Today was International Women’s Day, and political party, Bloco de Esquerda – Madeira (BE-M),chose to raise awareness of the serious problem of harassment with a street campaign entitled “Harassment is Crime. Complain!”
In a press statement, the ‘left blockers’ stated that “although the criminalisation of moral and sexual harassment already exists in the labour law, we continue to observe that one in three women experience some form of harassment at work. This type of harassment was the first to be penalized by law through the labour code, but did little to rectify the situation. As of 2015, street harassment, more commonly known as piropo, become a crime. Unfortunately criminalisation does not prevent crime! Behaviours have not changed, and constitute the personification of an extremely sexist society, which sees and accepts abuse as normal, but which also represses all those who denounce it, either pushing them away, devaluing the denouncements or even launching campaigns to discredit the victims, which ultimately leads to more and more women suffering in silence.
“Harassment both physical or through social media platforms has harmful effects, blatant sexualisation can cause psychological damage to girls and women. There are women who avoid areas of clusters of men to avoid suffering this type of harassment (unauthorized sexual proposals), harassment has also reached social networks. It is necessary to penalize and file a complaint against those who do not comply with the law. Harassment has to end!”
Samantha Gannon
info at madeira-weekly.com
