Girls Know Nothing - S2 Ep4: Claire Barnett: 'Gender Equality isn't a Disease' and the #SafeSpacesNow Project

Episode Date: February 16, 2023

Welcome back to Girls Know Nothing! 🧡 GKN is a female focused podcast hosted by @SharonNJGaffka Our next guest is Claire Barnett, Executive Director of UN Women UK. Claire has a masters degree from the University of Oxford examining the history of gender identity and has worked with charities in areas from microfinance in Brazil to justice for survivors of violence in Uganda, and access to social protection for UK youth. #UNWomen is the only global organisation working to make gender equality a reality at truly every level of society. UN Women's mission is to ensure every woman has an equal right and access to #Safety, #Choice, and a #Voice. Prior to joining UN Women UK, Claire helped to drive McKinsey's UK office work on diversity and inclusion, including as an author of The Power of Parity, examining the macroeconomic effect of accelerating gender equality on UK GDP and beyond. New episodes of Girls Know Nothing 🧡 will be released every Thursday, and will also be available on Spotify, Apple podcasts and wherever you get your podcast fixes! GKN Social Channels: Https://linktr.ee/girlsknownothing  Instagram: @girlsknownothingpod  TikTok: @girlsknownothing

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That's our best price ever on unlimited welcome with auto pay plus taxes and fees guaranteed for three years. Because at Verizon, we got you. Visit your local DC Verizon store today. $20 monthly promo credits applied over 36 months with a new line on Unlimited Welcome. In times of congestion, unlimited 5G and 4G LTE may be temporarily slower than other traffic. Domestic data roaming at 2G speeds. Price guarantee applies to then current base monthly rate. Additional terms and conditions apply. Welcome back to another episode of Girls Know Nothing. International Women's Day is one of the biggest days in the activist calendar, and it is vastly approaching. For those that don't know, the theme for 2023 is Embrace Equity.

Forging gender equity isn't limited to solely women fighting the good fight. It's so important for social, economic, cultural and political advancement of women. So it's critical that we do understand what it means to have gender equity. It's to recognise that each person has different circumstances and we need to allocate the exact resources and opportunities for everyone in order to be able to reach an equal outcome. Keeping this theme in mind, I am so happy to introduce our next guest. Claire Barnett is Chief Executive of UN Women UK, who has an incredible list of accolades. When I was reading your bio, I was like, wow, okay, I thought I'd done a lot in my time. But before joining UN Women UK, Claire has led on equality projects for McKinsey and company, including authoring award-winning McKinsey Global Institute research, The Power

of Parity, which examines the macroeconomic impact of accelerating gender equality on GDP. Claire also chairs the board of youth-led anti-sexual harassment organisation Our Streets Now and sits on the advisory board of Open UK and serves as a strategic independent advisor for public sector organisations and is part of the 2022-23 cohort of women in innovation award winners this is what i mean it's such a long list of things um claire was also named as one of stylist coronavirus heroes for her work in highlighting inequalities during the pandemic and building a community for marginalized people to find and support and have their voices heard. You're a judge at this year's Marie Claire

Future Shapers Award and recognised as one of 2022's Women Who Will lists for those changing the law in the UK for your leadership in gender equality. Welcome to the studio, Claire. Thank you so much. It's just a short introduction about me though. I was like, wow, this must be really good for the ego and you're like yeah I am so good and it's great that other people will tell me that I'm amazing as well um obviously I will eventually move on to your role as chief executive in women um UN Women UK but I did want to touch a little bit on your incredible list of accolades um it's quite clear that you've spent majority, if not all of your career or life very focused on gender equality. So, you know, what kind of inspired

you to pursue that field of study, first of all? Yeah, I feel like there's always this moment, isn't there, where those of us who are working in this field stop and think, how did I get here? You know, it's something that I always remember kind of living and breathing. So I grew up in a house that I think was just quietly but really determinedly equal and pro-equality. So my parents were teachers. And I remember, you know, we never talked about kind of politics or national affairs at home. But there was always just this underlying feeling of being aware of the impact of public sector cuts on services for the people who need them most. My dad had somehow come from an incredibly underprivileged background in Splott in Cardiff

and somehow turned out to be an enormous feminist through and through. And I think inherited that from his dad and just came from a line of men who were deeply dedicated to equality, you know, without having to study it or in an academic sense, but just having that really deep running understanding of what makes an equal partnership. So I think growing up with a male figure in the household who really deeply believed in that meant that when I started to enter environments where equality wasn't the norm and to see that around me, I just wasn't afraid to ask, why is that the way that it is? Yeah, I remember at my college,

they were telling me that they'd never had a female student president before. Wow. So I decided to run for it. And I remember people saying, well, no offense, but you're not going to get it. And I did. But, you know, I'd be like,

the next question was, did you get it I mean this would be a slightly different story wouldn't it I was like unfortunately they still haven't many years later but um but yeah I just think you know kind of being surprised by seeing that inequality in front of you you know and of course that's a kind of mild example but even um I did a whole bunch of, including tour guiding and working for various charities. And then when I went into my first kind of office job, they had ridiculously kindly, and also in the days of throwing money at things like this,

which I don't think happens quite so much anymore, they were taking all the new joiners on a ski trip to say welcome to the company. And I'd never been skiing, but obviously I thought I'll absolutely take a free ski trip. And I remember they said, well, you're going to have to source your own ski gear, of course. And I said, well, I don't have any ski gear and I can't afford to rent it.

So am I supposed to not come on the trip? And they were like, well, yeah, I guess just borrow it. And I was like, you know, it's really interesting that you're just assuming that to work in the city, people either can ski or have friends who have ski gear that they can borrow. And so I sort of said, well, I think you need to make it a policy that you lend the ski gear because you're shutting people like me out of these jobs. And so I think, you know, just being used to kind of speaking up and asking about that.

