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Blank Noise Invites You to “Walk Alone” on Dec. 2

December 1, 2016 By HKearl

From our friends at Blank Noise in India:

Have you walked, not having to think twice about the width of your smile,the length of your blouse, skirt, tee neck, sleeve.

Have you clenched your fist so hard ,worn a frown, sharpened elbows out ?

Does your daily list of every place, person, garment you ‘avoid’/ deny reveal a larger something- that you decide where to go, how to go, what time to go, what clothes to go in, with whom to go based on your safety?

Have you too been warned, just like me, about places, our bodies, our clothes, our cities, our streets?

An environment that constantly reminds women and girls to be careful , is also messaging out “ you experienced violence because you were not being careful enough”. Warnings lead to blame, blame leads to silence and shame. Our environments need to be made safe and inclusive, rather than have women carry the weight of warnings and fear. #INeverAskForIt #WalkAlone Towards Freedom From Fear.

100 Action Heroes #WalkAlone
Friday, 2nd December
anytime between
9 pm – midnight

Women occupy streets at night.
Alone. Wandering. Walking.
Stop To Gaze At The Stars
Smell the night blooming flowers
We are many
We are visible

Action Heroes co create safe spaces
We Walk Alone, Together;
Towards Freedom From Fear

Here’s how: identify site ( is it unfamiliar / unknown / desired?)
/ register / walk alone/ document / share

* Register

* Read event FAQs

Action Heroes and allies have registered from cities across India and beyond. A complete list will be out on the 2nd December morning.

Walk Alone was initiated in 2015 and has been built by Action Heroes and organisational allies from across cities/ towns/ countries including Ranchi, Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Bangalore, Philadelphia, Braunschweig, Toronto, Karachi, Melbourne, Koppa, Kohima, Shillong.

HABITAT 3: A Day of Connections

October 19, 2016 By HKearl

Hello 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!

HABITAT 3: Safer Cities is a Priority

October 18, 2016 By HKearl

*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.

India: Sanitation and Sexual Assaults

September 29, 2016 By Correspondent

Suchita Kotnala, Texas, USA / India, SSH Blog Correspondent

Trigger Warning – Rape, Murder

With the ‘World Toilet Day’ approaching on November 19^th, it’s time to turn our focus on the sanitation facilities, or lack thereof, in India, especially the rural India, where it is estimated, that nearly 65% of the population defecates out in the open. The lack of good sanitation practices not only poses a grave health risk to the vast population in general, but, also adds the risk of bodily harm that women have to face and live with everyday.

Although India is modernizing and evolving rapidly today, a significant chunk of its population has been lagging behind in terms of social and economic advancements, and women have been paying the biggest price for it, with their freedom. The fact that numerous women fall prey to sexual predators while on their way to attend to the nature’s call during the silent and dark hours between sunset and sunrise in the rural areas, paints a grim picture for the developing ‘superpower’ India. Every now and then, a high profile gang-rape story shakes the nation out of its reverie, but the sad truth is, that only a fraction of the sexual assaults even get reported, due to the existing caste and gender biases within the police force. In 2014, two teenage girls were found murdered, in Uttar Pradesh, India, after they went missing on the prior night, when they had gone out to relieve themselves. It is alleged that they were raped and strangled, but the police investigation failed to offer any clear answers. More recently, on the night of 31^st July this year, a 20-year-old woman was brutally gang-raped and murdered by two men, when she stepped out to answer the nature’s call, in Tamil Nadu, India.

Although strengthening the law and order and increased sensitization of the masses towards gender based violence is vital to bringing about a change for the better, the importance of providing privacy and security to the women while they perform one of the most basic rituals of life can’t be disputed. No one should have to plan their entire day around activities of daily living, fearing for their life or well being every time they stepped out of their house.

The Indian Govt. has stepped up on its efforts to build more toilets lately, spending millions. The initiative might be of greater consequence, if coupled with efforts to educate the society and change the culture and attitudes of the people towards good sanitation practices.

The Indian society cannot hope to progress and prosper if a significant portion of its population continues to struggle on a daily basis, merely to stay safe and alive every morning.

Suchita was raised in western India by loving and supportive parents who helped her and her sister to grow into strong, independent and career-oriented women. She’s a registered general practitioner in India and is currently preparing to obtain medical residency in the United States. She is passionate about women’s rights especially because she has had firsthand experiences of harassment and sexist behavior at public spaces, school and work.

