Sexual harassment and the right to everyday life

Abstract

Freedom from harassment is a basic human right and precondition to mental and physical health. While sexual harassment has become a higher-profile issue in recent years across a range of cultural contexts, including through the global rise of the # MeToo movement and the Everyday Sexism project, this issue has also attracted the attention of policymakers at the highest levels, leading, in the UK, to a Parliamentary Inquiry in 2018 on sexual harassment in public places, and a briefing paper on sexual harassment in higher education from the House of Commons in 2018. All of these highlight the urgent need for both deeper understanding and cultural change on this issue. Meanwhile, sexual harassment constitutes an important area of academic inquiry across a wide range of scholarly fields including psychology, sociology, women’s studies, criminology, law and social policy as well as geography. This article critically reviews key trends in scholarship on sexual harassment in public. It focuses on the spatial contexts of the street, the night-time economy and higher education institutions. A fundamental question of spatial justice, I argue that sexual harassment can be approached through three conceptual lenses: the relational emergence of bodies; the politics of everyday spatial practice; and the ways affects and the atmospheres they generate shape spatial experience. I argue that geographers have a vital role to play in advancing knowledge on this issue, and conclude by outlining a research agenda tracing outlines along which this work might unfold.

Urban Geography III: Universities and their spaces

“…Fourth, universities are gathering points of a range of publics and individuals: some display conflictual and aggressive behaviours that challenge the normative appearance of the university as a space of reasoned, enlightened debate (controversial as those terms can be, of course). For example, Boyer (2022) notes that higher education spaces ‘have become increasingly recognised as particularly problematic sites for sexual harassment and other forms of gender violence’ (p. 406). Similarly, the campus has become a flashpoint in sexual and gender politics: Nash et al (2019) illustrate how campuses in three different countries were sites of heteroactivism, where assertive campaigns against gender and sexual rights were framed within freedom of speech metanarratives.…”

Victim Blaming in Rape Culture (Narasi Pemakluman Kekerasan Seksual di Lingkungan Kampus)

“…Pelecehan seksual merupakan tindakan yang perlu digugat karena termasuk sebuah kekerasan yang merepresentasikan ketidakadilan gender apabila terjadi pada sebagian besar perempuan atau laki-laki saja (Boyer, 2022).…”

Influencia del entorno construido en la percepción de inseguridad y en la preferencia por caminar desde una perspectiva de género

“…Además, como novedad, se analiza la influencia de la percepción de la inseguridad entre la elección modal preferida y la elegida para hombres y mujeres. El trabajo forma parte de los recientes estudios sobre percepción de inseguridad en espacios públicos de ciudades españolas, donde hay, en general, bajos niveles de criminalidad (Ferrer & rUiz, 2018;García-carPintero & al., 2022;li-zárraGa & al., 2022;rodó-de-zárate & al., 2019;rodó-de-zárate & estivill, 2016), y donde se puede disfrutar del hecho de caminar como privilegio social (Boyer, 2022). La mayoría de las investigaciones han sido de tipo cualitativo y son menos los trabajos que utilizan metodología cuantitativa (león & al., 2022;.…”