And then anytime there was an opportunity to start working in usually non-profit work or advisory to combat those inequalities, I just jumped at it. So yeah, and I think, you know, ended up finding my way to UN Women because what UN Women does is that structural change. And it really understands that gender inequality isn't a disease, that if we can get enough funding for a vaccine and then, you know, increase vaccine uptake, we'll be able to eradicate it. It takes really hard work at so many levels of society to understand the issue, to get all of us taking action in our day-to-day lives, and then to create that change. And those big, difficult problems are the sorts of things that I'm

really interested in. So I think that's kind of how I found my way here. It's really interesting that you like to hear somebody who got their feminism views and feminist streak from a male member of their family because I always hear people talk about it where they get it from their mum or they've witnessed their mum go through something or like you know a female friend so like I think like more power to your dad like that's great to hear that there's you know male role models in out there that really do believe in yeah full gender equality because sometimes you hear the worst as opposed to the best. Yeah and I think so much you know we speak to men who really want to

make sure that their daughters have great lives but that manifests in protection you know it manifests in I've got to wrap you up in cotton wool and don't get me wrong my mum's incredible and such an amazingly strong resilient you know leader know, leader in her own right. But I think growing up with a father who really understands what equality looks like is, you know, such a privileged and lucky place to be. No, amazing. I think, so kind of going on to that, I briefly wanted to talk about the Power of Parity report. And for those people that are listening that want to read the report,

I will like include links in the bio. But could you just give us a bit of a brief overview as to like what the report is about? Yeah, of course. So what we really wanted to get at with that piece of work was, we know that business leaders understand that gender inequality, and this is going back a few years, and I think they understand even more now. But you know, they understood that gender inequality was a moral imperative and that inequality generally was something they should be doing. But the problem with that is that they didn't tend to really focus on it during business hours. So it was, how can we get the most marginalized people

to volunteer their time to tackle the problem, rather than really understanding that this is the best lever that they can pull to protect themselves against future risks, to weather the storms that are coming their way in terms of macroeconomic crashes, you know, in terms of climate impact and how that might affect their business. They're talking about problems like huge skills gaps, you know, a lack of staff that they can hire, decision making that isn't keeping their company resilient and gender equality and leadership and throughout the company achieves all of those, that really combats all of those challenges. So we wanted to get at the heart of that and produce something that really showed them quite

how much they were missing out on. We know that that was the language that leaders were going to be interested in, like you are leaving so much value on the table by not including, we started with women, but more broadly, marginalized groups in your businesses. So we wanted to measure, okay, what would the impact be on global GDP if we were just to include some more women? Not all women in the workforce, because lots of women will choose not to. They'll want to be at home spending time with their families, and they of course should. But if we were just to allow all of the women who tell us that they want to be at work but can't because of specific barriers to be in the

workforce and that looks like some people working a few more hours a week if they had less domestic work to do for their families and could share that out better. If we had better child care arrangements it means some women going from part-time to full-time and it means some going from not working at all to being able to work some hours and when we modeled all of those levers the impact was enormous and even in the UK we found that we could add 150 billion to the UK economy just by pulling those levers to include some more women and so it was no longer you know that has been shared a huge number of times and it was no longer isn't it something that we should all be finding the will within ourselves to take action on it was like why would leaders not be addressing this because so many things you know other trends that they're talking about add less to their

to the national economy and to their own value as a business than just including women it's well when I was reading the report I was seeing these really incredible figures. Like you said, like we could bring in by bridging the gap between gender pay and equality in the workplace. But do you think that businesses in the UK are doing enough to kind of promote that equality and bridge that gender pay gap? It's a really good question and a really tough one

because I don't think that it's as easy as they're not doing enough. But I often think they're doing the wrong things or in the wrong way. So we hear you know particularly women particularly women of colour who have been flying the flag for equality and working every day often voluntarily outside their day jobs to improve things in their workplaces and yes that includes offices but it also includes you know working for a transport company or being out kind of fitting road signs. That's the company we've been working with recently.

So in all sorts of those, you know, walks of life, doing all of this extra unpaid work and not seeing the change that they want to see. And that is exhausting and it's really making them think, what have I been working for? And I think there's a few issues there. So one is, I don't think many companies want to be the first mover on things.

So as I'm sure we'll talk about, you know, we do lots of work on preventing sexual harassment and creating safe public spaces and safe workplaces. And so many companies said to us several years ago, well, that's probably not a topic we're going to touch yet. But you know, we'll see how the thing how the climate goes. And now that some things are happening, it's like, okay, well, we might start talking about that, but we're going to be careful with it. And I think it's that fear to jump in that actually means that those companies are the ones who are left behind. I think the second issue is that we invest a lot of money in things that we don't really know if they're making an impact. So International Women's Day is around the corner, super exciting time of year,

because it really throws attention on gender inequality. And that's super important. But every year, you know, I get sent a lot of pictures of people sort of holding their arms up in the shape of an equal sign. And sometimes I hear that companies are spending quite a lot of money on breakfasts and photo calls and, you know, making that happen. And it kind of makes people feel good for a day. But I actually wonder if it does more harm than good, because it makes it look like there's loads of attention focused on the issue, but it's not talking about anything specific that we need to change. So I would love to see companies investing more money resource time and executive attention in programs that are tracked are measured and you know it's such a cliche now to say what gets measured gets done but that we can look back over five years and say we implemented that and this is

the change it made and there are so many specialists organizations like us and others doing incredible work that can be brought in to support that. But I think, you know, it's often because it is left to the most marginalized groups to lead these initiatives, it's quite often a case of, well, we have to start again. So we see like, you know, say we work with 100 companies in the UK, almost all of them at some point trying to reinvent the wheel, starting from scratch, going, yeah, how do we really do a gender equality initiative? And you're like, imagine what could happen if we had more alliances of companies like that working together, sharing, you know,

almost industry secrets, because we shouldn't be trying to be the first mover on gender equality, right? And so often we hear like, this is going to differentiate us, is we're going to be an equal company. And that's not the right way to look at equality. It should not be your USP. It should be a given and really working together. So I think most companies are doing something. It's just whether they're doing something meaningful, something that's followed through on and really sharing tips and supporting each other.

