay calm. Believe me, if anyone has ever wanted to spit fire during a conversation about street harassment – it’s me. If you let your emotions overwhelm you it will be much more difficult to word a convincing argument on the spot. Whenever your conversation partner says something frustrating, take a deep breath and move on to step two.

2) Remember the facts. Many websites have abundant research with scientific conclusions about street harassment. If somebody tells you that women are overreacting, point them to statistics on sexual assault. We live in a culture that blames the victims for the actions of perpetrators. It’s hard to walk through life as a woman not knowing that, but often it’s a fact that men overlook since sexual assault so overwhelmingly affects women. If these logical tactics still don’t sway the opinion of your acquaintance, it’s time to move on to an emotional argument.

3) Empathy. Everyone who has harassed somebody else has women in their life in some form: a mother, a sister, an aunt, a cousin, or a girlfriend. Ask the harasser how they would feel knowing someone said something sexually violent to the women in their lives. Ask them if they know the alternate routes their family members take to avoid certain men on certain streets or if their family members carry weapons to protect themselves from the threat of sexual violence. Most importantly, remember that this empathy needs to go both ways. Empathize with the harasser. Ask him why he harasses, why he thinks it’s okay, and even ask his opinion on the street harassment research you may have presented earlier in the conversation. By asking someone to truly evaluate their actions, they may realize their impact. But not everyone will – some will resist no matter what you do or say, and that’s where the last step comes in handy.

4) Recognize a lost cause. People are stubborn, especially when they’re feeling defensive. Maybe he’ll change his mind later, maybe he’ll never change his mind. Point is, some people won’t listen to what you have to say. Some people are stubborn enough they’ll wait to change their minds until after you’re gone. If the conversation has gone on for a while and you’re both just parroting the same things back to one another, realize that this conversation will probably not end with changing the other person’s mind. Never look back at conversations like this as if they’re a waste of time – think of it as your own training for future conversations. You’ll learn how to more eloquently word your arguments and you may even learn more about why you feel the way you feel about certain issues. For a while, almost nobody was even having a conversation about street harassment; so now, every conversation is integral to the fight against it.

Madison is a soon-to-be graduate of the University of Texas at Austin studying literature and sociology. Follow her on Twitter, @madiford222.