Gender and Education

ISSN: 0954-0253 (Print) 1360-0516 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cgee20

Reviving feminism through social media: from the

classroom to online and offline public spaces

Pamela Flores, Nancy Regina Gómez, Alana Farrah Roa & Risa Whitson

To cite this article: Pamela Flores, Nancy Regina Gómez, Alana Farrah Roa & Risa Whitson
(2018): Reviving feminism through social media: from the classroom to online and offline public
spaces, Gender and Education, DOI: 10.1080/09540253.2018.1513454

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/09540253.2018.1513454

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GENDER AND EDUCATION
https://doi.org/10.1080/09540253.2018.1513454

Reviving feminism through social media: from the classroom

to online and offline public spaces
a
Pamela Flores , Nancy Regina Gómeza, Alana Farrah Roaa and Risa Whitsonb
a
Social Communication Department, Universidad del Norte, Barranquilla, Colombia; bGeography, and
Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Departments, Ohio University, Athens, USA

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

Feminist research has urged the inquiry for strategies to engage Received 18 September 2017
young women in feminist debates and give them the tools to Accepted 27 July 2018
create effective techniques to fight against discriminatory
KEYWORDS
practices in their own lives. In response to this call, we turn our Street harassment; social
attention to social media as one of the appropriate tools for media; thematic analysis;
sharing their stories, fighting against street harassment, and gender violence
promoting the discussion on feminist ideals. Using a thematic
analysis, we examine how a group of young female university
students communicated, both in public spaces and on Facebook,
new social representations after being exposed to feminist
content, and after creating communication strategies to fight
street harassment. Our thematic analysis revealed it is possible to
engage young people with feminist principles when we reinforce
the theoretical content with personal experiences, and when we
use social media as a tool to express feelings and ideas.

Introduction
One of the central debates of contemporary feminism is the need to expose young women
to feminist content and information. Fernandez and Wilding (2003) argue that the
exposure of young women to the feminist debate gives them important tools to work
against the discrimination they find in their own lives. The aim is to recognise sexism in
everyday experiences and to inspire an activism able to question the current patriarchal
system, which tends to avoid the diversity of voices and subjectivities (Ryan 2006;
Eudey 2012; Piepmeier, Cantrell, and Maggio 2014).
The search for strategies to engage young generations in feminist debates has shown
that social media is especially appropriate for communicating new feelings and promoting
the discussion on feminist ideals (Baker and Ryalls 2014; Guillard 2016). Wilding (1998) has
identified the Internet as one of the strategies that can make feminism more accessible to
a new audience formed by a diversity of women immersed in technology. The objective is
to use the Internet as an entrance door, so that new generations of women make a link
between their experiences of gender discrimination and feminist theories, providing
them a space where they question the discriminatory practices that have been normalised

CONTACT Pamela Flores paflores@uninorte.edu.co

© 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
2 P. FLORES ET AL.

in their own contexts (Guillard 2012; Wang et al. 2012; Baker and Ryalls 2014; Dougherty
and Andercheck 2014).
Considering these findings, we created an academic experience to promote in our
female students an interest in the debate on sexist discriminatory practices. Our aim
was to influence the lives of students beyond the classroom and to show the value of
fighting discriminatory practices in their immediate surroundings (Scanlon 1993;
McCabe 2013). To achieve this, we tackled a specific problem invisible in the public
agenda of our city: street sexual harassment.
In this article we examine, through a thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke 2006), how a
group of young female university students communicated, both in public spaces and on
Facebook, new social representations after being exposed to feminist content, specifically
street harassment; and how they developed new ways to deal with the situation.
We are aware that access to and use of the Internet is mediated by power relations
(Kendall 1996; O’Brien 1996; Braidotti 2002; Fernandez and Wilding 2003; Daniels 2009).
Neither have we ignored criticisms of overestimating the use of social networks to
achieve social change (Lim 2012). McLean, Maalsen and Grech even talk about the
more-than-real ‘to highlight the excesses of digital spaces’ (2016, 157); and they invite
us to rethink the binary real life/online relations, and to temper ‘naïve optimism with rea-
listic appreciation of the negative and positive potentialities of spaces such as social
media … ’ (2017, 47). In other words, if new social media constitute new resources of
‘citizen-generated information’ (Elwood 2008) which enable new forms of activism and
inclusive practices in civic life, we should remember that these dynamics are not fully
understood, and conclusions have to be carefully evaluated.
Nevertheless, our purpose is to show how the use of offline and online spaces to discuss
feminist content and share feelings about inequality might help to build new forms of
communication, and remake the space.