Yeah, I guess my random little take on it is that if there are no women in leadership positions and there's not actually anyone who's actually experienced it themselves to be able to put in their two cents really and be able to drive it to the next level. Because what I found in organizations I've worked in where it is very female led,

you know, those initiatives actually do see longevity and have real impact. Yeah. And, you know, even outside kind of traditional leadership positions, if you don't have any women designers creating, you know, designs for a tech piece of software, that is not going to be inclusive either. You know, the UN theme for International Women's Day this year is digital inclusion. And so we're running a whole bunch of initiatives around how can you expect AI to learn from anything other than biased data if what you put in is already unequal. So I totally agree with you. And it's

also then companies who actually are starting to get maybe 30% women in leadership assume that that representation alone will make the change. And the other thing we're saying is, especially companies who actually are starting to get maybe 30% women in leadership assume that that representation alone will make the change. And the other thing we're saying is, you know, especially if that change has happened really gradually over time, we all do it, those people will assimilate into the institutional issues that you already have so that they fit in and they're not exposed and it's not their own unpaid labor that they're doing every day to try and, you know, bang the table on that issue. So we really have to look at those institutional structural things otherwise everybody will start you know making themselves in the image of the the leadership that was already there

no i agree completely um just on the last kind of like question before you kind of move on to more of the um un women uk stuff is that i get this a lot when i talk about gender pay gap and gender inequality in the workplace on the internet in general is that the gender pay cap does not exist um which you know they're like it's always been disproved and i'm yet to see an actual academic resource that says it has been disproved so um what would you say to people that like deny that the gender pay gap is still an issue I always love to ask by to start by asking why do you feel so strongly or so angrily about this because I think if an issue doesn't directly affect us and it makes us really angry we have to ask ourselves what part of us feels under threat by that and I think that's really important as a first starting point is like,

if you as a person think that the existence of the gender pay gap and people saying, I just want to be paid equally is a personal threat to you. Is it because actually, if you start ahead, then going back to equality feels like a loss and feels like oppression. And that is tough. You know, if you're used to seeing 10 out of 10 leadership roles being promoted, you know, having men promoted into those, and now it's eight out of 10, you will have less of an opportunity to be promoted. But that doesn't mean that you're unequal, right? And so I think that's really important. But I think then kind of moving on to does it exist? Does it not exist? Where we get caught up and sometimes a little bit confused is the difference between are people doing the same number of hours in the same role being paid

unequally? Or are people overall being paid unequally due to their characteristics? And that might be driven by other things. But when we start to lift the lid on, even if it is the case that actually the reasons that many women are being paid less is because there aren't so many of them in leadership roles, so they're more junior. They're not in roles that often have equity or shares in companies. They're often in non-commercial roles. They work fewer hours. You know, they're less likely to be promoted or to stay for a long time and get those benefits and bonuses. We've got to ask ourselves, why is that the case? And often it's the case because women are coming back after childcare responsibilities and just finding that they

can't slot back in. They're not getting the same progression as they used to have. The career that they built is just not there anymore because it hasn't been stewarded in the right way or their clients or customers have been taken by other people during their leave. We're seeing women overlooked in promotion rounds for reasons that can't be explained other than, well, we just had a feeling that he was just the right guy for the job. And you're like, yeah, if he looks like you, you're probably going to think he's the right guy for the job, right? But those are also issues of structural inequality. And so I think we're kind of missing the point a little bit when we get stuck in these endless conversations around, well, are you actually paying her less than you're paying

him for exactly the same number of hours? Or is it actually that she just doesn't have as good a job and that's why she's being paid less? And you've still got to ask yourself, why is that happening, right? Yeah, I think it's one of those things that when you're trying to explain that to people that just only see one tiny section, which is the figure. They forget to understand that there are so many other aspects that are built into it and gender pay gap literally isn't just how much you're paid at the end of the day.

For those, I'd be very surprised if people don't know what UN Women and UN Women UK is. Obviously, UN Women is the only global organisation working to make gender equality a reality in every way, which I find that really shocking because I thought there'd be more global organisations that work at the same level as UN Women. Yeah, so I mean, look, there are thousands, tens of thousands of incredible organizations working at every layer of society. So grassroots campaigners, you know, direct service delivery, doing research, doing advocacy with governments. I think what makes UN Women special is that because we exist at a level at which member states, as part of their membership to the UN, almost, you know,

they sign up to, they almost report to that agreed covenant that they make between them. So they say, in signing up to this, I'm saying that I have to stick to a higher level of standard that runs across these member states. And that hopefully, in theory, other parts of the UN will take action if I'm not sticking to that, right? Then, so you can really hold those governments to account in a way that they have to sign up to that then we work at the kind of mid-level of society with organizations institutions you know local authorities community groups to work on that level of institutional change so that we're seeing that local level change happening and then we support lots of organizations right at the grassroots so around the world we work work with, provide funding to, provide other kinds of support to,

incredible, tiny local organizations who know their work best, doing amazing work, that otherwise would never be able to access funding from the Icelandic government, for example. Or there'd be a huge amount of waste in the process because they'd all be trying to do their own thing and not have our colleagues on the ground um supporting them with you know perhaps it's a program across ukraine to make sure that women who otherwise had no access to period products

after the crisis now have those for example so i think being able to attack the problem from all of those levels is what makes it really unusual because we're not seeing individual level you know we are helping individuals but really the goal is shifting that and changing it over time across society. And I think that's what makes it really exciting. But I love that. And you're very kind to say, I'd be surprised if no one knows, you know, if anybody doesn't know what UN Women is. But actually loads of people don't know who we are. So we're kind of the baby of the UN system. Peer organizations like UNICEF and World Bank were set up in like late 1940s, mid 1950s, early 1960s. Fast forward 50 years, and UN Women were set up. So we're really new. And I just think

it shows that the world is waking up to the need for global efforts on gender equality. But it is a challenge that we have that, you know, we are small in comparative terms where globally we're about the same size as just the UK office for UNICEF. And so often our work's kind of overlooked, you know, in the recent crisis in Afghanistan, which is our biggest office in the world. There was a pledging summit where the UK brought together different governments to say that they were going to make contributions to work on the ground in Afghanistan. And every government referenced women and girls' rights. You know, it was really the kind of headline topic, we've got to address that. None of the funding from that summit went to UN Women, and we're the only organisation working to ensure gender equality, equality of funding,

you know, asking the Taliban to reverse their ban on women working in international NGOs. And so it was really disappointing to see that gender equality is still a sidelined issue in those matters. So yeah, it's, you know, super exciting organisation to work for, but we've got a long way to go to have the cause recognised, I think. Yeah, I think I can imagine it makes your role very interesting but also very stressful what does your like every day kind of entail like your day-to-day job such a good question it's so varied and it is stressful but I think I just also want to say I feel so lucky to be in a position like this you know there are so many people who care so deeply about gender equality and are you know they have so many other responsibilities.

