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Malawian women march to protest attacks

January 25, 2012 By HKearl

Women protest...Via Taipei Times

Last week groups of street vendors in the African country of Malawi harassed and attacked women, groping and stripping them naked if they were wearing pants or short skirts instead of a traditional dress.

There used to be a 30-year ban against women wearing pants or mini-skirts in Malawi, but it ended in 1994. Some men apparently think there should still be a ban and last week’s attack is just one example of their treatment of women in the capital Lilongwe and other towns like Mzuzu and Blantyre.

Via CNN:

“They beat them up and stripped them naked, claiming they did not follow the tradition,” said Seodi White, a rights activist and protest organizer. “Attacking women in trousers is an outrage. We are a democracy, they’re taking us back to the dark ages.”…

“Women have a right to wear what they want,” White said… “This is an embarrassment to our nation and an outright contempt for women.”

On Friday, hundreds of women and some men gathered to protest the attacks, wearing pants, miniskirts and leggings in a show of solidarity. Some women wore white T-shirts that said, “Real men don’t harass women,” and “Today we buy your merchandize, tomorrow you strip us naked!” since the most recent attacks were by store vendors. They chanted, “we are strong, we are strong,” and demanded an end to the attacks.

“Some of us have spent our entire life fighting for the freedom of women,” Malawian Vice President Joyce Banda told the protesters. “It is shocking some men want to take us back to bondage.”

Their protest drew the attention of President Bingu wa Mutharika and he warned the perpetrators to stop the attacks, saying women have a right to wear what they want: “I will not allow anyone to wake up and go on the streets and start undressing women and girls wearing trousers because that is criminal.”

He also ordered police to arrest anyone attacking women over their clothing and 15 men have already been arrested.

Street harassment and violence is often a mechanism for social control and that motive is clear in these attacks: men want to control how women dress. But sorry men, the women aren’t going to stand for it and neither is the president!

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Filed Under: News stories, street harassment Tagged With: Bingu wa Mutharika, Malawi, sexual assault, street harassment, trousers

Book Review: Why Loiter?

January 13, 2012 By Contributor

This is cross-posted with the author’s permission from MetroBlogs.

The book Why Loiter? Women & Risk on Mumbai Streets aims to map the exclusions and negotiations that females of various age groups and economic classes encounter in their everyday lives in urban spaces in the city of Mumbai. Authors trio, Shilpa Phadke, Sameera Khan and Shilpa Ranade have based this book on their 3 years of qualitative research and conclude that women’s presence and participation in public spaces and events has certainly increased but reserve that the city still does not offer equal claim into the realm of public safety in urban streets and spaces.

Why Loiter? Women & Risk on Mumbai Streets embarks on a significant journey on how a radically transforming city with respect to infrastructure and rapid construction, still continues to grant women only a status of secondary citizen by denying them complete safety at any time of the day. Provision of safety in urban spaces encompasses different understanding for women belonging to different economic classes. Woman travelling in a private vehicle from destination A to destination B has different safety level offered than another woman travelling from same destination A to B in a public transport.

As presented in the book, low visibility areas, poorly lit spaces, deserted streets and public transportation after sunset all consitute for unsafe environments. To counter, women alter their movement and restrict accessing urban spaces, maintaining a compromise. The book presents scenarios where this aspect of women in public spaces is so deeply entrenched that it becomes their second nature to modify their behavior. Examples like covering their chest with a book, file or dupatta, walking while gazing down and pretending to be on the phone while moving swiftly away into private spaces are common glimpses.

What is curious about the book is that investigates various economic and communal settings and how each is unique in providing different degree of freedom and social constraints. So a city, essentially an amalgam of various faiths and religion and cosmoplitan in its claim, provides a different level of freedom in varied communities. And women are not let loose from the clutches of moral policing in the name of safety. She can be letched, eve-teased, groped, stared and made to feel voilated, possibly anywhere. On the other hand, the same does not apply for men, as the authors point out. Men move about and expand their access to urban spaces more vigorously and more importantly any time of the day. Thus enabling more choices with respect to jobs they take up or engage in various social gestures.

This book presents scenarios of Mumbai’s changing landscape and how this emerging urban fabric could be flawed from equitable development and equal access to all citizens. And this is where I see authors blurring issues of gender humiliation to urban development. The two are distinct issues and a very organic development devoid of zoning has not been a solution either, as suggested by the researchers. Women’s safety in a city is not an unique Indian issue. Its rampant here could be a case of cultural baggage of gender hierarchy and its related perils.

Pallavi Shrivastava is an architectural designer with a keen interest in human ecology and sustainability in the built environment. She currently lives in Mumbai and works as a Country Manager for a Singapore Design Consultancy firm and pursues her academic research interest on sustainable and equitable urban development. She currently serves as the Mumbai Correspondent for World Architecture News. Pallavi holds a Masters degree in design from Arizona State University and has worked on several notable design projects both in India and USA. She is an Evidence Based Design Accreditation Certified (EDAC) and is also an USGBC LEED Green Associate.

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Filed Under: street harassment Tagged With: mumbai, Pallavi Shrivastava, Sameera Khan and Shilpa Ranade, sexual assault, Shilpa Phadke, Why Loiter? Women & Risk on Mumbai Streets

“Systematic sexual violence against women in Egypt”

December 19, 2011 By HKearl

12/20/11 update, from the New York Times:

“Thousands of woman marched through downtown Cairo on Tuesday evening to call for the end of military rule in an extraordinary expression of anger over images of soldiers beating, stripping and kicking a female demonstrator on the pavement of Tahrir Square….

