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Announcing a New Project!

November 25, 2017 By HKearl

Today is the first day of the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence as well as International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, and this year’s theme is “Leave No One Behind.”

Building on this theme as well as the outpouring of #MeToo sexual abuse stories from women around the world (H/T to the hashtag creator Tarana Burke), the SSH board and I are excited to announce a new project. 

Exciting New Survey
We plan to partner again with national survey firm GfK (they worked with us in 2014) to conduct a nationally representative survey on sexual harassment and abuse in all the places it occurs, including public spaces, schools, campuses, workplaces, places of worship and private homes. We hope the survey will show just how all-encompassing sexual harassment and abuse can be nationwide, as well as illuminate other information, like the young age it begins. To date, there has not been a survey like this undertaken.

Because this national sample of 2,000 people ages 18+ will reflect the demographics of the country, the experiences of smaller demographics won’t be as well documented, including demographics of people who face high rates of abuse. Thus, we will also conduct three separate online surveys that target three main demographics: transgender people, persons with disabilities and youth (of course acknowledging that some people span two or all three categories).

How can you be involved? 
1) Donate, $10 or more. We need to raise $11,000 to cover the costs. The sooner we raise the funds, the sooner we can undertake this timely project.

2) Encourage your networks and friends to donate, particularly for #GivingTuesday in three days. Here is a sample message and graphic for social media.

If you were moved by the #MeToo stories, you can bring more facts to light about the extent of #sexualharassment by helping @stopstharassmnt fund a ground-breaking national survey. https://www.razoo.com/team/Shanationlsurvey #EndSH

3) If you would like to participate in any of the three online surveys (the main survey is randomized and conducted by GfK), help solicit responses for them or give input on the questions, please be in touch.

Thanks!

Holly
SSH Founder

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Filed Under: 16 days, national study, nonprofit, SSH programs, street harassment, UN events and efforts Tagged With: fundraiser

Int’l Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women 2016

November 25, 2016 By HKearl

Image via UN Women
UN Women

Today, November 25, is the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, organized by the UN. The UNiTE campaign “strongly emphasizes the need for sustainable financing for efforts to end violence against women and girls towards the fulfillment of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.”

Why?

“One of the major challenges to efforts to prevent and end violence against women and girls worldwide is the substantial funding shortfall. As a result, resources for initiatives to prevent and end violence against women and girls are severely lacking.”

To that end, we encourage you to consider donations to these organizations that are working to address and end violence against women and girls:

  1. Stop Street Harassment (of course) to help fund our National Street Harassment Hotline in 2017. You can also donate to support our 2017 Safe Public Spaces Mentoring Program and an updating of the laws in our Know Your Rights Toolkit, which was produced in 2013.
  2. Collective Action for Safe Spaces (Washington, D.C.)
  3. Girls for Gender Equity (New York City)
  4. A Long Walk Home (Chicago)
  5. End Rape on Campus (national, USA)
A Long Walk Home Girl/Friends in Chicago
A Long Walk Home Girl/Friends in Chicago

Today is also the first day of the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence Campaign (being commemorated for its 25th year), coordinated by the Center for Women’s Global Leadership.The theme of the 16 Days Campaign is “From Peace in the Home to Peace in the World: Make Education Safe for All”.  According to the 16 Days website,

“This theme recognizes that structural discrimination and inequality is perpetuated in a cycle of violence that does not end even when girls and young women are in the act of gaining an education. Gender-based violence with respect to the right to education is a consistent threat in public spaces, schools, and homes and is a detriment to the universal human right to education and it is our obligation to focus on the precarious situation of education for girls and boys, young women and men this year through the 16 Days Campaign.”

Many girls and women also face violence and harassment simply traveling TO and FROM school and college. This also must be addressed if we want to see girls be able to safely receive an education.

For more information on this specific problem, see the Safe Routes to School National Partnership’s report that includes information on street harassment.

Join the conversations online with #16Days and take a stand against violence against women.

Remember, donate if you can! Our work relies on the generous contributions of people like you.

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Filed Under: 16 days, street harassment, UN events and efforts Tagged With: 16 days, girls walking to school, violence against women

HABITAT 3: A Day of Connections

October 19, 2016 By HKearl

img_8917Hello from my final day at HABITAT 3 in Quito, Ecuador.