They're not given the opportunity to have their voice heard. So I do feel lucky every day to be doing it. But it's a real mix. So, you know, some days I'll be, so at the moment I'm planning to take a delegation of 2,000 women and girls across the UK and some men and boys as well, with a focus on marginalized backgrounds to a two-week virtual UN conference where there'll be official delegates. And we're really working on kind of throwing open the doors of those halls of power, training them to understand the processes, to know the jargons that they can get a foot in the door, and then to have their voices heard to global leadership. So that is, you know, working with my team to plan how do we take

applications, you know, events that we're going to run to really bring them together in workshop to get their voices out and their vision together. I work with lots of our partners. So we co-host something called the Unstereotype Alliance in the UK, which is advertisers and brands who we convene to come together and eliminate harmful stereotypes from their advertising. So I do a lot of work with partners like that on either quite broad, you know, let's have a look at your brand communications and see where the issues are and where we can improve or quite specific, you know, for example, we're going to be training black cab drivers across the UK with Addison Lee. So, you know, there's some really kind of varied work with brands like that. And then there's a lot of work on directison Lee. So, you know, there's some really kind of varied work with brands like that.

And then there's a lot of work on direct program delivery. So within Safe Spaces now, we do lots of work with music festivals. And so often I'm with the team on the ground there, you know, running a tent where lots of young men come in and we do like glitter, beards and temporary tattoos, but also talk to them about issues of consent. So it is really varied. And then of course, there's a lot of more kind of policy and reporting work that can be slightly less out in the community stuff that I love, but is very important too. So unfortunately, a number of governments in this recession are turning away from supporting women and girls issues, you know, as you well know. And the UK government in

particular has really been reducing its support for specifically women's rights issues overseas. Unfortunately, it is disproportionately cut when international support is cut. So there'll also be work, you know, in and around Parliament speaking with MPs to help them understand the real need to bring that back. So it's a varied day, definitely can be stressful. I think for all of us working in this space, if you have lived experience of the issues in particular, it can be quite heavy work. And you know, I'm sure you find the same thing with your campaigning work. But I think, you know, I've never had more hope for change than working in this job. I see people every day who are just most incredible campaigners that give me

real confidence and hope that things are changing. So yeah, it brings me that as well. Some mornings you just wake up on the wrong side of the bed or you have a really long day at work and there's still more to do. Maybe you've been feeling like you can't catch a break and we never know what type of day we'll have, but Calm will help you handle every day. Calm helps you stress less, sleep more, and live a happier, healthier life. Their guided meditations, sleep stories, relaxing music tracks, and daily movement sessions are all designed to give you the tools

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would probably be very hard to like especially if it's a lot of women in the workplace to find a woman who hasn't actually experienced something that you guys will be working on in any way but I think when you've experienced it yourself and you find passion for what you do then it probably does help you get through the day a little bit more but I wanted to ask you briefly I know everyone hates listening to like COVID-19 stuff and obviously like we are trying to move on after the pandemic but do you find that the effects of coronavirus have really impacted your job? Yeah I mean let's just say if we thought that there were issues with women's rights and access to services before the pandemic hugely exacerbated that so I mean my immediate job experience was from one day to the next. We had a lot of

funding coming from corporate partnerships where they were creating change in their supply chains and in the communities where they, you know, farm products, for example, that just disappeared overnight. And it was really disappointing to see because I think, you know, you understand that when a company is under pressure, probably charity partnerships are going to be the first to go. But one of the stories that we've really been trying to tell going through the pandemic and out of it is that the best way to prepare yourself next time is to be working on equality. And there are so many reasons for that. But yeah, I mean, we saw women losing their jobs at much higher rates because they were in insecure contracts, much less likely to have that state protection. We found women shouldering the

enormous caring burden and domestic work burden that again was an existing issue and it was already there structurally, but something like a crisis like this just hugely exacerbated that. So suddenly it was trying to juggle a full-time job with educating children at home. And, you know, I think we all went into it trying to find some optimism. And you heard a lot of leaders saying, well, maybe this will lead to a real revolution in sharing caring responsibilities. And that's just not what we saw. So we did a lot of data collection across the world on what was the reality of that and in the UK as well. And unfortunately, it just was that women were in many cases in the UK, 25% of the women that we interviewed were doing all of their caring and

domestic work for the household. So, you know, it's huge. And of course, domestic abuse rates went up. And we always see this in a crisis. So whether it's COVID, you know, whether it's a climate crisis, a natural disaster, whether it's conflict, sexual violence and exploitation rise, as well as domestic abuse. so you know it's putting pressure particularly financial pressure on communities unfortunately we already have these underlying issues of gender-based violence it goes up so there was a huge amount of work to try and combat that and provide urgent and immediate protection to women and girls who are experiencing that and other marginalized genders and groups. And so I think the learning

for us now is, you know, we're so not out of the woods on this, but also let's use this as a case study for the world to say, wow, we were so unprepared. And, you know, these things didn't come out of nowhere. They were issues that we knew we already had and we hadn't addressed them as a public health issue. And we did some data collection as we were starting to look at the route out of the pandemic as a country and say, well, what happens when we all go back to public spaces? And we found that about 71% of women

of all ages in the UK said that they are sexually harassed in public spaces and so they were quite nervous about going back. And around the same time, this is really sort of starting to come out of COVID, 71% of people in a Guardian survey Around the same time, you know, this is really sort of starting to come out of COVID. 71% of people in a Guardian survey said that they'd had COVID in the UK. Yeah.

