Stop Street Harassment

Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming

It’s time to audit your city, Washington, DC!

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On Sunday, I declared March 20, the First Day of Spring, to be Anti-Street Harassment Day. Already more than 120 people have RSVPed to participate via Facebook, plus many more via Twitter. I hope you will, too. I’m excited to reveal what I’ll be doing on March 20 and I invite everyone who lives or works in Washington, DC, to participate, too!

What’s happening?

HollaBack DC! and I are organizing the FIRST Community Safety Audit to be conducted in Washington, DC, and the first to be conducted in the US in the past 15 years. This means we are organizing groups of people, training group leaders, and giving everyone a checklist of items to look for as they walk a few blocks in DC. Participants will be looking for specific items that will help indicate if the area is safe and inclusive for everyone.

In order to conduct audits in all 8 Wards, we need at least 80 volunteers. The time commitment is about two hours on March 20 and two hours on March 23.  Please sign up and ask your friends, neighbors, family, and co-workers who work or live in Washington, DC, to sign up too.

Where did this idea come from?

Women in Tanzania who conducted a community safety audit

When I attended an international conference on safe cities for women held in India last November, I learned about the community safety audits and immediately wanted to bring the initiative to the USA. People have conducted Community Safety Audits since 1989, when the Metropolitan Action Committee on Violence against Women & Children (METRAC) developed it in Toronto. Since then, they’ve been conducted in cities across Canada and internationally in cities in Russia, the UK, India, South Africa, and Tanzania. Our audit is adapted from METRAC’s.

This is your chance to be part of history!

Please sign up to volunteer for this important initiative in March. We want volunteers from all demographics and we will work to ensure that individuals with special mobility needs and/or childcare needs can participate.

The outcomes of the audit will be used to make recommendations to the DC City Council and other local decision-makers.  In April (date TBD) we will announce those asks at an anti-street harassment rally, which we hope will lead to the first ever DC City Council hearing on street harassment, following in the footsteps of New York City. So participating in the community safety audit is an opportunity to be part of history and to help establish a model for other cities to use.

Let’s all work together to take a good look at our city and see what we’d like to fix!

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New police initiatives in Delhi to deal with rise in reports of eve-teasing, rape

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Women’s reports of rape and molestation rose in Delhi during 2010. In response, this week the Delhi police force held a press conference to announce several new initiatives to make the city safer for women.

Via Sify News, here are what the initiatives include:

  1. All Police Control Room (PCR) vans had been ordered to help stranded women at night and women “in distress” can call 100 and get dropped off at the nearest safe spot.
  2. PCR vans with women police officers will be deployed around women’s colleges and schools.
  3. There will be a women’s help desk at all police stations, managed by women officers.
  4. Women police beat staff have been deployed in areas prone to crime against women.
  5. A 24X7 specialized mobile team will deal with domestic violence.
  6. Police teams will also conduct surprise checks in buses, markets, universities and areas prone to eve-teasing, especially in the mornings and evenings.

This is quite a lot of activity. Hopefully it will deter some of the street harassment and assault that is rampant in Delhi (just as it is in so many major cities around the world) and also provide survivors with ways to seek justice.

UNIFEM and Jagori are also working on initiatives to make Delhi safer for women.

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New Indian study: 98 percent of women report street harassment

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There aren’t a lot of studies out there about street harassment, so this week I was happy to read about two more. They were recently conducted in Korea and India.

#1: In a study of 828 salaried employees in an unnamed city in Korea, 43 percent said they experienced sexual harassment during their commute, and 79 percent were women. Via The Korean Times:

“Nearly 72 percent of the incidents occurred on subway cars, followed by buses at 27.3 percent and taxis at 1.1 percent. Nearly 60 percent said they experienced harassment between 7 a.m. and 9 a.m. when most workers are on their way to work, while 17 percent were between 6 p.m. and 8 p.m. while returning home from work.

About 61.9 percent said at the time of the sexual harassment, it was too crowded for them to move within the subway train or bus. In response to the harassment, 43.2 percent said they did nothing about it, and 25 percent moved to a different place. Only 18.2 percent strongly protested against the assailants and 6.3 percent shouted in anger.”

Unfortunately, the findings aren’t too different from surveys conducted in Chicago and New York City regarding harassment on the transit systems. The growing number of women-only transit around the world plus studies like these are a testament to the global problem of sexual harassment on public transportation.

#2: In the state capitol of Thiruvananthapurm in the south Indian state Keralaas, 1000 women were recently interviewed about street harassment. Ninety-eight percent said they had experienced it and 90 percent said the harassment was either physically or vocally violent. The harassment was notable on public transportation and 62 percent had experienced it there. Only seven percent had reported any of their experiences of harassment.

The study was part of UNIFEM’s safe cities project in India and once they have completed their studies they will work on solutions to make public places safer for women and girls. I met several people working on this initiative within the UN and Jagori at a recent conference in India. I am so grateful for the work they are doing!

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In Delhi, 2 out of 3 women experience harassment

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Safe Delhi PSA

Two out of three women in Delhi suffered sexual harassment at least 2-5 times during the last year. Via the BBC:

“Women in the national capital feel unsafe in many public spaces, and at all times of the day and night,” the survey says.

Public transport, buses and roadsides are reported as spaces where women and girls face high levels of sexual harassment.

Most women who were surveyed said buses were the most unsafe form of transport.

Many said the Metro system, which used to be safer earlier, is now equally crowded and unsafe.

The report says the most common forms of harassment are “verbal (passing lewd comments), visual (staring and leering) and physical (touching or groping or leaning over)”.

Women of all classes have to put up with harassment in their daily lives, but students between 15 and 19 years old and women employed in the informal sector are specially vulnerable, the survey says.

The findings come from a “Safe Cities Baseline Survey” of more than 5,000 people who were interviewed during Jan – March of this year, and the survey was commissioned by the NGO Jagori/Safe Delhi, the United Nations Development Fund for Women, and UN Habitat.

The report findings are unsurprising since a study conducted last fall showed that 96 percent of women surveyed in Delhi are afraid to be in public alone because of the high rates of harassment and risk of assault (view a newsclip about the study).

Also,  another survey of women in Delhi from earlier this year tracked their experiences in specific areas of the city and found that 1/3 of the women faced verbal harassment and half of the women felt unsafe there. Several recommendations came out of that survey, including traffic monitoring.

Like most big cities, men’s harassment of women in public places is clearly a huge problem and one that impedes women’s mobility and equality with men. Thankfully, groups like the UN and Jagori/Safe Delhi are addressing this reality.

In addition to surveying people and writing reports, Jagori/Safe Delhi is doing great ground work to make the city safer for women.

Also, check out some of their humorous anti-sexual harassment PSAs on YouTube.

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