Social networks and online activism

The advent of social networks is a central event that invites us to examine the individual
and collective experiences of women in relation to contemporary feminism. These experi-
ences range from the way women see themselves and their role in society to actions
seeking collective movements against gender-based violence, using hashtags on web plat-
forms. In all these cases, social networks make visible the multiplicity of stories of women
who question the dynamics of male power over the feminine, and claim the virtual space
as an alternative scenario to narrate from their own perspectives.
The impact of social networks as a tool that generates civic actions to combat gender
inequality has been widely documented (Plant 1997; Danitz and Strobel 1999; Sutton and
Pollock 2000; Sassen 2002; Carter Olson 2016). Particularly, the potential of sharing individ-
ual experiences of inequality and linking them with stories of other individuals in other
countries living similar situations has been the subject of extensive research (Dimond
et al. 2013; Keller, Mendes, and Rinngrose 2016; Gómez and Aden 2017).
The story of an individual who uses such networks to denounce social situations that
threaten gender equity becomes a trending topic that seeks to disrupt the ‘naturalness’
of the inequity of gender in patriarchal societies. The speed and immediacy with which
digital platforms report these contents make these stories ‘viral’ and may, in some
 GENDER AND EDUCATION 3

cases, result in collective actions in public spaces – offline spaces. Today, social networks
are innovative tools of feminist activism that amplify/extend women’s voices to
promote both local and global actions.
In the case of street harassment, the exchange of stories has enabled the definition of
the problem from the perspective of women. Dimond et al. (2013) have documented how
street harassment stories published by women on an organisation’s website like Hollaback!
have facilitated the identification of common definitions of the problem. Moreover, Leszc-
zynski and Elwood (2015) highlight the fact that the HarassMap ‘offers a continuously evol-
ving snapshot of gendered urban life’ (p. 15). The emergence of these narratives on a web
platform has led to questioning the masculine version of public space, and has validated
‘other’ forms of being in the world.
Even though the impact of social media is still being evaluated, the fact that social
media is widely used to express discontent and create communities about situations
that were invisible, shows that social media is contributing to new forms of political
manifestations.

Challenging street harassment in online and offline spaces

In October 2016, after the abduction, brutal rape and murder of 16-year-old Lucia Perez in
Mar del Plata, Argentina, thousands of women took to the street in Buenos Aires and other
cities across Latin America to protest violence against women. This march, organised
around the hashtag #NiUnaMenos (Not One Less), is an example of the intersection of
online and offline spaces in order to promote feminist activism. The various types of vio-
lence against women in public spaces, which movements such as Not one less seek to
address, provide a clear example of the ways in which access to the city, representation
in public spaces, and urban social belonging continue to be gendered.
However, women are increasingly challenging norms that constrain their presence,
mobility, and behaviour in public spaces by working to appropriate these spaces at
three scales: at the individual scale through everyday behaviour, at the community
scale through grassroots organisations, and at the international scale through transna-
tional activism. At individual scale, women reclaim public space through what Koskela
(1997) terms ‘boldness’ during their everyday activities. While fear and vigilance may be
constantly present for women in public spaces, they continue to be present in, and use
these spaces, thus turning their everyday activity into an act of resistance. The following
comments from Koskela’s interview respondents about their behaviour in public spaces
in the context of Helsinki, Finland illustrate this everyday boldness:
If I think about how I walk there, I go quite determinedly, I don’t stay standing around and
wondering or walk around looking lost, I go where I’m going (Susanna, 20 years old, as
cited in Koskela 1997, 309)

For me, it’s also a matter of not wanting to be afraid. Even if I sometimes feel uncertain, I try to
sweep the fear out of my mind, because restrictions like where you should walk and where
you should not limit your life so much. (Maria, 26 years old, as cited in Koskela 1997, 306)

Everyday action on an individual scale is evident as well in other geographic contexts. Gole
(2016), for example, interviewed women in Mumbai, India, who, while experiencing harass-
ment and violence in public spaces continued to resist their exclusion from these spaces.
4 P. FLORES ET AL.

