Abstract

The abduction and murder of Sarah Everard in London in March of this year was followed by an outpouring of grief and rage from women across the world. Many took to online spaces to document for the first time the range of habitual forms of safety work they perform in public in response to the threat and reality of public sexual harassment. This safety work, mandated for women and girls in public, functions to limit women’s space for action and responsibilise them for preventing violence. Despite this, the impact of public sexual harassment has been rarely studied academically. Drawing from one of the first in-depth studies of the phenomenon conducted in the UK, this webinar will discuss the range and extent of public sexual harassment on women and girls and explore what their articulations of safety work reveal of the tension between freedom and safety. Speaker’s profile is here. Link to paper (open access): https://doi.org/10.1080/01924036.2020.1732435