So we were like, actually, the scale of the issue, you know, the same proportion of people in the UK have had COVID as proportion of women in the UK are being sexually harassed. It's kind of a comparable public health issue here. You know, that does lead to death, injury, like it's something that we need to take really seriously. And so I would love to see the kind of behavioral techniques that we use in the COVID response being used to attack issues of human rights, because we know how to do it, but we're just not putting our best minds on it. No, I agree. And I think actually,

one thing that I found with a lot of institutions is that they will only really believe something's an issue when you see a hard fact and a figure in front of them as opposed to somebody continuously telling a lived experience I mean talking about the safe spaces now campaign I felt like I mean I can't speak for all women but myself like my inhibitions were very lowered when coming out of the pandemic because I'd been so used to being inside my house and kind of having that sanctity of home that for people that don't know when I when we came out of the pandemic or things started to open up again I was a victim of spiking and that was just because you know I don't want to put it down to myself as victim shaming where it was like well my inhibitions were lowered but I think it was a lot of people were just trying to get back to normal

life or forget what they should be doing around them. Like you said, we had seen some shocking figures and I've seen YouGov polls survey saying that four out of five women had experienced some form of sexual harassment in the street. Could you tell us a little bit more about the Safe Spaces Now project? Yeah, and look, I'm really sorry that that happened to you.

That's, you know, always terrifying. And I think it's so important to highlight that as we come out of COVID, just women and girls and other marginalized and vulnerable groups trying to live their life to the full is being exploited. And that is a terrible thing. You know, we talk about how do we inject life into the UK economy? You remember Eat Out to Health, right? It's like, we've got to get people going out. And yeah, you know, I'm sure we all have different views on that. But we do a lot of work with the music industry as part of that. And that is one of the ways that, you know, spaces where live music is playing should be places for joy and freedom and expressing yourself. And if we're

living with the constant fear, which so many women and girls in particular are, of not getting out of there alive or safely, you know, that's not a space for freedom at all. So Save Spaces Now was kind of a project that we dreamed up based on about a decade of experience of our colleagues around the world working in some of the world's most dangerous cities for abuse and violence in public spaces. And so they really had incredible experience end to end on, you know, gathering data, finding out where the issues really lie, working out what is going to attack that issue, addressing it, and then seeing if it works and scaling those. So we knew that we wanted to take action in the UK, but this is kind of hard to believe now

because things have changed so much in the past few years. But in 2017, we did a big campaign called Draw a Line where we brought together some incredible celebrities and politicians and leading voices and said, we all have experiences of this in one way or another, and we're here to draw a line and put an end to gender-based violence. We had, again, a lot of brands at that point who kind of said, that is a bit of a punchy topic for us, let's say. I'm not sure that we're really able to get involved. And, you know, we

started to build out really where are women and girls issues or experiences being overlooked and where is there a huge opportunity for us to address them and we said actually this safety in public spaces piece is something that everybody knows about but nobody talks about so we would do events even events where we're campaigning to end gender-based violence and I remember one of our amazing male board members said to a young woman who was there, who, you know, works in journalism, very kind of seemingly self-assured, you know, super confident woman. She was taking one of the newspapers that we'd created, which had loads of information about the topic with her, sort of rolled up in her hand. And the man on our board

said to her, you know, what is that? You're just taking that home to read later. And she said, I'm rolling it up so that I've got something to use as a weapon on my walk home because I'm just going to outskirts of London. I don't know if I'm going to be safe. And he was shocked to hear this and was kind of the first time that he'd heard somebody voice like, I tend to carry, you know, a fairly harmless, but some sort of something I could use as a weapon to protect myself. And we just really wanted to bring the issue out into the open and say, actually, we accept this as if it has to exist and it doesn't. You know, we've seen when we put the best of our efforts behind getting people to wear seatbelts in cars or not smoke inside or stand in queue, you know, use one-way systems

in COVID and wear masks. We know how to change behavior on a public scale. We're just not doing it for this issue. So we put together the Save Spaces Now campaign and spent a few years bringing together about 10,000 women and girls to start with across the UK in design thinking workshops where they really created. If I was to, you know, we could do this in COVID in particular. If I was to go back to public spaces tomorrow, how would I want them to look?

Like, let's start with the best possible scenario. How would they be safer, free and equal for all? And they created together over 150 different solutions for public spaces that we then did social media polling and worked with national leaders and honed those down to 12 top ideas and said, if we can implement those 12, we're going to make a huge difference in public spaces. And we released that research and a big report on that showing that only 3% of 18 to 24-year-old women in the UK were not being sexually harassed. Very sadly, by chance,

in the same week that Sarah Everard went missing. And I think we saw the national conversation turn from, this is just, you know, we had a small piece on page two of The Guardian that we didn't really expect to go anywhere. And there was a huge shift from another tragic, scary incident to people taking to the streets saying,

we're sick of this. No more, enough's enough, right? So we suddenly had a huge amount of interest in our work as that research came out because people were looking for solutions and not just to say, I'm angry, but to say, I want to see those solutions that people have created working in practice. So that was the kind of source, the data phase. And we're now in phase two, which is the solve phase, working on rolling those out with music festivals, transport

authorities, local and national government, and seeing great, great adoption, great pickup, great interest. Also seeing a lot of money going into CCTV, you know, increased policing, street lighting, things that we don't think we have sufficient evidence are attacking the root cause of the problem. So I would love to see more organizations and leaders getting involved with us and saying, right, what can I do to actually prevent sexual harassment and change behavior, which is what we really specialize in. We're seeing some amazing results already but we've got to get quite creative with how we address that in public spaces. Yeah I definitely think that there even though it's not necessarily data driven but I do think taking a proactive approach to things is always better than thinking

about the reactive or you know what can we do afterwards because by the time you get to the after bits usually too late um especially in unfortunate cases like sarah everard and and um many other women that have unfortunately followed as well um we even though it's two years on and we're still having two years on from, is it two years on from Sarah Everard? Yeah, even though it's two years on since Sarah Everard's death, which is one of the most high profile murders of women, unfortunately, in the UK. Why do you think it's still important that we keep having these conversations and still using her name to the forefront? Because unfortunately, you do get people that are like, well, it was two years ago.

