Stop Street Harassment

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What Could Women and Girls Achieve If They Were Safe

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Many, many studies demonstrate the myriad ways that women are discriminated against and unequal in countries world-wide. In the United States, our latest nationally representative study, done in partnership with Raliance and UCSD Center for Gender Equity and Health, adds to the stark picture.

For just a few of the many alarming data points:

  • 81% of women nationwide have experienced sexual harassment and/or assault in their lifetime.
  • 51% of women nationwide have reported being touched or groped without their permission.
  • 27% of women nationwide are survivors of sexual assault.

Among women who experienced sexual harassment and/or assault:

  • 57% said their first experience of sexual abuse occurred by age 17.
  • 88% said they’d experienced sexual harassment or assault in multiple locations.
  • The #1 location for experiences of sexual harassment was a public space and the #1 location for sexual assault was a private residence.

How can women and girls ever hope to achieve equality with men and boys when we are disproportionately harmed, and harmed across many spaces of our life (private homes, public spaces, schools, workplaces, online, etc.)?

And what could women and girls collectively achieve if we were not worrying about staying safe? If we were not regularly practicing avoidance strategies to try to reduce encounters of harassment and assault? If we were not being harassed as a tactic to exclude us from decision-making and leadership positions? If we were not coping with the aftermath of trauma from sexual harassment and assault?

Would world hunger be solved? Would climate change not be an issue? Would gun violence be reduced?

We expend so much time and energy just dealing with the threat of, the actual experiences of, and the aftermath of sexual harassment and assault that it robs us of valuable time and energy that we could use in more productive, fun and useful ways. We lose. Our community loses. The world loses.

This International Women’s Day, the theme is #PushforProgress. What will you do to push for the elimination of sexual harassment and assault?

Whatever you choose to do, you can make a difference and help ensure that the world becomes a more equitable place for women and girls.

And if you have the means, you can be our hero by making a tax-deductible donation today and help fund our initiatives (like national research, International Anti-Street Harassment Week and transit campaigns). Our work is made possible by generous individual donors.

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CSW and International Women’s Day 2015

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Happy International Women’s Day! This is an important opportunity each year for raising awareness about issue that particularly affect women, such as street harassment.

As the author of this Time magazine article notes, we’ve made a lot of progress in the past few decades regarding the education of girls, women’s access to water, women’s leadership, and maternal mortality. BUT there are still gaps in these areas and HUGE gaps in areas like gender-based violence. So as always, there is a lot more work to do.

The day coincides with the start of UN’s annual Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) in New York City and I am en route to attend the NGO CSW Consultation Day today. Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director, UN Women, will be one of the speakers and panelists from around the world will talk about the UN/international women’s movement from 1975-1995, the 1995 Beijing conference on women’s rights, what’s happened in the 20 years since then, and what comes next.

Starting at UN headquarters, an International Women’s Day march took place, concluding at Times Square around 4:30 p.m.

International Women's Day March
International Women’s Day March

Tomorrow I have various meetings — including at the UN — and also will attend the No Ceilings Full Participation Report release. From the event press release:

“The report is the culmination of a year-long, global data aggregation effort by the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, in collaboration with The Economist Intelligence Unit, UCLA WORLD Policy Analysis Center and Fathom Information Design. The report identifies the significant gains women and girls have made – and the gaps that still remain – since the U.N. Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995, when Secretary Clinton called on the international community to ensure “women’s rights are human rights.” Benchmarking process since that landmark event, No Ceilings is making the data open and accessible, and is pairing the report with an interactive, shareable collection of data visualizations. The data visualizations will highlight key findings from the data through interactive stories, as well as allow users the ability to explore the data on their own.”

Speakers will include Hillary and Chelsea Clinton, Melinda Gates, Her Excellency Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, President of the Republic of Liberia, Her Excellency Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović, President of the Republic of Croatia, Malala Yousafzai, and Sheryl WuDunn.

I will tweet during (or soon after) the events (@hkearl) and blog about them on Tuesday, so stay tuned. 

CSW will last about two weeks and the parallel events hosted by NGOs are free and open to the public if you’re in the area and want to attend.

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“If you ever walk alone to your car without thinking someone might attack you, this isn’t your day.”

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International Women’s Day (the 100th anniversary, no less) is a bonanza for events, articles, and activities on women’s rights! I love it.  What a day and it’s not even 10 a.m.

At 7 a.m. today, it was chilly with a beautiful clear sky when I joined three of my AAUW coworkers and a dozen other early-risers to participate in the Washington, DC, contingency of Women for Women International‘s Meet Me on the Bridge event. While we enjoyed bagels and coffee, we gathered at the base of the Lincoln Memorial to talk about women’s rights. Then we dodged bicyclist commuters to cross the Arlington Memorial Bridge. It was inspiring to be gathered so early and to know we were part of thousands of people all over the world crossing bridges to commemorate women’s rights.

Now that I’m online, my Facebook and Twitter feeds are flooded with International Women’s  Day events, articles, and campaigns. It’s fantastic! Here are a few that stood out to me:

And here are a few of my favorite tweets!

What are you doing for International Women’s Day?

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