Stop Street Harassment

Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming

Today’s Events – April 12

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It’s the first day of Meet Us On the Street: International Anti-Street Harassment Week, and we already have so much going on!

Virtual Events:

Please join Young Feminists and Allies, the National Organization for Women’s First Virtual Chapter, and Stop Street Harassment for a Google Hangout about Street Harassment from a multicultural perspective.

Holly Kearl, founder of International Anti-Street-Harassment Week, will moderate three brave women with diverse backgrounds as they discuss the similarities and differences in the ways they experience street harassment.

* Kasumi Hirokawa: TCK and trilingual feminist from Shanghai who currently lives in Japan

* MorningStar Angeline: Native American and Latina actress who lived in both the Southwest and West Coast of America

* Muneera Hassan: Bangladeshi-American, Muslim, college student from Boston currently living in Northern VA who wears hijab

There will be a Q&A section, so please send us your questions in advance or during the event at youngfeminists at gmail dot com or Tweet at at @nowyoungfems and please use the #EndSH hashtag.

International Events:

Cameroon: Young Women for a Change, Cameroon is holding a dialogue in Beau with youth and adolescents to address the different forms of Street harassment facing women and girls and how to intervene. [April 12]

Canada (Vancouver): Hollaback! Vancouver will be debuting their interactive campaign and art show “What’s Your Number?” It will enable people to record the frequency and emotions involved with street harassment for 24 hours. Clickers (or counters) will be distributed to initial participants along with a blank notebook. For 24 hours, they will click twice for direct street harassment, and once for an indirect impact. At the end of the 24 hours, the clickee is encouraged to creatively express the experience in the notebook provided through mediums like poetry, illustration or essaying before they’re passed on to the next one. At the end of the week, the notebooks will be collected by the Hollaback Vancouver team for compilation. In order to showcase the process behind What’s Your Number?, the art show will be a free event extended to the community at-large. Part education, part creative and part party, this night will get everyone together in a comfortable space to talk about the effects of street harassment and – most importantly – what can be done. [Campaign kicks of all over the city on April 12th, with the Artshow / wrap up party taking place April 30th 436 Columbia St Vancouver BC 7-11 pm]

Colombia: OCAC Colombia  is hosting SUNDAY, APRIL 12 – 9:00 a.m.: STOP THE STREET HARASSMENT: We will be in the Sunday’s Bikeway and we will will cross cycling the 7th Avenue from Plaza Bolivar to the National Park | DOMINGO 12 DE ABRIL – 9 AM. ALTO AL ACOSO. Estaremos en la Ciclovía y haremos un recorrido por la carrera séptima desde la Plaza de Bolívar hasta el Parque Nacional

Nepal: Hollaback! Kathmandu will be hosting a Stand Up Against Street Harassment event, displaying charts and boards that say street harassment is not okay. They will also be interacting with the local people about what the campaign is and what they can do to respond to street harassment and stop it. [April 12, 3-5pm at Basantapur]

USA Events:

Iowa: Hollaback! Des Moines is hosting their 3rd Annual Chalk Walk to End Street Harassment. [April 12, 1 pm at the Pappajohn Education Center]. Can’t be there in person? Sometime during the week of April 12-18, go back to a street where you experienced harassment. Reclaim that space by writing an empowering message; then take a picture and send it to them at dsm@ihollaback.org! They will post all the photos to their blog after the event.

Pennsylvania: FAAN Mail will be kicking off EndSHWeek with their 5th annual rally and community engagement event. [April 12, 2-5pm at Love Park, Philadelphia]

Virginia: Hollaback! RVA is hosting a Bystander Workshop discussing and presenting on how bystander intervention and street harassment intersect. They will provide “swag bags” and snacks to participants! [Richmond, April 12, time and place TBA]

Plus, some of our groups got an early start on things and hosted these fabulous events on Saturday, April 11th:

Bahamas: Hollaback! Bahamas hosted a meditation and stress relief workshop with the World Peace Initiative.