I know. And, you know, there's so much to say that I know you spoke to the brilliant Laura about this as well. There's so much to say and that needs saying about the fact that we focused on a particular case. And you know, we've got to be super careful about using the name of victims or survivors of assault or violence, you know, without necessarily knowing if that's what their family wants and also without perhaps giving the same attention to more marginalized victims that is so often the case, right? So I think, you know,

there's a lot that needs to be recognized about that. But I think, I love that, well, two things. I think there's a, it's really great that more people are coming forward and reporting, even though the system is often stacked against them. And I think we've seen high profile legal cases recently around domestic and intimate partner abuse, where quite frankly, I think they hugely discourage survivors and victims to come forward because it can be a terrifying experience. And so I think that can only be a good thing. I think our institutions, though, need to realise that if they're going to

address this issue, their reports will go up before they go down. You know, the point of this is that we're really encouraging people to come forward and air what's happened. And so we should expect a rise in reported cases. And that doesn't, that's not a bad thing. It's terrible that they're happening, but before they're happening, but before they were happening and we were covering them up, frankly. So I think the rise in reported cases, particularly in policing recently, is really concerning, but something that we should expect to come from other institutions as well. So, you know, the work that we do with music industry partners, and we're starting to do some more work with live events and

film, we're kind of saying to them, you know, you're going we do with music industry partners and we're starting to do some more work with live events and film, we're kind of saying to them, you know, you're going to have to really air a number of things on the table and that's going to feel uncomfortable as a leader. But you can only move forward if we're quite, you know, clear that what we want is actual safety and not a feeling of safety. It's not kind of confidence by telling everyone that things are okay. Because actually, if you tell someone they're going to be safe, and then they're attacked,

that's worse than not making them feel safe, right? So I think when we talk about what has really changed over the past two years, the two things I want to see are an understanding that this is a moment of reckoning. You know, do you as a leader want to be that person, that company, that when your Me Too moment happens, which if it hasn't to your industry, it will, you know do you as a leader want to be that that person that company that when your me too moment happens which if it hasn't to your industry it will you know it's coming do you want to be the one who has absolutely nothing to say when people say what have you done to prepare for this and to address it already and then it's really investing in the right areas so you know I mentioned this already but it's just let's not put our money into things that make us feel better but

we're not really sure if they work let's address the root cause of the issue and change that behavior because I think that with well for me like those images like the PR stunts are kind of only very short term and we always get this vibe where I see loads of stuff and then I think it kind of rubs certain groups of people up the wrong way. Because they're like, well, what about us? As opposed to like, just about them. And it's like, well, you know, these are just PR stunts. There are things that are working behind the scenes. And I think that it's more important

that we bring those out into the public eye rather than talking about like the pictures. With the Safe Spaces Now project, what do you feel like you and women have managed to you and women uk have managed to achieve with it so far so where we're delivering training to change behavior um what is quite different about the training is that there are a few ways of measuring effectiveness right and this is maybe going into slightly dry kind of how do we know it's working but it's really important um so you can ask participants do you feel more confident now do you think you'd be able to

intervene and we get amazing statistics on that that people say yes you know i really feel like i've learned my eyes have been open but also because of the ways that we deliver the training digitally and we're just working on the release of um a tool that allows people to use immersive reality to do this. You can actually track whether over time, in the long term, people are changing the ways that they intervene in these situations. So as bystanders,

as people who might be part of the problem and kind of learning how to avoid that risk. And then if it happens to you, do you have the tools at your fingertips to really get the support that you need not to protect yourself which is a different piece that you you know you just referred to i think it's really important that we don't put the onus on well what else can women do right because i think women are absolutely fine as they are um but yeah so we're actually able to see that behavior changing over time and i think that's really important because it allows

us to say is this working is it not you know let's measure that um and so I think that's quite an exciting you know tool that we need to use more of um going forward I think one thing that was um really interesting you said about earlier about going into music festivals and you know we're seeing well policing ramp up and security ramp up in those areas, but I don't necessarily think it makes people feel safer. When you were saying you were talking to men in tents about consent, like making it all fancy with glittery beards and tattoos and things, do you find that men are very receptive to these kinds of conversations? Do you think they're very open to being allies

and having these sometimes uncomfortable conversations? Yeah, and I think it really goes beyond allyship as well. You know, I know lots of people have started reading Bell Hooks recently and kind of really getting into, you know, her views on men aren't the problem. They're part of a problem that is a system and that actually, you know, it disadvantages them too. And I think it's really good that we're starting to recognize how patriarchy as a system harms men and boys whether that is you know pushing down emotions

and an inability to access emotional support at a younger age or stereotyping really affecting who you feel you have to be as a person whether that's a lack of ability to access shared parental leave you know there are so many ways in which patriarchy is harmful to men. Yeah. And I think it's really key that we understand that that is the same, you know, the same solution

for that is gender equality. It's not, what about this other issue? Although it's always interesting how if you look at the Google search trends data for International Men's Day, there's a small spike on International Men's Day, but the biggest spike

is on International Women's Day. but the biggest spike is on International Women's Day. And I think we've got to ask ourselves if we're only campaigning for our own rights on a day when other people's rights are being celebrated, are we really dedicating ourselves to that? But yeah, I mean, we have a campaign called HeForShe globally that really started by engaging male leaders on this. And now we're scaling much more widely to provide tools and support to men, you know, within communities across the world. And so far, there are 2 million men signed up to that, which is amazing. You know, those are people who said, I'll be an ally. But we really want to shift beyond that to not just supporting women and girls, but to really understanding that we're all attacking a system together. And that if we

