Investigating Sexual Harassment on Public Transportation in the NorthEast of England. A collaborative project with Rape Crisis Tyneside & Northumberla

There is a growing body of research that shows women are
likely to experience sexual harassment on public transport
(Allen and Vanderschuren, 2016). The social and
environmental factors of public transport advantage
perpetrators (Lewis et al, 2020; Hutson and Krueger, 2018)
while broader gender norms mean that women are much more
at risk (Westmarland, 2015). Despite international research
showing sexual harassment on public transport to be a
pervasive problem globally, the phenomenon is understudied
in Europe (Lewis et al, 2020), less studied in the UK, and has
never been studied specifically in relation to the North East of
England. This project seeks to address this gap, focusing for
the first time on the nature, extent, and impacts of sexual
harassment on transport for women in the North East. It draws
on and develops an innovative methodological frame that uses
McGlynn & Westmarland's (2019) Educational Empowerment
Approach (EEA) combined with the insights of intersectionality,
to uncover not only the range and extent of public sexual
harassment on transport in the N.E. but also its intersectional
impact. Through a collaborative partnership with Rape Crisis
Tyneside and Newcastle, this project will thus establish a new
evidence base to inform policy and practitioner responses to
the problem, as well as providing victim-survivor informed
recommendations for prevention.