VAWnet News Blog

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.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed a bill Thursday that raises the age of consent to be married to 18 — effectively banning child marriage.