can create change, you know, it's beneficial for us all, for our societies, for our economies. Yeah, I think it is really important that when I try to speak to groups of people, the types of people that would Google in like International Men's Day, on International Women's Day, that I do try to explain to them

that, you know, it's not us versus you. It's a group thing, a societal change that we're trying to shift and have a really long lasting effect on society especially for generations coming up um earlier you briefly mentioned your hashtag draw a line campaign where you've had some really remarkable people come forward and help support you and women uk um for those people that don't know, can you tell us what is the Draw a Line campaign? Yeah, so, you know, this was really coming out of a time when talking about, I suppose to kind of say that UN Women does three broad things, safety, choice and a voice for all

women and girls worldwide. So, you know, safety being freedom from gender based violence of all kinds, financial, emotional, as well as physical. Choice being what you can become and who you can be, you know, in school, what toys you play with, what jobs you can access, you know, can you run for parliament? And a voice being representation across every level of society, you know, is my voice being heard as a leader and not just as a victim or a beneficiary? The second two areas of that, so choice and a voice, were, you know, for some time now, for a few decades now, a topic that we could really work with leaders on and get, you know, buy-in and investments that we could roll out solutions to those. The safety piece was much more difficult. And it was really, you know, we've had the data for some time now that

at least one in three women in the world are survivors of, you know, either domestic or intimate partner or sexual violence. And it was just kind of bringing together, I suppose it was a bit of a watershed moment. So we launched this campaign, I think within two weeks of Me Too hitting the world stage. And of course, the work behind Me Too had been taking place for a long time before that, at a grassroots level and was already thriving. But I think it was a real moment in time where, you know, I remember a couple of years before that I stepped off a flight, having been living abroad and saw that Elle magazine, I think it was Elle, in the UK had something about we should all be feminists on the cover. It's like, wow, are we saying that we're all feminists now?

Like, this is a huge step forward. And this kind of followed that. So the next piece to saying we all want gender equality was saying, we, you know, so many women and so many people who have women close to them have been impacted by gender-based violence. And it's time to put a stop to that. So it was really getting, you know, people from every kind of walk of life in society to tell their story and come forward and say,

this has affected me and it's time for us to be bold about uniting to end that. So all the work that we've done around delivering direct solutions has kind of come out of that. I think it's one thing as well with like, when you look at movements like Me Too, when one person kind of steps up, it kind of sets off a domino effect and it really empowers other people to come forward.

Is that partly the reason why you launched the Draw a Line campaign? Yeah, we wanted people to know that they weren't alone. But we also, you know, we did a lot of work throughout the different years of that campaign. It falls during the 16 days of activism, which is from the International Day to End Violence Against Women, the 25th of November till the 10th of December, which is Human Rights Day. And, you know, each year we've done different. So one year we produced a huge tapestry where survivors had written their stories and what they wanted to see change and their hopes for a brighter future on different threads. And we had some artists and embroiderers create this enormous line that stretched between buildings and went on the floor around Covent Garden and kind of stretched across London,

but weaving together a real symbol of solidarity. So it was almost kind of people holding hands and weaving together those stories to, you know, perhaps not hide past wounds, but to make them into something that created positive change going forward. So it was saying we can dare to hope, you know, we can tell these stories, but we can also say, let's build a shared vision for a joint future. And then let's ask people to stand with us on that. That's really amazing. I think what was the, I wanted to know, what do you think the biggest thing that you've learned from the campaign?

I think one of the biggest things I've learned from across a few of the campaigns that we've done, actually, is that there is so much common ground. We think that, you know, we're coming at some of these issues from really different places. And it's important to embrace that real diversity and variety of stories. You know, we all have a different experience and that's really key. But sometimes, you know, we either think that men's rights within patriarchy, women's rights are two different causes and that we can't bridge that gap, or we get increasing division within the movement.

And some of that is on purpose. You know, we have groups funding a real fight about the rights of trans people at the moment that is not only causing huge violence to them as a group, but is also holding back the movement towards gender equality more broadly, because we're spending time, you know, arguing about whose rights are threatened most, rather than focusing on a shared vision and solidarity and moving forward. And so, you know, one of the things I've learned is that really, when we start to dig into some of these stories, and we say, why are you angry about this cause? And you know, what are you afraid of? And how do we address that, right, rather than kind of bringing down another group?

How do we really look at what is making you so so scared about this and and that's often um you know very reasonable things uh in the safe spaces now campaign when we were building up the stories and the ideas we found that older women were sometimes saying to us well we don't really understand what younger women are making such a fuss about because a lot of the time they're reporting maybe being stared at a lot or kind of followed or catcalled, which is a really dangerous way of minimizing sexual harassment, right? But, you know, they were saying, I would love to be treated in that way. And when we really dug into like, where does that resentment come from? We were being told things like, well, I've grown up in a world where my personal value is so closely

tied to the way that men treat me and sometimes in a really disrespectful way like catcalling, but I now see that as validation that I look good. So when that starts happening to me less and less as I age, my value decreases. You know, I feel like I'm being told that I'm not worthy as a person because I'm less physically attractive and that's what women are here to offer and actually now I'm much more afraid perhaps for perhaps my personal safety on the train at night because I can't run home anymore right and actually these are all parts of the same problem and there's so much common ground there so I'm very passionate about you know having learned that we're all working towards similar things and rather than getting caught up on well you know I don't want

someone else within the movement to win first because I need to prioritize my thing actually how do we see that we've got to be stronger together I think that's like a really actually amazing way of like wording it and I've always had that people like people say to me oh well I'd love to be catcalled what's what's your problem and like to actually hear someone address it and say well you know this is the reason why I don't I don't think I'd have actually personally thought about it and say, well, you know, this is the reason why, I don't think I'd have actually personally thought about it in that way. Actually, one of the things I really wanted to ask you, because you are somebody who has spent all of your life dedicated to this amazing cause, I often get a lot of DMs, not just from young women, just from young people in general,

