Public spaces need to be safe and inclusive for all. Now.

In 2023, make a real difference by helping make our public spaces safe.

On 10th March 2021, we released a report revealing the prevalence of sexual harassment across the UK – only 3% of 18-24 year-olds had told us they weren’t being harassed. This data was made up of your stories, of what you’ve experienced, and it was shared so many times that it reached over 1 Billion people online.

Since then, you have helped UN Women UK’s small charity team shape a national conversation, and your ideas have already started making change at music festivals, with taxi companies, on public transport, in organisations and in online spaces. It’s a time for change. 

Be part of it.

Imagine a world...

What would you do?

Based on 10 years of creating safer public spaces around the world, and together with you, we’ve designed 150 solutions for change. We took them to Parliament and asked the UK’s leaders to take action.

We worked to bring these ideas into a reality – and are now bringing together Government, local authorities, public services and transport providers.

Are you with us?

Over 70%
of women in the UK say they have experienced sexual harassment in public

Only 3%
of women aged 18-24 told us they had not experienced any of the behaviours we asked about

This is a global issue – almost 9 in 10
women in some cities around the world feel unsafe in public spaces

Every 10 Minutes
somewhere in the world an adolescent girl dies as a result of violence.

And the systems in place to reduce violence and harassment ARE NOT WORKING.

Only 4% of women told us they reported the incidents of harassment to an official organisation – with 45% of women saying they didn’t believe reporting would help change anything.

We have to act now.

Data from YouGov Survey of over 1,000 women, commissioned by UN Women UK in January 2021.

Read the full data in the report by the APPG for UN Women, or find out more about the APPG over on our APPG page here.

Safe spaces in music

Read our open letter, signed by artists, festivals and labels, calling for the return of live music to be made safer.

Express Yourself

We’ve brought artists together to influence culture through creativity.

Our virtual gallery, ‘A Safe Space’, is now live – made up of a huge number of specially comissioned artworks and community submissions in mixed media.

Reimagining a safe and free world for women, girls and marginalised groups.

Take a walk around the gallery here.

Open Letter

We are not willing to accept this reality any longer.

In 2021, we’ve held online workshops with 400 women and girls, and surveyed thousands more. We’re doing this because we want to be able to show the Government, public space owners and funding bodies that a different future is possible – and this is what it looks like.

In 2022 we delivered behavioural change workshops to music festival staff, taxi drivers, public transport workers, local government and corporate organisations.

In 2023 we have big plans to take these workshops to 1000’s more – will you help us?

Please add your name to our open letter and help us demand change.

Add your name.

    We will keep you up to date on how the you can get involved and how we are making change together. If that's okay, go ahead and sign your name.

    We are working to create safe spaces across the world.

     

    Under our global UN Women framework ‘Safe Cities and Safe Public Spaces’, we have already trained >2,500 bus drivers in Quito, rolled out a behavioural change programme for boys and girls in schools across Cairo, and helped change the law in Guatemala to make women’s lives saver.

    Now, we are making this change happen in the UK, with a 3-step campaign.

    1. SOURCE

    • Build a complete data picture of safety in women’s lives to surface the reality of where the real problems lie

    2. SOLVE

    • Work with owners of public spaces, bystanders and activists to design bespoke solutions that actually work

    3. SCALE

    • Take our learnings to the policy decision makers at the highest level to make the change last.

    Activists and participants taking part in UN Women UK events

    WHAT WE’VE ACHIEVED IN THE UK

    Since the project launch, we’ve brought together:

    50 representatives from the private sector, public services and community activists joined our ‘Movement Makers’ steering group

    >1000 women through a national online survey who told us about their experiences of sexual harassment in public spaces

    400 women and girls in design thinking workshops to create a blueprint for a safer reality in partnership with the National Lottery Emerging Futures Fund

    100 grassroots campaigners for an activist workshop at The Roundhouse, coaching them on how to express and grow their local solutions in partnership with I WEIGH and Change.org

    a new APPG made up of Parliamentary representatives, working on Safe Spaces Now as their focus

    80 women software engineers, designers and leaders in our Hackathon with Beautystack, designing and making ‘tech for good’ solutions to create safer spaces for women, girls and marginalised groups

    300 reports of experiences of safety on London’s streets, which we analysed for our real-time pilot study with Safe and The City to produce insights on what needs to change in urban areas

    50 Bristol University innovation hub students who spent a term working to create a digital safe spaces platform with us

    50 McKinsey colleagues in a one-day hackathon to develop our digital activists’ hub

    10 startups and social enterprise partners working towards safe spaces, at a share and learn evening hosted by Vodafone HQ.

    8 music festival activations with 350 volunteers.

    Takeover of Westminster Tube advertising space with art showing a Safe Spaces Now journey.

    Partnership with Addison Lee to deliver behavioural change workshops and equip their drivers to spot sexual harassment and safely support the target.

     

    Get involved

     

    If your organisation or collective would like to join the Safe Spaces Now Movement Makers, get in touch with us by email. 

    UN Women is the only global organisation working for gender equality in every sphere of society: from running grassroots programmes with the most vulnerable, to accelerating attitudinal change with influencers and organisations, and helping goverments design more gender-equal policy.

    Our mission is for every woman and girl to have an equal right to Safety, Choice, and A Voice.

    We want you to be part of the change – because our voices are louder when we raise them together.

    Film credits

    Production Company: Missing Link Films
    Writer/Director: Florence Winter Hill
    Producer: Ben Link

    Production Manager: Portia Abatan
    1st AD: Ben Keswick
    Director of Photography: Ronnie McQuillan
    Editor: Flaura Atkinson at Stitch Editing
    Colourist: Juliette Wileman at Absolute Post
    Sound: Ellis McGourlay at 750mph
    Composer: Cora Miron

    For full film credits please see our YouTube channel here.