“Women don’t put up with harassment in the workplace or the home, why are they still putting up with it on the street?” That’s the question asked by Hollaback, a group confronting street harassment using technology, which is geared towards recording and sharing incidents of street harassment with others in efforts to end the pervasive practice. Now, the group has developed an i-Phone application, making responses to harassment even more accessible and quick to disseminate. Through the website or i-Phone application, individuals are encouraged to recount their experiences, identify the location of the incident, and even share pictures of the perpetrators in efforts to help prevent more harassment and hold perpetrators accountable.
The group was created in response to the widespread phenomena of street harassment and the recognition of this act as one of the most common, yet unchallenged forms of gender-based violence. “Street harassment teaches us to be silent,” said Emily May, the executive director of Hollaback. “It teaches us to walk on. That is the very last thing we want to be teaching women and girls."
The group’s message is not just being heard by users of the website or application, but by the New York City Council Committee on Women’s Issues, who held its first hearing on street harassment last month. The committee chairwoman, Julissa Ferreras, a Democrat from Queens, has vowed to pursue all three demands by a group of activists at the hearings - a study examining street harassment, an advertising campaign, and the establishment of “harassment-free zones” around schools. “Ms. Ferreras called the hearing after visiting a high school in Elmhurst, Queens, where instead of requesting computers or supplies, female students asked her to stop the mechanics in a nearby garage from making inappropriate comments directed at them. Their stories hit close to home for the councilwoman, who grew up in the district and still remembers the ‘speed walk’ to and from school, when she would try to avoid a group of men who stood outside one particular bodega,” writes Karen Zraick in the Times piece. Ms. Ferreras, who understands the pervasiveness of street harassment, said she was even harassed on her way to the hearing.
Challenging and prosecuting street harassment is an essential component to ending all violence against women and LGBTQ individuals. As Hollaback’s website states, “Everyone has a right to feel safe and confident without being objectified. Sexual harassment is a gateway crime that creates a cultural environment that makes gender-based violence OK. There exists a clear legal framework to reproach sexual harassment and abuse in the home and at work, but when it comes to the streets—all bets are off. This gap isn’t because street harassment hurts any less, it’s because there hasn’t been a solution. Until now.”
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