Cambridgeshire and Peterborough says No to harassment of women and girls. Changing the narrative.

Elect me Nicky Massey as PCC for Cambridgeshire and Peterborough and let make a real change and stop harassment of women and girls! As I woman I know the horrors and impact street harassment has on women, it creates fear and is the reasons why so many of us walk at night with keys in hand.

We need to change the narrative when we speak about street harassment. I changed the way that Street harassment is defined on the internet by removing the term “catcalling and wolf whistling” as women are not animals and those terms belittle what is actually happening which is street harassment. I also removed the reference to street harassment being “unwanted flirtatious behaviour “ its not Flirtatious it is “unwanted sexualised comment”. Let’s change the narrative and call it out for what it is.

I started the group on Facebook Cambridgeshire and Peterborough says no to Harassment of women and girls inspired by the work of some students in Sheffield (thank you Evie Hairsine and team) highlighting that fact that women get harassed every day all through our lives.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/camspeterbagainstharassment

The group is open with love and respect to all men and women in the area.

We are mapping where harassment has taken place in order to do interventions such as posters highlighting the street harassment, chalking, and sending the data to the councils and Police to inform them where CCTV/Lighting/ Patrols and other interventions need to happen. https://bit.ly/3rrXqDw

I have hosted two events so far discussing the impact that harassment has on everyone, the way it creates fear and the fact that EVERY women has had street harassment and much worse in some cases in one way or the other. We need to having the conversations with men in order to help them understand and to help them call out bad behaviour.

I want to work with partners to fund active bystanding training in schools which helps our youth understand what the problem is and how to intervene and stop it in a safe way. I will encourage all businesses to also have active bystander training and I have done so already by asking Cambridge Bid and Peterborough Positive to ask their businesses to consider active bystander training. It will take us all to call out the bad behaviour to get finally get change.

The sad death of Sarah Everard recently has meant that women all over the country have an outpouring of decades of repressed memories of being harassed, followed and abused.

The recent commentary of “stay at home at night women and girls as you are not safe” is not the right way to deal with it.

Neither is this governments response to the out pouring of concern from women and girls. Better lighting is a good thing and welcome, as many have been asking for this for many years as lighting across our county has been dimmed to save money due to central government cuts. However the funding allocated to the better lighting project means no much will actually be able to be done with it.

The idea of putting undercover police officers in pubs and clubs to stop harassment and violence against women is ridiculous and just shows it’s an idea that has been formed without asking women what they want.

We do need to have space spaces in the nighttime economy and known people that are visible so that if people need help they know where to go. That also means encouraging taxi Marshalls in town centres on key nights (weekends normally). Funding street pastors/street angels/night bus schemes that go out to help people have a safe good night out. It’s not just about visible policing and more police officers - as those are only dealing with a symptom of a much wider problem. It is about embedding safe spaces and safe ambassadors in places of need as well as better and effective policing patrols in the areas of high concern.

We need to have better and integrated CCTV across the county.

We need to continue this wave of change by keep talking about it, keep thinking of new ways to tackle the problem. I am always willing to listen on how we can do more to stop and prevent harassment of women and girls. How can we help women and girls feel safe at night?

In parts of London I have been hearing about how in some places a help box/button has been installed one to go to the police and one to the CCTV operatives, so if someone feels they are being followed are feel unsafe they can the CCTV operatives to “follow” them home. If they need immediate support they can press the Call police button. Would this work in some areas of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough? I don’t know about that, but we need to have these conversations so we can make sure the streets are safe for all.