The two big highlights were:

1) Co-presenting this morning on a panel about crowdsourcing and community engagement with Elsa D’Silva of Safecity from India and Rosy Mondardini of Open Seventeen in Switzerland. Even with an 8 a.m. start time, about 40 people joined us — and unlike most other panels, we respected the time and spent 1/3rd of our session on Q&A with the audience. People were interested to hear more about how we collect data (through crowdsource mapping, story collection at workshops, stories submitted online, and surveys) and how we have been able to create concrete changes in our communities with those data.

2) The other highlight was meeting up with two activists I have emailed with for years — Alma in Italy and Alice in Brazil. We all realized last night we were all in town and arranged to meet today. Elsa joined me and so then we had anti-street harassment activists from four countries, four continents all together. It was very exciting!! Each of their groups participate in International Anti-Street Harassment Week each year, which is cool.

Alice invited us to make a video with her organization’s “super hero” to talk about creative ways to deal with street harassers (video to come).

I also got to meet Marcelo from ActionAid when he came to my panel and I went to his; he helped galvanize many of their ActionAid Safe Cities groups to join International Anti-Street Harassment Week this year.

Doing this work can sometimes feel really isolating when so much of it is done online, from my home, from buses and airports and hotel rooms, and so to actually meet people who are doing similar work and to put a face to an email address I have seen pop up over the years was so exciting!

10-19-16-our-bodies-are-not-public-space-habitat-3-quito-ecuador

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Filed Under: anti-street harassment week, street harassment, UN events and efforts Tagged With: brazil, Habitat 3, India, italy, usa

HABITAT 3: Safer Cities is a Priority

October 18, 2016 By HKearl

Norti, Suneeta, Maria, Lakshmi, Luis, Powes
Norti, Suneeta, Maria, Lakshmi, Luis, Powes

Hello from day 4 at HABITAT 3 in Quito, Ecuador. The big event for me today was the UN Women panel on their Safe Cities programme.

UN Women could only host one high-level session at the conference and they chose this issue. My colleagues at UN Women have advocated for several years for this program on sexual harassment in public spaces to be recognized and included in these kinds of high level global events, so this was a big payoff.

The room was packed with about 150 people, including people standing in the back and sitting on the floor. It went really well.

First, here is an overview of what the Safe Cities programme is. This is essentially what was shared by the moderator, Lakshmi Puri, Deputy Executive Director and Assistant Secretary General of UN Women.

The flyer for the event today... that I designed!
The flyer for the event today… that I designed!

While the program is now in more than 20 cities, there were five flagship cities (Delhi, Cairo, Quito, Port Moresby, and Kigali) that started in 2011. Representatives from all five cities were invited to speak on the panel and representatives from Port Moresby, Delhi and Cairo were able to join (the rep from Cairo gave a pre-recorded video address). They spoke about their efforts and progress over the past five years. They were all incredibly inspiring, but I think that the governor from Port Moresby was my favorite.

In his opening remarks, Governor Parkop Powes did not shy away from sharing the problem of violence in Papua New Guinea. He talked about how tribes have been at war with each other for a long time and that violence is often seen as a means for solving problems. He noted that they are a patriarchal society where men are dominant. “Trying to change the violent culture is not easy. But we see it’s important. Violence is an impediment to women and also to the development of our city.”

The focus of the Port Moresby Safe Cities program has been to make marketplaces safer as they are not only economic hubs but also social hubs. They’ve had some successes so far, but they have a ways to go, he said.

“After being in the program for a while, we see that the interventions deal with the symptoms of violence and they alone won’t solve the problem. We’ve created a safe market to make it safe for women and girls, but we haven’t solved the problem of who is responsible for violence. The women vendors who leave the market and go back home still face threats of violence and fear of violence as they travel or even in their home. So we haven’t solved the problem of violence. Having a safe house for women facing domestic violence is symptom but doesn’t solve the problem. Same thing with the women-only buses – we’d rather have an integrated system where everyone is safe, but for now, we decided to have a women-only bus. Ultimately, it’s the behavior of men that’s the problem. They are violent. It’s the culture. We are working with UN Women to create behavior change.”

