Please help: Stopping Street Harassment

[lashcampaign]

Hi All,

I'm new here so apologies if I've posted this in the wrong place.

I am running a campaign called LASH (London Anti Street Harassment). It's aim is to make the sexual harassment of women in public places unacceptable - starting in London.

The campaign's enjoyed recent coverage in The Guardian, The Observer and on BBC radio.
We recently met with policy makers working on a certain mayoral candidates policy for London 2012. They want to inclde street harassment as an issue, but they needs stats.

We've therefore been asked to conduct a survey to fid out how common street harassment is in London, where it happens, what the police response is etc.

Please, please help by filling out this survey - it's just 9 questions. So far we've had 150 responses - we need to get to 1000 by the middle of the month! It would be great if you could get your teenage kids and partners to fill this out too - we need as diverse a response pool as possible, and would particularly like to highlight the fact that underage girls are subject to obscene comments and harassment on the streets of London.

The survey's located on our website, where you can also find out more information: www.lashcampaign.org.

Thanks very much in advance. Feel free to contact me with queries.

Best,
Vicky Simister
Founder, LASH Campaign

[ForzaDelDestino]

here is the website

[CarGirl]

As you need to live/travel to London to fill in the questionnaire perhaps you should post it in the Mumsnet local bits and even go over to the otherside Netmums and post it in the London areas there too.

[Janos]

Thanks for posting this, what a great idea.

You may want to have a look at the Feminism topic - you should get support there. Good luck!

[Floopy21]

Done

[PrivetDancer]

It's a pretty poor survey. It doesn't ask how often you are in london or where for starters, just where you have been harassed. How are you possibly going to get sensible figures out of that?
It's a pointless campaign too really! Do you really think a campaign is going to stop people leering??

[lashcampaign]

Thanks for the help - I have reposted to the local forums.

[lashcampaign]

Hi PrivetDancer: why would it need to ask how often people are in London? I'd appreciate your input.

The UN lists sexual harassment as a form of violence against women, and is campaigning to end it. They seem to think it's worth campaigning against, as do the supporters of my campaign!

[ForzaDelDestino]

well if it asked how many often people were in London then asked how often they were harrassed then you might be able to tease out a statistic or two,non?

[PrivetDancer]

Well, because you will get no feel for how often people are being harassed this way.
If somebody reports being harassed once per week and is in London permanently that is different to somebody being harassed once per week but only being in London for an hour / per week. You'll get no sense of perspective of the scale of the 'problem' from this survey.

[PrivetDancer]

Also, it's the kind of survey that is far more likely to be filled in by people who have been harassed and people who haven't won't bother, so the results will be rather skewed.

[Janos]

I don't agree it's pointless, PrivetDancer. Why are you so keen to discredit the survey?

[ChequeredFlag]

I agree, Privet; have just filled it in to say I've never been harassed in London, but then I live in Wales and visit London twice a year these days, so it's much less likely to happen to me.

How do you intend to campaign against leering/honking (serious question)?

[ccpccp]

37% of respondents have witnessed someone wanking in public? Did you do the survey in Regents Park loos?

If you want to be taken seriously, you need to focus on the important issues (why is wolf whistling above sexual assault? Or even listed with it - you will NEVER stamp out wolf whistling) and give appropriate info on how you measured these huge scary figures.