The event may have been the biggest women’s demonstration in Egypt’s history, and the most significant since a 1919 march led by pioneering Egyptian feminist Huda Shaarawi to protest British rule. The scale was stunning, and utterly unexpected in this strictly patriarchal society. Previous attempts to organize women’s events in Tahrir Square this year have either fizzled or, in at least one case, ended in the physical harassment of the handful of women who did turn out.”

Marvelous.

Image via Al-Jazeera

Visit the website HarassMap or follow the hashtag #EndSH on Twitter and you’ll find documentation of street harassment and sexual assault in Cairo, including Tahrir Square.

Journalist Mona Eltahawy is outspoken about this atrocity, and last month she brought attention to the sexual assault she and other female journalists experienced while covering protests at Tahrir Square.

Today on CNN, Eltahawy spoke about the brutality of the Egyptian military against protesters. She brought attention to the treatment of women in particular (especially the woman dubbed “Blue Bra Girl“):

“…I hope she survived…I hope she is able to recover… I cannot even begin to imagine what she went through…what this woman went through is incredible on so many levels. I salute her first of all for her courage in being there. And second of all, I think what she does, and especially this picture you are seeing right now, is it exposes once and for all and kills any denial about the Egyptian regime whether it was under Mubarak and now under the military and the use of systematic sexual violence against women in Egypt. It is a shame, it has been denied for too long and we must expose it at every level. And unfortunately, her tragic case has allowed us to do that very publicly…”

As many others have said before, there can be no true revolution until the sexual harassment and violence against women ends.

Update: Eltahawy just spoke to the BBC, too.

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Filed Under: News stories Tagged With: Blue Bra girl, Egypt, Mona Eltahawy, sexual assault, street harassment, Tahrir Square

Consequences for street harassers

December 19, 2011 By HKearl

One reason why street harassment is so pervasive is because street harassers rarely face consequences for their actions. But lately, more and more harassers ARE facing consequences, sometimes from the women they target and sometimes from the police.

1 – In Kuwait, after nine men sexually harassed young women at a shopping mall, the police shaved their heads and made them sign a pledge of good conduct in public.

2 – After a soldier groped her, a store clerk in India threw rocks at him on the street, cheered on by passers-by.

Boston groper, via the Boston Herald

3 – When a man groped her on the subway in Boston, a woman took his photo and reported him to the police. He was charged with indecent assault and battery on a person over the age of 14.

4 – A street harasser in Bellingham, Washington, approached two women on a street, making offensive slurs. After one of them said they didn’t want to talk to him, he caused $600 worth of damage to their car. One of the women tackled the man and held him down until a bouncer from a nearby bar came to help. The harasser was was arrested and taken to jail for investigation of malicious harassment, which is a hate crime.

5 – After groping a woman on the street in Romania, a street harasser was chased away by the woman.

YES!

Read 16 other memorable responses to street harassment from this year.

Hopefully each of these harassers will be deterred from harassing again because of the consequences they faced. There’s less incentive for them if they know they could have their head shaved or be chased or hit or jailed.

What kinds of consequences do you want to see street harassers face?

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Filed Under: News stories, street harassment Tagged With: consequences for gropers, groping, sexual assault, street harassers

Gender violence at epidemic levels in the USA

December 15, 2011 By HKearl

1 in 5 women in the U.S. is a survivor of rape or attempted rape, according to the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, a 2010 study released yesterday by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The first of its kind, the CDC study reveals the US to be a country where violence is rampant, especially against women, and especially against young women.

Via NPR News:

“As many as 29 million women say they have suffered severe and frightening physical violence from a boyfriend, spouse or other intimate partner. That includes being choked, beaten, stabbed, shot, punched, slammed against something or hurt by hair-pulling.

That number grows to 36 million if slapping, pushing and shoving are counted.

Almost half of the women who reported rape or attempted rape said it happened when they were 17 or younger.

As many as 1 in 3 women have experienced rape, physical violence or stalking by an intimate partner in their lifetimes, compared to about 1 in 10 men.

Both men and women who had been menaced or attacked in these ways reported more health problems. Female victims, in particular, had significantly higher rates of irritable bowel syndrome, asthma, frequent headaches and difficulty sleeping.

Certain states seemed to have higher reports of sexual violence than others. Alaska, Oregon and Nevada were among the highest in rapes and attempted rapes of women, and Virginia and Tennessee were among the lowest.”

The findings are not very shocking when you work on issues of gender violence every day. What I want to know is if issues of rape, domestic violence, and stalking will stop being treated as jokes and stop being viewed as non-priorities compared to “real problems,” private matters, and the fault of the victim/survivor. I want to see these issues treated as a national crisis. Because that’s what they are.

Prevention must become mandatory in homes and schools nationwide.

Also, while this didn’t come out in the published study, thanks to input from Shannon Lynberg, co-founder of Holla Back DC!, the survey included questions about street harassment as a form of violence. Holla Back DC! will be interviewing some of the study’s authors to get the data on the prevalence of street harassment. This will be the first time we have national data on street harassment so stay tuned.

About 9,000 women and 7,400 men selected at random took the CDC survey. The CDC plans to conduct this same study annually.

If you are a survivor of sexual assault (woman or man), you can find help at the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network‘s online hotline or phone hotline. It’s never too late to seek help, even if the abuse happened decades ago. There’s always time to start or continue your healing process.

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Filed Under: News stories Tagged With: CDC study, domestic violence, gender violence, intimiate partner violence, RAINN, sexual assault, stalking, survivor help

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