Part 2: Sexual Harassment of Women in India: A Violation of Personal and Public Space

May 25, 2016 By Correspondent

Manish Madan, Ph.D, USA, SSH Blog Correspondent

[This is continued from Part 1]

The next part of my write-up is on a recent research study that I conducted with my co-author Mahesh K. Nalla, understanding the nature of sexual harassment of women in public places with a focus on the capital city, New Delhi, India. I enumerate a few of the key findings below:

Nearly 2 out of 5 women (40 percent) reported to being sexually harassed (from being catcalled, whistled at to being physically groped, poked etc.) in the year prior, and
About 3 out of 5 women (about 58 percent) had experienced the harassment at least once in their lifetime.
Nearly 56 percent of the women said, they knew someone (friend/family) who has been harassed at least once in their lifetime.
About 80 percent of the women reported to have experienced victimization while waiting for a bus at a bus-stop, and about 60-70 percent reported victimization at a roadside; pubic park/public areas such as market place, shopping complex etc.
Majority of the women had experienced it in the daytime compared to after dark hours. This in our view was not too surprising given that the most women tend to access public spaces or use the public transportation for their daily business during the daytime.
Women find public mode of transportation (busses, metro etc.) and public spaces as less accommodating for them compared to the men.
Women were less likely to report feeling of safety in public spaces compared to men.
Finally, there is a significant gap in how men and women view sexual harassment.

Most of these finding should find much attention with policy makers in Delhi government or with the Delhi Women Commission given the context of the study post Delhi Gang Rape that questioned the women’s safety in the capital city.

Interestingly, there was not much gap in women’s experience of actual victimization versus their perception of victimization at specific public locations – call it a woman’s instinct, and on a much serious note, admit our inability in ensuring a safer and/or accommodating environment for women.

The significant gap in gender views on sexual harassment opens an important array of discussion points given the dynamics of sexual harassment. For example, nearly one-third to one-fourth of the men did not view whistling, catcalling, brushing up against a women or leaning closely as a constituting sexual harassment while nearly all women found them to be very serious instances of sexual harassment. It is therefore an important take-home for us – the education, awareness needs to be initiated in identifying actions that constitute sexual harassment. We have to be on the same page.

The UN Millennium Project suggested eight goals that quantify as well as qualify toward “basic human rights – the rights of each person on the planet to health, education, shelter, and security.” Promoting gender equality and empower women is one of those eight basic human rights goal that the large gathering of world leaders adopted as part of the UN Millennium Declaration in September 2000. Just like any project deadline, the participating nations committed to the deadline of 2015. Are we there yet, or do we really need a deadline extension in ensuring women safety?

The 2013 Charter of Public Space recently adopted in Rome stated public spaces to be as accessible and enjoyable by all for free … “Public spaces are a key elements of individual and social well-being, the places of a community’s collective life, expression of the diversity of their common natural and cultural richness and a foundation of their identity.” Can we ask the Government to ensure that public spaces are equitable and inclusive to all genders? I see a prominent role of urban city planners, who also understand the concepts of gendered spaces and can advise the government in relevant light.

Finally, as suggested by the study, the inadequate or distressed access of public space to women is not only contrary to the UN Millennium Development Goal on the Status of Women but at a fundamental level challenges the constitutional and basic human rights of women in our society. Eight out of 10 women waiting at a bus stop recognize that they will likely be experiencing or witnessing some form of sexual harassment. Is it supposed to be the new normal? I believe we as a community of responsible citizens can do better, isn’t it?

The Road Ahead

Like any other social menace, sexual harassment of women in public spaces is an issue that needs a collective effort where all stakeholders such as government, legislators, urban planners, criminal justice system, advocacy groups, NGOs, schools, media, researchers and finally, men and women work together. The remedial may not be prompt but with sustained efforts backed by research, we can hope to have lesser instances of sexual harassment.

Citizen-driven initiatives backed by organizations, government will be at the heart of this, in my view. As clichéd as it may sound, I am neither the first one nor will be last to say, the public discourse on sexual harassment must initiate at an early educational level within schools and within homes. Furthermore, attitudinal change is a must toward gender sensitization. Every time there is an instance of sexual harassment, someone’s right to personal and public space is getting violated. Someone’s constitutional right to be a free citizen is getting violated and it is not cool.

I encourage initiating cross-gender dialogue #WhatIsSexualHarassment to understand and raise awareness about what indeed sexual harassment is. Trust me, there will be far too many definitions emerging from this proposed dialogue, however, my hope will be the sensitization and education of many men and women alike about what all constitutes sexual harassment.

Sexual harassment of women is not a women’s issue anymore. As a society we have to work collectively toward addressing the prevalence of sexual harassment and envision a community that refuses any form of violence against women. I do want to put a special emphasis that this article is put in no way to single out one gender over another or to draw a generalization of men versus women. I hope you all join my vision.

Manish is a Professor of Criminal Justice at Stockton University where his research focuses on examining sexual harassment, gender empowerment, spousal abuse and policing issues. You can follow him @Prof_Madan or reach out to him at www.manishmadan.com.

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