United Kingdom: Rape & Sexual Abuse Support Centre hosted street action focused on victim-blaming and rape culture (#ThisDoesn’tMeanYes) at Braithwait Tunnel, Braithwaite Street, London.

South Korea: Rok Gi Yeon Promotions hosted “Ladies Night Vol. 2,” a benefit concert to support the charity Disruptive Voices, in Seoul. Find the Facebook event here.

Pakistan: No to Harassment hosted a fabulous panel and discussion about how a woman is #notanobject.

New York: Hollaback! hosted the annual NYC Anti-Street Harassment Rally! The event featured local activists and speakers and include da series of workshops for folks to learn more and take action against street harassment. It also featured Hollaback!’s famous 12 foot inflatable #catagainstcatcalling cat.

Pennsylvania: University of Scranton is hosted a SHARE (Street Harassment Awareness Response and Education) Fair.

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Walk for Respect in Nepal

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Today 500 youth participated in a Walk for Respect against street harassment/sexual harassment in Kathmandu, Nepal.

Via YouTube:

“We silently walked through footpaths carrying various banners and placards up to Kathmandu Durbar Square.

Objective
1. To sensitize the greater problem among youths as well as other people i.e. eve teasing and sexual harassment.
2. Boost the morale of the people to face the challenges in this issue
3. Aware the people of existing laws and policies of Nepal
4. Gather public support to force the government to take necessary steps in these issues.
5. Warn the culprits that their misbehaviors are illegal and they can be punished for their misdeeds.”

Via CNN:

“The main theme of our campaign is to sensitize the greater problem among youths as well as other people i.e. eve teasing and sexual harassment. We want to boost the morale of the people to face the challenges in this issue and aware the people of existing laws and policies of Nepal. Eve teasing and sexual harassment are serious violation of Human Rights. As an aware conscious citizen we cannot tolerate the violation of Human rights. That’s why this issue needs to be addressed immediately and needs to be acted ASAP.”

One of the participants Pragya shakya said, “It’s high time we raise our voices. We have been suppressed in so many ways and why should we always suffer. The Government has made the rules against eve teasing and sexual harassment so why are we keeping our silence. We will not keep our silence it’s our right to speak, walk and talk with freedom and no one can take this away from us. Like said above people have no right to tell us what to wear first they should stop thinking bad. It’s my right to be who I’m but it’s against law to make me feel harassed.”

Good for them for speaking out!

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Five Country Study on Women’s Safety in Cities

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Nepali Women conduct a safety walk

“I carry safety pins with me while travelling. Whenever I feel that I am being harassed by someone around me, I poke him with my safety pin. It alerts the person who is conducting such violence on me. I was taught to do it by seniors in my college. I was hesitant to do it at first, but I found that when my friends did it, the person who harasses tends to back off. So that gave me confidence to use it by myself as well. .. ” – A college student in Nepal

“A woman I know felt safe in this community because of the [gangsters/traffickers] who took care of the community, who watched over everything that happened. But that only gives you security when they don’t have their eye on you [i.e., want to date you]…the man who watched over the entrance to the community one day decided he wanted to go out with her, and he told her to go get dressed up to go out the next day at 7 p.m. If she didn’t go out with him, he was going to kill her children and husband. She didn’t have a choice.” – A woman in Brazil

“When we [are] leaving factory, there are crowd[s] and gangsters often come to touch women’s bottoms and they laugh and feel it’s normal. There have also been instances where workers were sexually assaulted by gangsters during daylight hours.” – A garment factory worker in Cambodia

How safe are public places for women who work in factories in Cambodia, for university students in Liberia, for street vendors in Ethiopia, for women commuters in Nepal, and for women in Brazil?

The NGO ActionAid conducted a participatory study to find out the answer. Through using safety audits, focus groups, and mapping, groups of women discussed and showed what about their cities make them feel insecure. Unsurprisingly, there were a lot of reasons why they felt unsafe, including personal experiences of harassment or assault, wariness of local drug traffickers, and poorly lit roads.

