Stop Street Harassment

Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming

16 Days: Day 16, Egypt

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During the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence (Nov. 25 – Dec. 10), Stop Street Harassment is featuring activists who took action against street harassment this year, one new country per day.

Photo courtesy of Emad Karim.

Day #16: Egypt

From creating human chains and organizing rallies to protest street sexual violence, to organizing volunteers to speak to community members about the issue, to advocating for stronger anti-harassment laws, to creating volunteer anti-harassment patrols, activists in Egypt have been BUSY this year!

This summer, I traveled to Egypt and met with many of these activists, especially from HarassMap, and participated in some of their work. It was inspiring.

To better understand the issue and what activists there are fighting, watch this powerful (but possibly triggering) segment from Unreported World, released on Friday. To know that men are paid to sexually assault women who are participating in the political process by protesting is horrific, but I gain courage from their courage as they fight and speak out despite this grim truth.

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16 Days: Day 6, South Africa

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During the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence (Nov. 25 – Dec. 10), Stop Street Harassment is featuring activists who took action against street harassment this year, one new country per day.

via Africa Review

Day #6: South Africa

After two teenagers wearing miniskirts were harassed and groped by a group of 50-60 men at a taxi rank, around 3,000 South Africans marched through Johannesburg in protest. The ruling African National Congress Women’s League organized the march to emphasize “that women had the right wear whatever they wanted without fear of victimization.”

During the march, Women’s Minister Lulu Xingwana warned that she would close down the taxi rank if such harassment continued. She also said, “The scourge of women abuse threatens to erode many of the hard-earned gains of the liberation struggle. It denies women their birth rights. It condemns them to a life of fear and prevents them from being productive members of society.”

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Egypt: Year One, HarassMap Report

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I grew up in Cairo learning how to strategize my life to avoid sexual harassment. I would make sure to run my errands during a football match when men and boys in the neighborhood are busy watching, not before or after. I knew which routes to take to school, and that I can only go to cafes to meet my friends, but never to public parks.

I always took sexual harassment as a fact of life that I need to deal with. It never struck me as a plaguing problem until, as a 25-year old professional, I realized that I spend a significant portion of my income on a “precaution budget” against sexual harassment. For example, I had to go out at expensive restaurants but not the more affordable “men-only” cafes or free public parks, and I had to resort to private taxi rides over public buses. I even turned down jobs because they had no accessible parking, which will take me back to the dreadful public bus. And even with all these precautions, I was still harassed in the few minutes that I have to walk every day between my parked car and any building.

I felt very lonely in this shameful experience. But when I talked to one friend after another, I found that it happened to every other woman I know, and that it was not my fault. So I decided that the first step in building up resistance against this shameful behavior, is to create awareness, and tell other women that it is not their fault, and they should not let sexual harassment go unpunished.

Through common friends, I met Rebecca, Engy, and Amel, and we established Harassmap: an open online mapping tool to end the social tolerance of sexual harassment. We help victims, like us, speak out and access support services, and contribute to changing the environment in our streets to no longer tolerate harassers. Our initiative has three prongs: online crowdsourcing of harassment reports, offline street campaigns in target locations, and referral to psychological/legal support services.

Our first year of work was a learning experience for us first and foremost. The reports we received on our portal (540 in the first year) showed that there is no typical harasser or victim. The demographic features of the former ranged across teenagers, university professors, medical doctors –and children in 83 cases; whereas the victims were young and old, women and men, veiled, face-veiled and not.

This insight was a strong foundation for our offline campaigns. It was important to feel confident as we debunked the justifications of harassers to violate women’s safety as such. “Look how she’s dressed”, “It’s her fault for going out so late”, “men are sexually frustrated” are all too common excuses. Conversely, knee-jerk condemnation or patronizing media discourse were evidently ineffective, we had to speak grassroots language and immerse within the grassroots. Now, more than 500 HarassMap volunteers go out once per month to ask shop owners, police, doormen and others with a presence in the street to send the message: harassment will not be tolerated!

In 2012-2013 we are working on strengthening our efforts on the ground. Public order enforcement by community figures (mainly doormen) is very evident in Egypt and it is important to win it on our side. Therefore we aim to strengthen community outreach teams to become more independent as they interact with respective communities. On the other hand, we hope to expand our intervention beyond street harassment, to include workplace, school and university. Finally, we are encouraging the Egyptian police to work together and use our reporting system to target enforcement areas.

Sawsan Gad is a GIS Analyst and the co-founder of HarassMap.

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VOTE!

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L to R: Holly Kearl, Chai Shenoy, Council Member Muriel Bowser, Ben Merrion

If you’re in the USA, I hope you’re voting today (if you didn’t already by an absentee ballot or early voting)!!!! People have fought hard, starved, and died to ensure that more than just white men can have this right, so use it!

Here’s just one reason why I think it’s important to vote — because we need people in office who understand our issues and care about them and will act. A perfect example of this was when I joined a group of people organized by Collective Action for Safe Spaces to testify about sexual harassment on the Metro system in Washington, DC, earlier this year. The all male Metro leaders said sexual harassment wasn’t a problem. But the DC City Council chair was a woman, Muriel Bowser, and she said, “As a woman, I feel differently” and told them to do something!! And they did. Without her, the fight would have been much harder.

VOTE!!

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“Rub against me and I’ll expose you”

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Phase Two of the Ad Campaign

Last February, during a DC City Council Hearing, several brave Washington, DC commuters shared their experiences of being sexually harassed on the Metro buses and trains. At the same time, many of us – led by Collective Action for Safe Spaces – pressured the Metro into taking action on this issue (with lots of support from area blogs). Thankfully, the DC transit authority responded to the stories and campaigning. Among the many changes they’ve made, launched an anti-harassment public service announcement campaign in April.

At first the ads were on buses and subway platforms. Now they’re also on Metro cars and tonight, on my way home from work, I looked up and saw one! New ads will continue to be rolled out every few months to keep the content fresh.

I am very excited that commuters can see this ad and know that sexual harassment isn’t tolerated on the Metro system and that there is a way to report incidents that happen.

The Reports Are In

Here’s another piece of news about the campaign — One change we suggested the transit authority make was to start tracking ALL types of sexual harassment, not just types deemed criminal offenses (e.g. sexual assault). They agreed to do this and even created an online form to make it easier for people to report harassment incidents.

Recently, they released information about the number of reports they’ve received through September: there were 78 reports, including 39 incidents that were criminal. It’s impossible to compare numbers to the previous year since the tracking criteria and system is different but we now have a starting point to which we can compare future numbers.

I think this is all great progress and I’m really grateful I live in an area where I can look up during my commute and know that action is being taken to make the Metro system safer for everyone.

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