FEELING SAFE AT NIGHT
“We shouldn’t have to walk through the town at night and fear for our safety, that’s at the centre of this, people should feel safe on a night out.”
That is the passionate belief of JoAnne Neary of the ‘Ask for Angela’ campaign which was officially launched at Sligo City Hall on Tuesday last.
The Social Justice student at IT Sligo has got involved with the campaign as she found herself repeatedly returning to themes of gender equality and gendered issues in her studies.
“Rape is a gendered issue, domestic violence is a gender issue. You’re looking at the statistics on the rape crisis website and it’s at least 75% of the victims are female and 75% of perpetrators are male. It is definitely a gendered issue,” she told The Sligo Champion. For JoAnne, she believes the patriarchal setup of society, paired with misogyny feeds into these gendered issues.
“I have a daughter and she works in a bar and the harassment she gets, it’s just unbelievable, and that’s just her sober serving people. The crap she’s meant to put up with, that’s also a real fear as a mother and a woman.”
Referencing daily realities for a lot of women in relation to keeping them safe, JoAnne says women have to be constantly vigilant when they go out.
“Women have to be vigilant when they’re getting into an Uber, they have to be vigilant all the time and I resent that. I should be able to raise my daughter to reach her full potential and to send her out into the world not as a fighter where she always has to be looking over her back, fearful that something will happen to her.”
Impassioned about the Ask for Angela initiative, JoAnne believes people will get behind it as people will recognise how important it is for society as a whole.
“For me it’s a very personal thing and I know that a lot of people will get behind it because people do feel passionate about it. I think little things matter, we can create a huge amount of change by taking baby steps, creating awareness around what types of behaviour are just not acceptable will go a long way.”
Though it’s just newly-launched, JoAnne said people are very much behind the campaign. “This is its first big outing in public, the general public haven’t got a chance to give us their feedback, but people are jumping at the chance to support this because it’s the right thing to do.” Working alongside Sligo BID and the Purple Flag, it is hoped the Ask Angela campaign will be rolled out across Sligo soon.
“We’ve got a commitment from the Vintners in support of this and the other thing is, everyone benefits from this initiative, it’s not just one cohort of society, it will be everyone that will benefit. The support we have is phenomenal.”