VAWnet News Blog

Survivors need flexible, affordable, and safe housing options to achieve safety and lasting stability. The August 2021 TAQ explores how faith leaders can work to address domestic violence and support the housing needs of survivors in their communities.

The CDC estimates that 1 in 6 men have been sexually victimized at some point. It's a largely silent epidemic, and not confronting this issue only makes recovery harder for survivors.

Meeting the immediate needs of the community in the pandemic has a lot to do with preventing sexual violence. The July 2021 TAQ explores the ways in which sexual violence prevention work has shifted in response to lessons learned from COVID-19.

In order to make Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) safer for females and gender-expansive people, Reminie Chaidez and 99 other paid youth joined forces with Alliance for Girls to launch a campaign against gender-based violence in the country’s fifth largest transit system. As part of the effort, over 300 posters featuring young people and anti-sexual harassment messaging now appear in BART’s traincars, stations and billboards.

“Sexual violence against women and girls is a kind of discrimination that comes from long-existing structures,” says Linda Cabrera, director of Sisma Mujer, an organisation that defends victims of gender-based violence in Colombia. “What it has created is different kinds of traumas.”

More than 70% of female restaurant employees have been sexually harassed, one recent survey found, and half experience sexual harassment on a weekly basis, according to another. Dependence on tipped wages, along with job requirements to appear friendly and pleasant — in other words "service with a smile" — jointly create a culture of sexual harassment.