Everyday Sexism Project is one year old

Just because sexism is ‘everyday’, doesn’t make it trivial.

Last week the Everyday Sexism Project celebrated its first anniversary.

The project was launched by Laura Bates, aiming, among other things, ‘to show the world that sexism does exist, it is faced by women everyday and it is a valid problem to discuss.’

The project catalogues everyday incidents of sexism that women have suffered, from being groped on the tube to being told to make sandwiches.

Entries are also collected and disseminated through the website and using twitter.

To date, over 25 000 have been collected.

It is not limited to the UK either;  the project spans 16 countries and eight languages, passing through Argentina, Austria and South Africa among others.

It turns out women in Canada are just as likely as women in the UK to have expletives thrown at them for turning down unwanted drinks and advances.

The project provides a place for women to share and report their experiences, an empowering and liberating process for those who have met with sexist incidents.

Although the testimonies can make for depressing reading, they also provide women with the – strengthening –  knowledge that they are not alone.

Not alone in their experiences, but also not alone in their assertion that these incidents are not acceptable and that things must change.

The project’s ability to create this solidarity and online network is a winning trait, and particularly crucial when facing something as seemingly intractable as everyday sexism.

Fighting sexism might feel like trying to empty the sea with a thimble, but when you find out that thousands of other women are also fighting back, it becomes a less daunting battle.

But the testimonies have also revealed the sheer scale – and insidious nature – of the situation.

And the scale here is not just one of frequency, but is one of gravity too.

Many of these incidents, which women are so often told to shrug off or not overact to, amount to no less than sexual assault.

Indeed, when Bates wrote ‘an article on the definition of sexual assault, [she] received hundreds of tweets and emails from women who hadn’t realized they had been sexually assaulted.’

Why is fighting everyday sexism so important? Aren’t there other, bigger fights? As the detractors would argue, are we kicking up a fuss over nothing?

Hardly. Fighting everyday sexism is paramount.

The ‘it’s no big deal’ idea is very false – these incidents are a big deal. They hurt and upset, and we shouldn’t be quiet about it. Telling women to be quiet is the oldest repartee in the ‘how to be keep women down’ handbook.

Furthermore, if ‘small’ misdemeanours remain unaddressed, larger ones will follow.

As Wilson and Kelling, the social scientists who in 1982 first proposed the broken windows theory, put it:  ‘one unrepaired broken window is a symbol that no one cares, and so breaking more windows costs nothing.’

The theory became famous when it informed New York City’s crime fighting policy in the 1990s, with Mayor Giuliani taking a zero-tolerance policy to crime, including petty crime such as graffiti or fare dodging on the tube, as a means to fighting the violent crime that characterised the city.

This isn’t to say that catcalling is necessarily a gateway activity to sexual assault. But every time we allow catcalling to go unaddressed, every time we allow rape jokes to flourish, we contribute to the normalisation of violence and assault against women.

This creates a culture – and society – where rapists aren’t sent to prison and where women are blamed for being attacked.

All these supposedly ‘trivial’ incidents of sexism underpin and buttress a world where women are not, and cannot, be equal.

Initiatives such as the Everyday Sexism Project help women bring down this structure, so that catcalling and condescension can become a thing of the past.