As one respondent commented, ‘The only way to fight it is by one being sensitive but you
can’t stop doing things.’ (Gole 2016, 30). The result of this type of behaviour is that
women’s ‘everyday spatial practices can be seen as practices of resistance. By daring to
go out – by their very presence in urban sphere – women produce space that is more avail-
able for other women’ (Koskela 1997, 316).
In addition to everyday actions, women also challenge violence against them through
collective, grassroots organisation. In particular, a number of groups are working to pub-
licise ways in which women’s actions can challenge the masculinity of public spaces. One
example of this is HARASSmap, a grassroots organisation that developed in response to
the victimisation of women in the Tahrir Square protests in Cairo, Egypt during and follow-
ing the Arab Spring uprisings in 2012 and 2013 (Peuchaud 2014; Skalli 2014). HARASSmap
focuses on supporting women’s right to the city and their presence in public spaces by in-
person individual and group interventions designed to end gender violence in public
areas. In particular, the organisation blends online and physical activism by using crowd-
sourcing reports about incidences of harassment and violence against women in public
spaces to make an online, interactive map that demonstrates the extent of the problem
in Cairo. The group also works through community mobilisation to speak with neighbours
about street harassment, and runs the ‘Safe Places’ programme for businesses, schools,
and universities committed to making public spaces safer for women (see harassmap.org).
Besides working directly, women are also organising at the grassroots by engaging in
other traditionally male activities in public spaces. One example of this is the organisation
‘Why Loiter,’ based in Mumbai, India. Women involved in this local, grassroots movement,
largely organised on social media (#whyloiter), intentionally ‘loiter’ in order to be in public
spaces to push against the idea that women need a reason for being in the streets. In these
cases not only is there a change in behaviour among individual women, but social media is
also used to push toward a changed meaning of public spaces (such as bars and streets at
night) in order to de-naturalise their masculinisation (Phadke, Khan, and Ranade 2011).
Grassroots organising is also occurring around issues of mobility, with examples including
the #Right2Drive movement in Saudi Arabia, which finally succeeded in 2018; the #Girl-
sOnBikes movement in Karachi and Lahore, Pakistan; and the #IranianWomenLoveCycling
movement, which originated in Ishfahan, Iran. These movements challenge both the law
(in the cases of Iran and Saudi Arabia) and strong local customs regarding women’s mobi-
lity in public spaces. As one participant in the Girls on Bikes movement commented, ‘Every
time something bad happens, the immediate reaction is to stay indoors, stay safe. This is a
way to say that we (women) can and should be on the streets … ’ (Mir and Ghani 2016).
Another organiser echoed this idea by stating, ‘Fear is the biggest thing that stops us from
going out and doing anything like cycling or walking and I think when we actually start to
do these things is when we start to overcome that fear,’ (Mir and Ghani 2016). These cases
also highlight the importance of social media as a platform for organising protests. As an
example, the SlutWalk movement began in Toronto, Canada, spread throughout the
United States, and continued to develop in Australia, Great Britain, Germany, the Nether-
lands, India, and South Africa, among other countries. The organisers of the Toronto Slut-
walk used Facebook to articulate the most predominant concerns of young feminists,
which are those expressed through online media (Reger 2014).
Finally, transnational organisations are also working to address the issue of violence
against women in public spaces. UN Women has been particularly active in this regard
 GENDER AND EDUCATION 5

through their Safe Cities Global Initiative, which builds on and further develops the ‘Safe
Cities Free of Violence against Women and Girls’ initiative. This programme seeks to bring
local, regional, and national governments, as well as civil society groups together to work
with international organisations (including UN Women, UN-Habitat, UNICEF, and other
global agencies) to create cities that are both sustainable and safe for women (UN
Women 2014). The result is innovative collaboration across a variety of actors to
address the issue of women’s safety in public spaces in a comprehensive manner.
It is both, in organised responses to women’s fear, as well as in their everyday actions,
that women are remaking their cities and themselves. In this purpose, social media has
proved to be an important tool for communicating between diverse communities with
similar problems, creating awareness of the right to the city from a gender perspective
and, borrowing Harvey’s words, building a huge ‘collective power to reshape the processes
of urbanisation’ (2008, 23).

‘Mi Huella Azul’: leaving blue footprints in public spaces

The Project ‘Mi Huella Azul’ (‘My Blue Footprint’) developed in 2016 in the city and metro-
politan area of Barranquilla, Colombia, the main city on the Colombian Caribbean coast
(2,000,000 inhabitants). The project was financed by Opens Society Foundations with
the purpose of making an impact in university curriculums to promote democracy. As
part of a university course, activities were mandatory, but since the purpose was to
promote awareness and responses about the problem, freedom was given to create strat-
egies and to participate in different types of activities. As in any course on human rights
and development of democratic ideas, changes were encouraged through open discus-
sions and field activities. Our aim was to use pedagogical strategies that would raise
enthusiasm and commitment beyond the fact that the activities were part of a university
course.
In Latin America and, particularly, on the Caribbean region, ‘machismo,’ the idea that
men are stronger and better than women, has a powerful cultural tradition. At the
same time, women are changing and dealing with two conflicting realities: they want to
make decisions for their lives, but they also fear the consequences. For many women,
spaces are insecure. They fear being at home because their fathers or their husbands
may harm them. They fear crossing the streets because they may suffer harassment. In
the case of domestic violence, public institutions and civil society have gained an aware-
ness of the problem, and public institutions are taking actions. However, violence in public
spaces remains invisible and normalised.
‘Mi Huella Azul’ is premised on Article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
‘Everyone has the right to live, to be free, and to feel safe.’ It also focuses on the UN Sus-
tainable Development Goal 5, which addresses women’s empowerment, and Sustainable
Development Goal 11, on creating inclusive and safe cities (2014). Specifically, the project
educated women to demand their right to the city, addressing street harassment and
sexual abuse in public spaces, considering both physical and psychological violence. As
a main goal, the purpose was to give women communicative tools to express their feel-
ings, share their stories, and fight against street harassment. In this sense, the use of
social media proved to be, as we will explain throughout the article, a powerful resource
that encouraged them to express their feelings and ideas.
6 P. FLORES ET AL.

