Transformative Prevention of Gender-Based Violence in Night-Time Leisure Venues

Good Practice

Efficiency, Equality

Transformative Prevention of Gender-Based Violence in Night-Time Leisure Venues

Deploying “Purple Points” in nighttime leisure venues and awareness campaigns to prevent gender-based violence (GBV) and promote equal enjoyment of leisure time.

Catalan Government

Spain

Local policy

POLICY OBJECTIVE

Employ an intersectional approach and critical thinking to dismantle gender mandates, stereotypes, and false beliefs about gender-based violence (GBV), perpetrators, and victims, as well as other racist, ageist, classist, and ableist beliefs and stereotypes.
Leverage individual, group, community, organizational, and institutional work to expand imaginaries around gender, sexuality, and gender relationships.
Provide agency and resources to communities and harness the vast preventive potential of their neighbourhood-, association-, and family-based networks to sidestep individualized responses and survivor isolation, strengthen community commitment and tackle GBV proactively.
Empower women to enjoy nighttime leisure and to make associated venues, whether physical, virtual, or symbolic, their own.
Ensure that women feel equal ownership of all spaces and times by transforming them, preventing GBV from occurring in them, protecting women’s rights and freedoms, and empowering women to adopt self-protection mechanisms as necessary.
Because it is crucial that survivors are able to identify GBV themselves, and that public authorities and communities are able to detect such situations quickly, make it easier for people to identify and detect GBV and access specialized services, and make information about the Network’s specialized responses to GBV universally accessible.

CONTEXT

In democratic countries, women’s right to eradicate GBV must be an absolute priority. Achieving this requires profound social and cultural transformation and a rejection of the patriarchal culture that enables, naturalizes, and justifies GBV. This is only possible with feminist policies driving structural changes from all levels of government and sectorial areas in coordination with the fabric of associations.

Our country’s approach to GBV focuses on reparation, tools, and services to care for victims directly. This prioritization is understandable given both the need to respond to specific demands, and situations of violence requiring a diligent response. But prevention is often relegated to specific projects and strategically less integrated into overall policies. Data from recent surveys on GBV reveal the prevalence of this problem in society and underscores the need to rethink interventions.

In Catalonia, 79.3% of women have experienced some form of GBV in their lifetime, according to the Catalan Ministry of Interior’s Survey on Gender-Based Violence in 2021. (One in four women reported having experienced some form of GBV during that same year.) Among women aged 16 to 29, the figure increases to 82.7%, with at least one incident of GBV experienced by one in three women before the age of 15.

The data indicate that sexual violence is the most prevalent and normalized form of violence. Among female respondents of the Survey on Sexual Violence (2019), 78.8% experienced sexual violence at least once since the age of 15. In 2019, 13.6% of all incidents were committed by groups of 2 to 5 men. In cities and towns, the majority of sexual violence —28% in 2019— occurs in public spaces.

POLICY DESCRIPTION

We promote Purple Points through two actions:

First, awarding grants to local and supra-local institutions to organize Purple Points based on the standards established in the “White Paper on Preventing Gender-Based Violence”.
Second, through specialized organizations that give event organizers and entertainment venues training and individualized support in organizing Purple Points.

Apart from community Purple Points, we promote awareness campaigns. For example, by publicizing a free GBV helpline (900 900 120) in nightlife spaces and the public transport network. In addition, in collaboration with the Catalan Ministry of Culture, we have designed a campaign titled “El masclisme no fa festa” (“Sexism does not encourage partying”). Associated posters, postcards, videos, and radio spots are available for download.

KEY ASPECTS

This innovative policy addresses the need to ensure equal leisure time through tools to prevent GBV in the socio-community context.

A particularly innovative element is that the policy defines the standards that public authorities must follow when designing and implementing prevention tools. In this case, these tools include Purple Points, training activities, and campaigns.

RESULTS

Results are currently being compiled.

Policy's Website

Ruben

Sánchez Ruiz

Deputy Director General for Sensitization and Prevention

rsanchezruiz@gencat.cat

Good Practice