Sexual assault and harassment are happening in political and activist organisations. Sometimes they are even harder to address because people hesitate to recognise that these problems persist inside progressive groups. This article explores the background of why sexual assault and harassment are happening and what we can do to prevent it.

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What is sexual assault and what is sexual harassment? #

Structural Background #

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Definition #

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Awareness & Prevention Structures in the organisation #

Persons responsible #

Training of the Responsibles #

Possible Measures #

Awareness & Prevention Structures during Activist Events #

Political Camps #

Benefits of tackling this in the context of political camps: The participants of camps for political purposes are together for a longer period of time and are brought together by shared ideas and expectations. This also offers the possibility to tackle the issue of possible sexual assault beforehand and during the event - for example in workshops.

Events like this should anyways also have their own support structure for survivors.

How to contribute #

You can make this article better by:

• Elaborate more on the background and the structures that need to change.

• Add more measures for preventing and changing the structures.

• Find ways to follow-up with the survivors without overwhelming the volunteers in e.g. prep-teams.

• Add more training opportunities for people dealing with this topic

External resources #

• Sexual Harassment, Psychology and Feminism pp 43-68| Cite as

• Women, Sexual Harassment and Victim Politics
  https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-55255-8_3

• Ask an activist: What are the most important lessons learned on sexual harassment in this last year of activism?

• https://www.unwomen.org/en/news/stories/2018/12/ask-an-activist-catharine-mackinnon

• Sexual harassment prevention and support structures, at disposal and well communicated to all stakeholders https://www.plotina.eu/sexual-harassment-prevention-support-stakeholders/

• Prevention Strategies

• https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/sexualviolence/prevention.html

• Risk and Protective Factors: https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/sexualviolence/riskprotectivefactors.html

• STOP SV: A Technical Package to Prevent Sexual Violence: https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/SV-Prevention-Technical-Package.pdf

• Together, we can change norms to prevent sexual violence and harassment: https://www.preventioninstitute.org/blog/together-we-can-change-norms-prevent-sexual-violence-and-harassment

• SEXUAL HARASSMENT - A THEORETICAL OVERVIEW: https://uir.unisa.ac.za/bitstream/handle/10500/1556/02chapter2.pdf?sequence=2

• Preventing violence against women needs greater focus on perpetrators: https://www.sbs.com.au/news/preventing-violence-against-women-needs-greater-focus-on-perpetrators-our-watch-says/f9c962c6-7fa3-4e67-9c62-89f5caaddf49

• Example: Transparency International: https://images.transparencycdn.org/images/2020-12-10_PSEAH-Policy_Final.pdf

• Seven Ways to Stand Up Against Sexual Harassment: https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/seven_ways_to_stand_up_against_sexual_harassment

Attribution #

This article was created during “Pizza & Write-a-thon” a joint project between Activist Handbook and Federation of Young European Greens