Method
Participants
The whole process took place during two semesters in the framework of a 48-hour under-
graduate course called Communication and Culture at Universidad del Norte (Barranquilla,
Colombia). During each semester, 60 girls, between 20 and 22 years old, participated in the
course to develop the project. Our students belong to all social classes and practice
different religions, but the university does not establish any distinctions in relation to
these variables. Concerning ethnicity, Colombia is mainly a mestizo country, where
most people share a mixed ethnic identity. According to official statistics, we have Afro-
Colombians (10%) and indigenous (3.4%) population (www.dane.gov.co), but in the Uni-
versity, we do not have quotas. Since 2010, the University has a programme for the
inclusion of sexual minorities and disabled population. Any of these categories were
part of the study.

Enhancing gender identity and gathering data.

We developed activities to discuss street harassment and promote other social represen-
tations on the problem. On the webpage mihuellaazul.com.co there are evidences of the
activities described in this article.
First step: A syllabus to explore feminist ideas. To begin with the project we developed a
syllabus to allow students to explore their skills, values, and interests in relation to
women’s right to the city, and specifically, their attitudes and beliefs toward street harass-
ment. This led female students to see themselves as actors in the urban space who know
how to defend their rights, and respect the rights of others. In the particular case of street
harassment, the course proposed to increase self-awareness in relation to cultural patterns
of behaviour and emotions that make us normalise certain situations.
Our purpose was not to present a huge set of concepts or theoretical analysis. The
approach was practical, leading students to express themselves and explore their abilities
to face the situation. Nevertheless, we discussed basic readings in relation to the right to
the city. Excerpts from authors with different backgrounds and perspectives (Lefebvre,
Lynch, Harvey, etc.) were commented; and specially a variety of articles and documents
specifically confronting the issue from a gender perspective. In this sense, the studies pub-
lished by ‘Red Mujer y Hábitat de América Latina’ such as ‘Agenda de las Mujeres por la
Ciudad’ and ‘Construyendo ciudades seguras’ (see http://www.redmujer.org.ar/
publicaciones.html) were very helpful. We also discussed different initiatives throughout
the world to stop street harassment. As one of the strategies, we created an alert so we
were constantly receiving news of what was happening with street harassment in Latin
America. As Gacoin states, ‘A sense of personal (gendered) identity is key for action and
this action … serves as the moral compass of identity,’ (2017, 78). Thus, the course gave
the opportunity to the students to express their feelings and reflect upon the ways in
which they were transforming their ideas throughout the process.
Second step: experiences in situ. After providing opportunities to discuss the subject
and express how these reflections were changing their ideas about the problem, we pro-
posed to develop experiences in situ. The main purpose was to communicate that street
harassment is a social problem not a private issue. Our communication strategies began
 GENDER AND EDUCATION 7

with the creation of a symbol, the blue footprint, meaning that our footprints will stay in
public spaces after we go home. Then we launched the Facebook page, followed by public
interventions designed by the students. These interventions included entertaining activi-
ties in parks and squares to attract people’s participation.
Third step: The production of a documentary. This activity served to recreate the
process and review the experience with the participants or showing it to different commu-
nities. This allowed to enhance the discussion, and gave the students a sense of pride for
what they were doing.
Fourth step: The forums. We organised two Forums on ‘Security for Women in Public
Spaces’. We invited experts to discuss issues as online feminism and its impact on street
harassment; the right to the city from a gender perspective; and emotional aspects
related to the use of public spaces. We recorded the interventions of the students in
the forums.
Fifth step: Writing essays. After the second forum, students were asked to write essays
discussing what they had learned throughout the process and how they had recreated
their views with the experiences they had lived.
The interest that the students had in the project and all the work they did seemed to
indicate that the process had had impact on them. However, we needed to create a
method in order to assess the process and establish valid conclusions. Throughout the
process, we had gathered an enormous amount of data that had to be organised and ana-
lysed. We made transcriptions of the interventions on the Facebook webpage, in the docu-
mentary and in the discussions after the forums. We also organised the 60 essays written
after the second forum and the videos of the interventions in public spaces. Following the
phases of thematic analysis, our purpose was to find, from the girls’ point of view, based on
the communication strategies they had built, which were the main themes that had
evolved around the subject, and which were their views after the process.