The findings from the study and the recommendations for making cities safer for women are available in the fascinating report Women and the City: Examining the gender impact of violence and urbanisation.

I highly recommend reading the report as it provides an in-depth slice of information about five demographics of women in five different countries and because the study was conducted and written in such a way that the women were able to share their stories and speak for themselves.

Through email correspondences, the report author Alice Taylor told me why she thinks the study is important:

“I think it’s crucial to look at issues of how cities are developed and are growing — in ways that are equal and unequal to their citizens — and violence against women together, to see how different kinds of risk factors intersect to influence women’s lives.”

She also spoke to its challenges:

“It was challenging to analyze and bring together such different contexts and approaches into one report, but it demonstrated how prevalent forms of insecurity are for women across urban settings.”

And she shared three findings that stuck out to her the most from her process of writing the report:

“First, the ways in which women constantly have to calculate and avoid routes in their own cities – that was universal.

Second, the finding about the popularity of mapping, which I think holds a lot of promise as a community-based and participatory approach as well as a powerful advocacy tool.

Third, I think there’s a lot to develop in the future in terms of ethics and “do no harm” when doing research on women’s urban safety, as well as monitoring and evaluation to understand what works.

After the five country profiles, the report concludes with six recommendations for making cities safer for women (starting on page 61):

1.      Raise awareness of the problem

2.      Build government commitment

3.      Change social norms for prevention

4.      Build institutional capacity to address the problem

5.      Strengthen networks for advocacy

6.      Conduct research for evidence-based programmes and policies.

Their recommendations aligned closely with the ones I wrote in my book (e.g. raising awareness, changing social norms, and conducting research).

In conclusion, Taylor offers her thoughts on where further research is necessary:

“I think a big question out there, is to further articulate gender analysis around urban safety: which types urban violence/ insecurity are particularly dangerous for women (i.e., poor men experience higher murder rates and are also greatly affected by poverty), why, and what interventions can be designed.”

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“Fight for what we believe in”

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I think it’s so important to hear from women around the world regarding street harassment, so I’m cross-posting this piece from a woman in Nepal via Booksie:

“A woman walks down the street and then a man she does not know makes an obscene noise or gesture. Either she retorts or ignores him and walks on. Is the story same to the events that you have to go through? What do you do to fight the street harassment or you just let it go. I am writing to all the readers whoever relates to me and to all the people who have once a while made an attempt teasing a girl or making a passerby awkward. I don’t deny that even guys can be the victim of street harassment but because I am a girl I can exactly tell you what it feels like.

Some of the men (as some men are ones causing street harassment) do not realize their actions feel like harassment to women. For those I have something to say. Treat women with dignity and respect. Ask yourself, “How will my mother, sister, spouse feel if treated in the same way?” If you have a good reason talking to any unknown women, address her with smile or decent language. Do not address her with whistle, honk or kissy noises. The way a woman is dressed does not show if she wants to be commented on. She may be dressed up for special events or specific person. Never follow a woman without a good reason like: she dropped a wallet and you are trying to return. If you see others doing it, refuse to join and discourage others from doing so. At a suitable time, raise the issue about public harassment with your friends and explain why it is inappropriate to treat people that way.

There is no any ‘best’ way to response the harasser in every circumstance. But at least we can put effort Making Street safer for us. Stand for yourself and speak up. Be instant; don’t regret later for doing nothing. If any security person is around you, seek for the help or ask to the people nearby, they might lend a hand. You should use a strong body language. Use statements not questions. Like, ‘do not touch me’ not ‘will you please leave me alone.’ Sometimes strong stare is stronger than the words, so it might help you. It’s obvious that we cannot find mirror image every time we walk on the streets but it is possible to fight for what we believe in. All I am trying to infer is that if someone has done harm to your dignity even in a small way, fight it back, and take a step.

Priyanka Pokhrel
Inhured International
Lalitpur, Kathmandu Nepal.”

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