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Ella was just 19 when she was groped by a man while waiting for a train in the Sydney CBD.
“I didn’t feel like myself, I felt like my autonomy had been taken away from me I was being dominated by someone else and completely out of my control”
She’s not alone - Plan International Australia surveyed 500 Sydney women aged 18-25, to see how they feel in public spaces across different parts of Sydney. The results are startling.
90% of respondents said they don’t feel safe in Sydney after dark. Nearly one in four women experience street harassment at least once a month in Sydney. Four out of five said it first happened before they were 18. Women said they’d been harassed, cat-called, leered at, followed and in some cases, groped. Many more than once.
Plan International CEO Susanne Legena says it’s not just a local problem.
”We’ve got data coming from Delhi, Lima, Madrid and Kampala and it doesn’t seem to matter where you are in the world, if you’re a girl you are probably going to be in a situation where you are harassed.”
The survey was part of the Plan International’s ‘Free To Be’ project, which created an interactive map for both women and men to report instances of harassment, or areas across Sydney where people felt unsafe. ‘Good’ and ‘bad’ areas were reported across the city, but a common feature – public transport.
But is it about improving city design, or culture?
“A lot of people report that incidents happen where other people are around them but aren’t really doing anything. So I guess we have to start to say, why would we not intervene if we saw something?”
The project was initially trialled in Melbourne, and after the data was released the city committed to creating safer public spaces. There’s currently an app in development that would allow women to report instances of sexual harassment on public transport in real time.
Clearly, Sydney’s not up to scratch on this – but now we’ve got the data, how can we ensure people feel safe across the city?