because I'm such a physical active campaigner and I'm seen out with organizations and charities, how do young people also become that instead of just having to share a hashtag online? And I think for me, it's really hard to give that advice because it ended up being just natural progression of my career. What would you, like, what advice would you give to those people who also want to become physical activists? Yeah, that's such a good question. Thank you. Because I think, you know, so often it's really disempowering, particularly as a young woman, to think, I really want to take action on this and I'm just not being given the opportunity. Like, the best I can do is write my opinion on Instagram, know it'll disappear after 24 hours, you know, not know if I'm affecting anything. So we've built our community

with a real participation model that is about moving people from their only opportunity to support being passive sharing, like sharing a social media post, you know, sending on an email, attending an event and sitting in front of a panel,

but, you know, not having the opportunity to speak to how can we really move them up so that they're actually leading this movement. So my colleagues, Atonte and Tab, are building this incredible community that is just growing and growing across the UK. We started with, you know, we used to have a delegation to major UN events of about seven spots, and you had to be in person. So it was really difficult for us to open that up. And in 2021, I think perhaps slightly foolishly, the people who provided the tech support for that said, well, it's going to be virtual, so you can have an unlimited delegation.

That was a dangerous figure. So most organizations took like 20, 30 people. I was like, we're going to take a thousand in year one and we're just going to fill that delegation of people who have never been given the opportunity to have their doors heard in parliament, at the UN, like beyond. Because the UN is there to share the voices, document the voices of the people

and then tell governments that they have to create change in line with that, right? And so even as one small sub-entity of that, that's got to create change in line with that right and so even as one small sub-entity of that that's got to be what our mandate is is really kind of sharing people's voices and creating change so we have the commission on the status of women coming up which is two weeks where now that everyone knows about COP26 after it was in the UK it's kind of that but for gender equality So it's like 600 events sometimes over the course of two weeks where you can talk about every aspect of gender equality,

build visions for change, meet people from all over the world doing the same campaigning, and really importantly, have your voices heard with leadership. So we're currently taking applications to join our delegation for that. And we would just love people from all walks of life who care about gender equality to apply to take part to get involved um and hopefully to start a lifelong journey of being part of a really supportive equality movement no don't worry and also actually in the bio for the description for this episode i'll make sure that that link's included as well so if anybody is listening that actually wants to apply and thinks that this is something that they would love to get involved in, then it's available to them. Because yeah, I think it's

really hard to like physically find a way to get yourself in there, especially if you are from one of those like marginalized communities or you don't have someone in your life who's already done it before you. Yeah. And I should say, you know, we always have spots for people to apply who don't have their own access to internet, you know, to Wi-Fi, to laptops. So if you are managing to listen to this episode and you're not sure how you're going to join or, you know, just get in touch because we have ways of working that out.

And I think you're right. It's so many amazing campaigners and you've talked about this as well, really changing structures and changing policies. So many amazing campaigners are talking about the importance of going from individual level, like becoming a famous voice on this to actually like, how do we create change for everyone? And I think that's what this is all about. It's so much better to stand shoulder to shoulder with amazing people fighting for the same cause than to feel like

you're kind of, you know, getting on the cover of a magazine and then that's where it ends, right? So I think it brings a real sense of achievement no definitely and I think actually one thing I love about what I do now is that I do feel more achievement getting something like this out into the world than well some of the other things that other people have gone on to do yeah I think if you think about gender equality is gender inequality is something that has so many faces and I think if you think about the need to spread and share an understanding of the real subtle ways in which those stereotypes hold people back and affect people,

even what you did, raising some of those issues on a program like Love Island that reaches so many people, is an amazing conversation starter, right? So I think, you know, if all of those people who hear that and think, well, yeah, I've wanted to speak up about it since I saw, you know, Sharon talking about that, I would love them to get involved. Yeah, no, definitely. And it's not, am I not only just making the name Sharon cool,

which I did hear from like some people commenting on the show. But no, I think it actually did change how people, their perspective on certain aspects of television, which was really remarkable to hear um so I guess the I always ask my guests similar final questions mostly focusing on gender inequalities so my question to you would be what would you say to people that deny gender equity or equality being an issue so I think we need to do more to create spaces for grey areas to be talked about

because if we start to inhabit a world where we're increasingly independent and isolated and everyone's afraid of saying the wrong thing, they feel like they can't talk about it, that's got to be downhill. So I would say for the people who are just wondering,

like, I'm just saying, it feels a bit unfair that my workplace is focusing on women's rights when I feel really marginalized in these ways or really, you know, overlooked. I think we got to create spaces to air that in a really healthy way. And so I would love to say to those people, well, what's your vision for an equal world? You know, what are you afraid of? What do you want to achieve? Where do you feel held back? And then let's commit to working on that, right? Because inevitably, it will be part and parcel of the same issue. And so again, I think

it's finding that common ground, instead of focusing on division within some of these things, it's saying, well, let's do it together. You know, you should not feel afraid of the future, and how a group like you is going to be treated. So let's talk about how we can make sure that the future is more equal for everyone and that we don't leave anyone behind. No, that's really amazing. I think actually, when you say that a lot of the issues are part and parcel of the same problem, it's really important to be able to kind of understand that. I keep saying it again and again in this episode, it's not us versus them. It's a societal thing. And I think when we realize that we all have the same power and ability to be able to do some change,

even if it's on a smaller level, it does have a domino effect onto a massive bigger thing. And I'm so grateful for the work that UN Women UK do and UN Women as a global organisation. And I just want to say a massive thank you for coming on and talking to me

about all of these amazing campaigns you've been doing and being able to share the campaign work you can reach out to younger people as well. Oh, well, thank you so much for the work that you're doing. You know, the more people are aware of this, the more people through work that you and others are doing have the opportunity to have their voice heard, the better.

And thank you so much for having me. It's been lovely to talk to you. Thank you. The Florence County Museum presents Fighters for Freedom William H. Johnson Picturing Justice on loan from the Smithsonian American Art Museum 25 paintings by William H. Johnson highlighting icons like Harriet Tubman political leaders like Franklin Roosevelt athletes like Jack Johnson and Joe Louis, as well as cultural icons like Paul Robeson and Marian Anderson. On exhibit now through August 10th at Florence County

Museum.