Describing and evaluating the data

During the first stage of the project, it was difficult to obtain comments in the classroom.
As students later confessed, it was embarrassing and painful to talk about harassment.
Additionally, they had never thought about this situation as a public issue that could be
faced collectively. However, Facebook soon became an important tool to express their
concerns about harassment and to share their feelings with others.
Our thematic analysis had the purpose of describing how female students who
attended the course got involved in the process, and how they communicated their
ideas and feelings both in online and in offline spaces. ‘Thematic analysis is a method
for identifying, analysing, and reporting patterns (themes) within data,’ (Braun and
Clarke 2006, 79). Themes are recognisable because they capture ‘something important
about the data in relation to the research question’ (82), in this case, in relation to the
ideas discovered by the young women after being exposed to feminist content and learn-
ing to use social media to promote social change. Since we did not have any ‘preexisting
coding frame’, our analysis was inductive. In other words, we focused on what had become
critical themes for the students themselves, not on themes previously established by the
existing research on the subject. On the other hand, we chose a latent level analysis
since we wanted to go ‘beyond the semantic content of the data, and … identify or
8 P. FLORES ET AL.

examine the underlying ideas, assumptions, and conceptualisations … ’ (84). Finally, we

chose a constructionist framework, since we were not interested ‘on motivation or individ-
ual psychologies, but instead (on theorising) the sociocultural contexts, and structural con-
ditions, that enable the individual accounts that are provided’ (85).
Following these guidelines (p. 87), we read or watched all the material several times:
links, reflections, videos of the interventions in public spaces, photographs, the testimo-
nies given for the documentary, and some of the testimonies expressed in the classroom
(Phase 1). We also included 20 of the 60 essays the students wrote after the second forum.
We selected the essays at random. We read all the data carefully and began a discussion on
initial codes (Phase 2). After establishing the codes, we were ready to discuss our themes
(Phase 3). We built thematic maps in order to find what the students had considered
important, and we created ‘mental boxes’ to organise the themes. Reviewing themes
(Phase 4) is a very important step. During this stage, we established that our themes
appeared ‘to form a coherent pattern’; and, at the same time, they distinguished clearly
one from another. This done, we were ready to define and name our themes (Phase 5),
and writing the report (Phase 6).
The various activities developed during the project provided a huge amount of data.
Due to the extent of the data and the nature of the different sources, instead of retrieving
the information gathered, we decided to create a web site with the history of the project
through photographs and videos of the interventions, the documentary, and some testi-
monies so that any person interested could have access to the process (https:/www.
mihuellaazul.com.co). Other data is difficult to storage; for example, Facebook posts are
more likely to have an ephemeral nature and difficult to retrieve because social media
is constantly ‘changing, being updated or deleted’ (Walker 2017, 9). On the other hand,
we gave back the essays to the students.

Communicating awareness: from social media to the streets

It has happened to me, and this is how I feel
During the first sessions of the course, we gave some theoretical background on the right
to the city. After the discussion, we introduced the concept of street harassment as an
example of the violation of this right, and we asked female students to express their feel-
ings and share their stories about violence in public spaces. The response during the sub-
sequent sessions was silence. Our first interpretation (which later proved to be wrong) was
that they were not interested in the subject. Then we decided to launch the Facebook
page and encourage students to participate in that venue.
To motivate the discussion, we proposed to create and dramatise stories about street
harassment. The students chose to create a video showing harassment on public transpor-
tation. We published the video on Facebook on March 23 with the title ‘Has this happened
to you?’ We discussed the story in the classroom and voices began to emerge. On March
26, we posted an excerpt of an interview with anthropologist Susana Ojeda. This interview
was so successful that we had more than 250 video views in just a week. We discussed the
interview in the classroom. We also read some of the testimonies posted on the webpage
(See: www.mihuellaazul.com.co) and used them to foster discussion. The fact that some of
the female students were expressing what had happened to them, motivated others, and
 GENDER AND EDUCATION 9

feelings began to arise. ‘I didn’t know that most girls felt the same,’ explained one of the
students in the classroom. ‘I thought I was giving [street harassment] more importance
than it had, but now I know I was not because this is violence.’ After the first testimonies,
the website and the classroom discussions became more active. ‘It was embarrassing
before, but now I feel men should be embarrassed, not us,’ said another student.
The next step was to create performances either on campus or in public spaces, and
publishing them on the project’s Facebook page. One of the students commented next
to a photograph of her activity:
It was so common to listen how men talked to women walking in the streets, highlighting
some attribute of their bodies or making any indecent proposal, that, in an absurd way, I con-
sidered it a joke. However, today I can safely say that it is not. It is not a joke, and it is not a
compliment. Street sexual harassment is a social problem, and it is so unreal and palpable
that women and men alike have accepted this. It involves unfairness, abuse of power, psycho-
logical abuse … In this very moment, millions of women are moving to the other sidewalk to
avoid a comment. (Facebook page Mi Huella Azul 12/04/2016).

