violence against women Archives | Stop Street Harassment

Int’l Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women 2016

November 25, 2016 By HKearl

Today, November 25, is the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, organized by the UN. The UNiTE campaign “strongly emphasizes the need for sustainable financing for efforts to end violence against women and girls towards the fulfillment of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.”

Why?

“One of the major challenges to efforts to prevent and end violence against women and girls worldwide is the substantial funding shortfall. As a result, resources for initiatives to prevent and end violence against women and girls are severely lacking.”

To that end, we encourage you to consider donations to these organizations that are working to address and end violence against women and girls:

Stop Street Harassment (of course) to help fund our National Street Harassment Hotline in 2017. You can also donate to support our 2017 Safe Public Spaces Mentoring Program and an updating of the laws in our Know Your Rights Toolkit, which was produced in 2013.
Collective Action for Safe Spaces (Washington, D.C.)
Girls for Gender Equity (New York City)
A Long Walk Home (Chicago)
End Rape on Campus (national, USA)

*A Long Walk Home Girl/Friends in Chicago*

Today is also the first day of the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence Campaign (being commemorated for its 25th year), coordinated by the Center for Women’s Global Leadership.The theme of the 16 Days Campaign is “From Peace in the Home to Peace in the World: Make Education Safe for All”. According to the 16 Days website,

“This theme recognizes that structural discrimination and inequality is perpetuated in a cycle of violence that does not end even when girls and young women are in the act of gaining an education. Gender-based violence with respect to the right to education is a consistent threat in public spaces, schools, and homes and is a detriment to the universal human right to education and it is our obligation to focus on the precarious situation of education for girls and boys, young women and men this year through the 16 Days Campaign.”

Many girls and women also face violence and harassment simply traveling TO and FROM school and college. This also must be addressed if we want to see girls be able to safely receive an education.

For more information on this specific problem, see the Safe Routes to School National Partnership’s report that includes information on street harassment.

Join the conversations online with #16Days and take a stand against violence against women.

Remember, donate if you can! Our work relies on the generous contributions of people like you.

Argentinean Women March to Protest Violence Against Women

October 19, 2016 By HKearl

Earlier this month, Lucía Pérez, a schoolgirl, was drugged, raped and tortured in the coastal city of Mar del Plata.

Via the Guardian: “The cruelty of her attack was such that Pérez suffered a cardiac arrest, according to prosecutor María Isabel Sánchez, who described it as “an act of inhuman sexual aggression”. Following their assault, the assailants washed the 16-year-old in an attempt to erase forensic evidence and took her to a nearby hospital, where she died shortly after arrival from internal injuries sustained during her rape.”

Today, women across Argentina marched to protest violence against women, including this horrific incident. No woman should ever have to experience this cruelty or lose her life just because she is female.

The Courage to Fight Violence Against Women Conference

January 28, 2016 By HKearl

Just passing along information about this upcoming conference in Washington, DC!

“It is a woman’s fundamental right…to walk the streets and not be groped”

January 8, 2016 By HKearl

In the wake of the mass attacks on German women last week, Musa Okwonga (“a poet, author, sportswriter, broadcaster, musician, public relations consultant and commentator on current affairs”) wrote a powerful piece on his blog titled, “How to deal with the sexual assaults in Cologne and Hamburg.”

The whole piece is worth a read, and I especially appreciate his final paragraph:

“Why don’t we just start with the premise that it is a woman’s fundamental right, wherever she is in the world, to walk the streets and not be groped. And why don’t we see this as a perfect moment for men, regardless of our ethnic backgrounds, to get genuinely angry about the treatment of women in public spaces: to reject with fury the suggestion that we are somehow conditioned by society forever to treat women as objects, condemned by our uncontrollable sexual desires to lunge at them as they walk past. Let’s do our best to challenge the rampant misogyny which has gone on worldwide for far too long, and reject whatever lessons of sexist repression we may have been taught. Because women are tired of telling us about this, and exhausted of fighting a battle that for too long has gone overlooked.”

YES!. Thank you, Musa.

It is sad that a statement like his is so rare. We MUST have more men step up and speak out against gender-based violence.

Woman Killed in U.S., Women Migrants Targeted Abroad

January 7, 2016 By HKearl

Trigger Warning

Here are two upsetting stories for the new year so far (in addition to the attacks on women in Germany). We have so much more work to do.

First, I am sorry to share the news of another senseless death that started as a benign conversation, escalated to street harassment and then to gunshots!! Our thoughts are with Sara’s friends & family.

Via CNN:

“Sara Mutschlechner was driving through the Dallas suburb with three passengers around 2 a.m. (3 a.m. ET) Friday when a gray Honda Pilot with five to six males inside pulled up next to them, Kizer said at a Tuesday afternoon press conference.

“It was an amicable conversation to begin with, but quickly went downhill and some derogatory statements were made toward the female occupants of that vehicle,” the Denton Police spokesman told reporters.

Kizer described those “very derogatory” remarks as being of a “sexual nature,” adding that a male inside Mutschlechner’s vehicle responded by calling them out as offensive.

“Some comments were made back towards him, even a couple of threats were thrown,” the police spokesman said. “About that time, they were driving through the intersection … when several shots were fired.”

One of those shots struck Mutschlechner in the head, according to Denton Police.

She quickly lost control of her car, which first hit another vehicle leaving a nearby parking lot before veering into an electrical pole.

The Honda Pilot, meanwhile, fled.

Mutschlechner, a University of North Texas student and member of the Zeta Tau Alpha sorority, died after being transported to an area hospital. She was a designated driver that night and had not been drinking, witnesses said.”

The second story comes from the New York Times and is about men targeting migrant women from countries like Syria for sexual abuse.

“Interviews with dozens of migrants, social workers and psychologists caring for traumatized new arrivals across Germany suggest that the current mass migration has been accompanied by a surge of violence against women. From forced marriages and sex trafficking to domestic abuse, women report violence from fellow refugees, smugglers, male family members and even European police officers. There are no reliable statistics for sexual and other abuse of female refugees….

As some women painted their hands with henna and others traded frustrations about the time it was taking to get refugee status, Samar, a 35-year-old former employee of the Syrian Finance Ministry, opened up about the particular stress of being a woman on the move. Bombed out of her home in Darayya, a suburb of Damascus that early in the civil war became known for antigovernment protests, Samar spent 14 months on the road alone with her three daughters, ages 2, 8 and 13.

“I did not leave them out of my sight for one minute,” she said in Arabic, speaking through an interpreter. She and other single mothers slept in shifts along the way, watching over their daughters and one another.

But in Izmir, Turkey, about to board a boat to Greece, Samar was robbed and left with no money to pay the smuggler. A stocky man who called himself Omar, he offered to take her for free, but only if she had sex with him. Samar had heard him before, at night, in the hostel where she and other refugee women were staying, “going to this room and that.”

“Everybody knows there are two ways of paying the smugglers,” she said. “With money or with your body.”

But she refused, and Omar became angry. That night he burst into Samar’s room, threatening her and her daughters before her screaming chased him away. Samar stayed in Turkey for almost a year to work and save up the 4,000 euros needed for the remainder of the journey.

Sitting with her youngest daughter curled on her lap, Samar concluded: “Almost all men in the world are bad.”

Across town, in west Berlin, Ms. Höhne sympathized, but had a more nuanced view. There are no easy solutions, she said. Female-only shelters are not an option because most families want to stay together. Some women rely on men for protection. And, she added, “We mustn’t forget many of the men are traumatized, too.”

“There is no black and white, good and evil,” she said. “If we want to help the women, we need to help the men, too.”