How Women’s Movements Can Get New Protocols?: A Kit for Future Revindications

by Danela Terán (MDE ’20) and Carolina Sepúlveda (MDes ’20)

In 2018 there was a wave of feminist demonstrations in several countries and contexts that denounced violence and sexual harassment towards women, such as the #MeToo movement in the US and the #NiUnaMenos movement in Latin America. This wave not only exposed the ubiquity of gender violence but also questioned the educational institutions protocols that protect women from sexual violence and harassment.

The project is an object-kit that provides tools to start a conversation about sexual harassment, gender-based discrimination and protocols. This object is aimed at women movements within educational institutions to learn how a protocol on sexual violence and harassment in schools and universities should be built. Based on Chilean Universities and Harvard’s efforts, successes and obstacles, the kit will propose simple ways to recreate safe spaces of conversation and exchange to get clear petitions that can later become protocols, policies or laws.

This kit can be used by communities that haven’t started a conversation about sexual harassment protocols, but also be useful to contexts like the US, where there are clear policies and a federal law, Title IX, but female students organizations still need a more easy, interactive and compelling way to talk about these issues.

The purpose is not only to educate a community on the subject but also to provide tools that will allow policy building to be an easy and straight forward matter, as policy building needs to be followed by a process of negotiation and approval and then followed by a process of teaching and promoting the new protocol.