These words reveal an acquired knowledge that allows her to stop normalising a situation
that she finds uncomfortable. She characterises street harassment as gender violence and
she recognises that her experience is not only hers, but the experience of ‘millions of
women.’ In the section of the Facebook page called visitors posts, one of the visitors
stated that normally she ignores catcalling, but that she experienced another kind of har-
assment which left her paralysed:
When an unknown man talks to you, crosses your path, prevents you from moving, and tells
you a lot of things that you don’t know how to react to; and the fear of being hurt leaves you
paralysed, unable to scream, even if you are in a place full of people who could help you, still,
this is truly a terrible feeling. (Facebook page Mi Huella Azul, 11-04-2016)

She explained that her intention in sharing her case was to warn about this situation, so that
we tackle the root of the problem. This publication received the empathy of another student,
who thanked her for sharing her experience and highlights the relevance of using the
hashtag #NoMás and ‘raising our voices’ (Facebook page Mi Huella Azul, 11/05/2016).
As we said, students also wrote essays to narrate their experiences of street harassment.
In the essay Blame it on Beauty, a student narrated an episode that occurred when record-
ing the reactions of potential harassers while two young girls were crossing a street under
construction. She said that they experienced feelings of anger and repugnance: ‘I wanted
to finish quickly, even I felt the aggression when I saw what they were doing to my friends,’
(Essay Blame it on Beauty, 27/10/2016).
Once the students were capable of sharing their experiences and feelings, we proposed
an exercise in the classroom to identify the emotions generated by street harassment.
Fear, anger, and frustration were the most common responses. These results served to
strengthen the feeling of a common sentiment around a common problem. To address
these results outside the space of the classroom, the students took their cameras and
looked for other young women who wanted to share their stories. Some of these
videos are part of the documentary, and clearly show that ‘giving a name to the
problem’, as one student stated, helped them to recognise it and to build a common
feeling. This stage of the process was crucial since it made visible underlying ideas and
assumptions that characterise the phenomenon, and led to the second theme.
10 P. FLORES ET AL.

I have the right to feel safe and to decide about my body

In Latin America, different studies show that women and men have different perceptions
about urban violence and that fear is much more common in women than in men (Falú
2014, 20). This fear, adds Falú, ‘ … limits their right to enjoy public spaces, and it is an
obstacle to participation,’ (20).
The recognition of fear and the idea that they had rights led the young women to
express in several ways: ‘I have the right to feel safe.’ One student wrote:
Everyone in our society should feel safe when going outdoors or expressing his or herself in a
public space. This is why we think that campaigns like Mi Huella Azul are necessary to bring
together stories of men and women, foster a change in our culture, denaturalised something
that isn’t right, and continue working to build a better world. (May 11, 2016)

Theoretically, they were inspired by Lynch’s basic public rights and by the ‘Charter on
Women’s Rights to the City’ (Barcelona 2004). In the case of Lynch’s rights, we worked
in class on a reinterpretation of these rights from a gender perspective. In the case of
the Charter, we specifically analysed the aspects related to violence in public spaces. In
practice, the self-awareness that female students felt more insecure when wearing
certain types of clothing led to associate safety and the way they were dressed. Therefore,
the ideas of safety and wearing what they wanted became a theme. Messages like: ‘My
cleavage is not an invitation to harass me,’ ‘I dress for myself, not for you,’ ‘To use
public space does not mean that my body is a public place,’ ‘I decide what to do with
my body,’ ‘It wasn’t the skirt, it wasn’t the place, it wasn’t the time’, confront the precon-
ceptions that justify sexual harassment based on how women are dressed, where they are,
or how their bodies occupy public spaces. With sentences like ‘We want to live. Nothing
justifies sexual assault!’ they expressed their new attitude: blame is on the offender, not
on the victim. Women have to leave fear behind and show that they have the right to
use public spaces on their own terms.
Even though they know that safety is an ignored right, they decided to continue using
public spaces. One student commented, ‘I used to go out with someone, my sister or a
friend. Now, I go out alone because I have to show that I’m not afraid, or even if I am, I
have to overcome my fear.’ This connects to what Koskela (1997) terms ‘boldness’ and indi-
cates that participants took steps offline to challenge norms surrounding gender and
public space.
On October 19, students published an illustration by the artist Debi Hasky, which shows
a woman with arms crossed and a caption that states, ‘I don’t want your compliment, I
want your respect.’ A man commented: ‘You have to earn it.’ This comment generated
a debate on the role of clothing in street harassment. Several students argued that any
person deserves respect just for being a human being; and that humiliation and harass-
ment are not acceptable for any reason. The man suggested that certain clothes might
cause harassment since they do not show decency. It is important to state that three
male participants also supported the idea that all humans deserve respect and added
that it would be important to educate young men so that they would respect women
no matter what they are wearing.
The issue of what to wear is always present in the discussions about harassment. The
expression tienes que darte tu lugar (literally ‘you have to give yourself your place’)
means that women have to create the conditions to gain respect. Since ‘the place does
 GENDER AND EDUCATION 11

not exist, it has to be created,’ as one student stated. In the documentary, one student
expressed:
If I dress in a certain way, if I use makeup, it is because I feel good doing it. It is for me, because I
want to look in a certain way. It is not to satisfy someone, it is not to be watched by other
people, but I think that many people believe that we dress for others. When I see a group
of men in a corner, I believe they are thinking that she wears certain clothing or fixes her
hair in a certain way because she likes to be told things in the street.