They are trying some creative methods. For example, doing yoga with men to help them start to respect themselves and then respect women. As another example, Governor Powes takes a walk every Sunday that anyone can join him in. He said sometimes a thousand people will join him, most of them women. This is really revolutionary because many women feel very unsafe walking in public. Rates of rape are very high, as are rates of murder. On average, every single person knows at least one person who has been murdered. So by walking in public for recreation, the women are claiming public spaces and demanding that they be safe for all.

A representative from the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation closed out the panel. This is the “mother donor” of the program. They continued to fund it, even when Spain was in an economic crisis. The representative shared that they will increase their support next year. This is huge as it is really hard to fund programs to end violence against women (as I know firsthand from my limited experience trying to fundraise for Stop Street Harassment). Having this support is really important and makes the program possible.

Later in the day, I also had the opportunity to join my boss in meeting with the Quito Safe Cities team. They talked about their work with transit officials to make public transit safer. They also have created a comic book about respect that they will be taking to five schools and training teachers on how to hold conversations around respect. They were very open about how Ecuadorian culture is full of machismo and how they have to focus on changing mindsets and attitudes before they can really see change. But they said they have support at the highest levels — and indeed, the wife of the mayor, Maria Fernando Pacheco, led the meeting as she is very supportive of the program — and so that is making their implementation process easier. Plus, they have alarming data that helps them more easily galvanize support: more than 90% of women face street harassment. More than 1 in 4 girls have been harassed outside their schools. Most women see public transit as unsafe. And most women try not to be alone in public after 6 p.m. when it gets dark.

These two events were inspiring and uplifting and it made me so so so so happy to hear from and meet people in various parts of the world who are committed to making public spaces safer and who understand that ultimately, we have to see cultures change before that will be a reality.

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Filed Under: street harassment, UN events and efforts Tagged With: ecuador, Habitat 3, India, papau new guinea, safe cities, spain, UN women

HABITAT 3: Men Talking to Men

October 17, 2016 By HKearl

Today was day three of HABITAT 3 in Quito, Ecuador. My boss asked me to attend four sessions that were not pitched as being specifically about women or gender or sexual violence (though there are a few of those across the conference, many of them involving UN Women in some way) with the hopes that I could help insert those topics into the conversation during the Q&A. What I found when I attended the sessions was what she and I suspected, without those items in the title or being pitched as the main topic, gender and women’s experiences and views barely came up at all. It reminded me of college where unless I took a course in the women’s studies division, the courses basically focused on men. As a history major, I’ll always remember my first women’s history class and my relief — “here’s where the women are!”

As an example of the four sessions today, one focused on the active transportation of bicycling and walking and how having fewer vehicles on the roads benefits cities in various ways. In theory, yes, I agree. Here is where I had issues. All of the presenter were men and they seemed to only be focused on men. The data they presented from their various cities did not include a gender break down. Their discussions about barriers to having more people walk or cycle did not include street harassment. Women’s unique experiences were not included AT ALL. What an oversight. You cannot expect to see more women walking and cycling until the issue of street harassment and safety are addressed and ended!

10-17-16-habitat-3The first three sessions I attended went over time or nearly went over time and so there either was no time for questions or only time for 2-3 questions. Thus, I did not get to insert gender during the Q&A … until the final session. This was a session on urban rules and governance. The moderator was a female judge from Malawi and panelists included an EU parliament member, Sierra Leone mayor and minister in Singapore. These three were all men. They talked about how to pass policies and laws, how to work across local, regional and national government, and more.

The process for Q&A was to have a few people ask their questions and then the panelists could answer them in a grouping. I was the fourth person to ask a question in a group and the first woman. The three men went on and on about their own work and observations. I actually asked a question:

In most countries, women are under-represented in government and law, especially at the national level, so what is being done to ensure that women’s unique experiences, such as sexual harassment while in public spaces, is taken into account in the creation of and enforcement of policies and laws?

When the time came for the panel to respond, none of the men addressed my question. They only responded to the topics raised by the men. The moderator kindly tried to incorporate a response to me in her remarks, but even then it was pretty basic: yes, the views of women, children, persons with disabilities, etc should be included as we pass policies and laws.

Needless to say, I was really disappointed in the series of sessions and in the response (or, nonresponse) to my question. I am tired of men talking to men about men’s experiences when women are in the room, are trying to be active participants, and have unique viewpoints to offer!

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Filed Under: UN events and efforts Tagged With: gender, Habitat 3, laws, men, transit, UN women

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