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Sexual harassment, social change communication, and the power to change

The recent communication for social change intervention to address sexual violence on a University campus created by Ms. Monica Baey, a student of Communication, reflects some of the best practices of communication for social change. In her incredibly brave articulation of her experience with sexual harassment, Ms. Baey creates a simple message. A message that draws attention to her experience, and in doing so, clearly communicates the broader culture of sexual violence.

Her narrative points to specific structural sites and spaces (police, university) where justice is typically carried out and articulates clear demands for change.  Most importantly, her creative uses of digital communication bypass the traditional channels of communication. Her experience shared on Instagram through powerful visual storytelling, circulates in accelerated networks of sharing, and finds its way into the mainstream media.

The first story on her experience appears on an international channel (South China Morning Post) and then gets picked up by the traditional mainstream channels in Singapore. This is significant as the relationship with international media ensures that narrative control is maintained by Ms. Baey.

In subsequent press statements, the University has positively responded to the challenge, noting the formation of a committee to look at disciplinary practices. The Minister of Education in Singapore has posted on his Facebook suggesting the need for re-looking at the punishment for sexual violence. These are very good starting points for conversations on transforming the broader culture.

In 2017, based on inputs from students, staff, and faculty members on the challenges they experienced with sexual harassment, CARE placed sexual violence as a key agenda for the Center to address through our social change communication work.

The Center collaborated with the veteran Singapore activist, and the Center's activist-in-residence, Braema Mathi, to put together a panel addressing sexual violence on University campuses. The panel was attended by Braema Mathi, Gloria James-Civetta, and Jolene Tan, AWARE's Head of Research.. Attended by staff and students, it highlighted the culture of patriarchy that circulates violence, specific strategies for addressing sexual harassment and the work of social change communication to address sexual violence on University campuses.

The collaboration with Ms. Mathi also resulted in a white paper titled "Sexual violence on University campuses: Communication Interventions." The white paper highlighted strategies for universities to address in building communication interventions, as well as strategies for change advocates to adopt in bringing about changes in cultures of sexual violence in Universities.

Among the strategies for Universities to adopt were the following recommendations:

  1. Advocating to build gender just Universities. Building gender justice across the University reflects a broad commitment to justice through education, prevention interventions, policy formation, disciplinary processes, and evaluation mechanisms. Continual and democratic evaluation are key components, with transparency in how such evaluations are implemented, how they are taken into account, and how their findings are disseminated. 
  2. Advocating to build internal University structures for addressing sexual violence. These University structures may be in the form of a Unit for Addressing Sexual Harassment or a Center for Preventing, Reporting, and Remedying Sexual Violence. Given the tendency of power to accumulate around structures, such a Unit should be explicitly represented by elected faculty, staff, and students on a rotating basis. Such a Unit must be completed by explicit policies on addressing sexual harassment and sexual violence. Given the tendency of power to concentrate and reproduce itself, the representation to a unit or committee must be democratic, ideally through a transparent election process.
  3.  Developing clear standards of communication. Clearly operationalizing sexual violence, defining it, and building two way communication processes around the articulation of sexual harassment are key. In defining the standards of communication and definition, the voices of students, staff, and faculty are key. Also, developing clear messages around the definition and forms of sexual violence is integral to transforming cultures of sexual violence.
  4. Developing mechanisms of protection of targets who report. Sexual violence is embedded in networks and relationships of power. Therefore, it is critical that frameworks be developed for protecting the identities of those that experience sexual violence. Building networks of solidarity is central to supporting individuals that experience sexual violence, including access to counseling, support networks, and institutional resources for navigating the experience.
  5. Developing cultures of witnessing. Bystander programs, programs for reporting acts of sexual violence are key and effective resources in countering sexual violence. While such programs may be embedded within Universities, ensuring they have bridges outside, such as with gender-based civil society groups is key.
In addition, the white paper outlines effective strategies for communication for social change, including building communication infrastructures for voices of individuals experiencing sexual violence, networking with various movements and groups outside the University to sustain change, creating messages that would stand out and draw attention to the culture of sexual violence, ensuring that the demands are clear and point to specific elements of structures that need to change, deploying disruptive communication channels outside of the traditional University channels, and developing reflexive practices that continually interrogate the formation and accumulation of power.

These principles of social change communication were well reflected in the "Social change communication" modules taught by Dr. Ee Lyn Tan in 2017-2018, where a student group developed strategies for advocacy and social change communication in addressing sexual violence. Other teachers of social change communication Asha Pandi, Satveer Kaur, Anuradha Rao, Dazzelyn Zapata, Afreen Azim, and Raksha Mahtani have worked with students on a wide range of projects of social change communication, drawing on their work at CARE. A number of these projects have directly addressed communication strategies for social change addressing sexual violence.

It is encouraging to witness how an effort of social change communication, emerging from an individual, with the courage to articulate her experience emerges as the basis for broader social change. Movements, we are taught by Ms. Baey, and by the #metoo movement, often emerge from individuals making the call for justice. Our students, the millenial generation, are the face of change, often through their deployment of communication that disrupts. Sustaining the change process is the key to cultural transformation. In sustaining the change process, what is critical to explore is how a change process retains the transformative space, challenging the tendency of power to co-opt it.



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