Students have also stated that being forced to modify their clothing or to change the
street they take to get somewhere violates their right to feel free and safe in the
streets. They are aware that this disrespect for the woman’s body is a matter of gender,
but they stressed that it affects them in their rights as human beings and as citizens. As
one student wrote:
Human rights do not depend on the context, or the day, age, time, or clothing. Violating
human rights should not be excused. Street harassment is a problem; it is a reality that
must be taken into account instead of ignoring it as a problem that does not concern to
us. (Essay 27/10/2016)

On May 11, students asked followers of the page to write things they would tell street
harassers if they could. This activity was similar to one of the interventions in a public
space, but this time they expected to have more comments since social media promotes
wider participation, as Wilding discovered 20 years ago. People made statements such as
‘That makes you no better person, I deserve respect,’ ‘Treat others as you want to be
treated,’ ‘You can express yourself, but you should respect me.’ Although there were sen-
tences like ‘Would you like these comments if they were directed to your daughter?’ the
general discourse was based on the idea of respecting rights, not on the fact that the
victim could be your mother or your daughter. It is also important to note that the
language used was friendly, avoiding insults or recriminations.

Active women: I can do something about it

The responsibility for the Facebook page and the interventions in public spaces gave the
young women the idea that they had the capacity to make changes. As a result, they
became aware that they not only wanted to change their personal situation, but to use
this new knowledge to make people, both men and women, think different about
street harassment. In the documentary, a student said: ‘I didn’t know that I could
change so many thoughts and so many preconceptions about this social problem.’ This
expresses not only a personal discovery, but also an awareness of her power as a commu-
nicator who learns how to use communication tools to bring about social changes.
After the interventions in public spaces, some students shared personal messages in
the Facebook page Mi Huella Azul. On March 30, a student published a message:
‘Beyond what you see, I am a person!,’ and she drew a pair of eyes and a hand. On May
5, a visitor added: ‘I walk quietly in public spaces. I wander without fear. For a harass-
ment-free city I won’t be silent,’ demonstrating that through the page other women
were motivated to join the campaign.
The testimonies for the documentary also show how female students evolved from a
reactive to a proactive position. While they began by recognising the problem and
12 P. FLORES ET AL.

expressing their feelings about it, their response shifted to the creation of a ‘chain of soli-
darity’ sharing their stories and finally, to motivating people to change their views. They
said that they had always been harassed, but they had never realised that this was not
a normal situation, because the silence around the subject prevented them from thinking
about it as a problem:
I remember that one of the questions of the survey we did on street harassment asked if
women exaggerated when they said that catcalling was sexual harassment. I was very sur-
prised because from our perspective as women, it is a lack of respect, but there were many
men and even women, who said that women should feel flattered because they were
being told something nice (Testimony, Documentary Mi Huella Azul, 2016).

We also observe this attitude in the videos posted to the Facebook page after the
interventions:
We are here, in the streets of our historical downtown, to tell passers-by our message. Citizens
became aware of the problem, they signed our blue wall, and made a commitment with all
women in our city: they agreed to respect every woman walking in the streets, and to transmit
this message to their peers, (Facebook page Mi Huella Asul, 13/04/2016)

Summarising the process, one student expressed:

I loved being part of this project because through it we told every woman that we don’t have
to accept this reality, that we can change it, and also that we can teach men that this is not a
compliment, it is not a compliment to be treated like a piece of meat. (Testimony, Documen-
tary Mi Huella Azul, 2016)

A serious issue
In one of the dramatised videos, a blow on the body of a woman follows every word of
harassment. Then, it presents statistics of violence against women, including sexual
aggression. This publication received the comment: ‘Beautifully powerful, and it puts
light on such a serious issue. I love it,’ (Facebook page Mi Huella Azul, 21/01/2017). The
student who shared the video answered with this comment:
Thank you so much! This is a serious issue, but some people don’t understand how big the
problem is. They say that this is “normal” and that this is part of “our culture” but they’re
very wrong. This is so wrong. (Facebook page Mi Huella Azul, 21/01/2017)

In the comments to Facebook posts, expressions such as ‘we must raise awareness,’ ‘you
need to take action soon’ or ‘street harassment is not a game’ became common. A normal-
ised situation, an accepted aggression, an unrecognised fear, all became a serious issue,
showing the potential of social media to promote social change. As Guilliard says,
‘Social media is not a panacea and its potential as an activist outlet has not been fully
realised,’ (2016, 623), but as she also demonstrates, the responses of students are enthu-
siastic, and it serves to strengthen the interactions among students and with course
content (2016, 621–622).
As many other groups that have used social media to promote cooperation around an
idea, Mi Huella Azul community dissolved after the course finished. McLean, Maalsen and
Grech state, after evaluating DTJ followers in Australia, that ‘the reporting back of research
findings … did not garner significant interest’ (2016, 157). Nevertheless, what we have to
 GENDER AND EDUCATION 13

value is not the permanence or durability of the community that, per se, is ephemeral. We
have to establish the affection in terms of what is new in what the participants know, feel,
and do; we may observe this through the different communications they produce.
The thematic analysis of the statements made by the students show that it is possible to
affect the knowledge, the attitudes, and the expressions of young people in a relatively short
period of time, when we reinforce the theoretical content with personal experiences, and
when we use social media as a tool to express feelings and ideas.

Conclusions
Street harassment is a form of gender violence that remains invisible and normalised. During
the project Mi Huella Azul, developed during two semesters in an undergraduate course
called Communication and Culture, female students discussed feminist content specifically
related to the right to the city, and they created communication strategies to raise aware-
ness and foster discussion on street harassment both in online and in offline spaces.
While speaking about the problem was embarrassing at the beginning, the use of social
media created a sense of community inside and outside the classroom that helped to
appreciate feminist content and develop the project. As students got involved in the dis-
cussions, they realised that street harassment is a social problem, that most women have
suffered these situations, and that expressing their feelings about it is an important step to
face this issue. Later on, as they developed and published the strategies, they understood
that feeling safe is a right; and that they must be free to use public spaces on their own
terms. Finally, they got to the conclusion that they can be active about the problem,
that they are not powerless, and that, even though the situation has been accepted for
centuries, it is not normal and it is not acceptable.
Despite the multiplicity of scholars’ perspectives that question the possibilities of new
media technologies to empower women, participants’ experiences suggest social media
was important for the development of the project. Sharing their stories and ideas on
the subject gave the young girls a sense of community that promoted active behaviours
and creative strategies. Even though this specific community dissolved after the course
was finished, we may assume that some transformations occurred if we are going to
give credit to their testimonies in the essays, the videos, and the documentary. In fact,
the products created by them showed that they had a new knowledge, that they had
new feelings, and that they reacted differently.
In contrast with other projects on Street Harassment, our focus was never on the stalker,
but on women, promoting the appropriation of public spaces and making them feel that
feeling safe is a right. We do not intend to draw definite conclusions. On the contrary, we
are just opening a conversation on a subject that was not considered a social issue; and
evaluating strategies to promote discussions on feminist issues combining online and
offline spaces.
The project was a qualitative study. Our goal was not to generalise, but rather to
provide a contextualised understanding of the ways young undergrad women in Barran-
quilla, Colombia recreate their meanings about public spaces and the right to the city. We
embrace the fact these women’s realities are unique, diverse and local phenomena. From
this approach, the goal of the project was not measure changes of behaviour among par-
ticipants regarding street harassment, but it privileges women’s symbolic practices of
14 P. FLORES ET AL.

expression and interpretation of their realities. Changing representations is a long-term

issue. Future long-term goals to measure changes of behaviour in relation to gender
awareness and knowledge should consider instruments to measure levels of knowledge,
such as post and pre-tests.
This project aims to give women communicative tools to express their feelings, share
their stories, and fight against street harassment. As a result, we can suggest that when
young female students get involved in the discussion of feminist ideas and begin to
produce messages promoting equity, we are drawing a blue footprint or huella azul, a
claim for our right, quoting Harvey, to remake the city.

Disclosure statements
No potential conflict of interests was reported by the authors.

Funding
This work was supported by Open Society Foundations under Grant # OR2015-25050.

Notes on contributors
Pamela Flores holds a PhD in Cultural Studies from Universidad de Sevilla, Spain. She is an Associate
Professor and Coordinator of the Masters of Communication at Universidad del Norte, Barranquilla,
Colombia. Her research interests focus on the relations between public spaces and citizenship, urban
cultures, and the coexistence of differences in contemporary world.
Nancy Regina Gómez has a PhD in Communication Studies from Ohio University. She is a Professor,
and Director of PBX, Research Group in Communication, Culture, and Social change at Universidad
del Norte, Barranquilla, Colombia. Her research interests focus on the recognition of diversity, the
evolution of feminism and feminist theory, and narratives of peace.
Alana Farrah Roa is a doctoral student at Universidad del Norte, Barranquilla, Colombia. Her research
interests have to do with the communication of equality in public and private spaces, and with the
recognition of the rights of Women and LBGT Communities.
Risa Whitson is an Associate Professor and Curriculum Chair at the Geography Department and at
the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Department of Ohio University. Her interests are situ-
ated at the intersection of geographies of development, social geography, and feminist geography.

ORCID
Pamela Flores http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2812-9212

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