The Women Under Siege Project is an independent initiative of the

Women's Media Center Women's Media Center (WMC) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit women's organization in the United States founded in 2005 by writers and activists Jane Fonda, Robin Morgan, and Gloria Steinem.

(WMC). The project documents online and through

social media Social media are interactive media technologies that facilitate the creation and sharing of information, ideas, interests, and other forms of expression through virtual communities and networks. While challenges to the definition of ''social medi ...

how

rape Rape is a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse or other forms of sexual penetration carried out against a person without their consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority, or ...

and

gender-based violence Gender-related violence or gender-based violence includes any kind of violence directed against people due to their gender or gender identification. Types of gender-related violence include: * Violence against women (sometimes referred to simply a ...

are used as tools in

war War is an intense armed conflict between states, governments, societies, or paramilitary groups such as mercenaries, insurgents, and militias. It is generally characterized by extreme violence, destruction, and mortality, using regular o ...

fare and

genocide Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people—usually defined as an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group—in whole or in part. Raphael Lemkin coined the term in 1944, combining the Greek word (, "race, people") with the Lat ...

. The project uses

journalism Journalism is the production and distribution of reports on the interaction of events, facts, ideas, and people that are the " news of the day" and that informs society to at least some degree. The word, a noun, applies to the occupation (pro ...

to investigate and bring to light these issues which impact women throughout the world, but especially in areas of conflict. The director of Women Under Siege, Lauren Wolfe, has said that the first step to challenging rape is to stop

victim blaming Victim blaming occurs when the victim of a crime or any wrongful act is held entirely or partially at fault for the harm that befell them. There is historical and current prejudice against the victims of domestic violence and sex crimes, such as ...

and to focus on the

perpetrators In law enforcement jargon, a suspect is a known person accused or suspected of committing a crime. Police and reporters in the United States often use the word suspect as a jargon when referring to the perpetrator of the offense (perp in dated U ...

and the

culture Culture () is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, and habits of the individuals in these groups ...

s that produce them. The Women Under Siege Project was founded by

Gloria Steinem Gloria Marie Steinem (; born March 25, 1934) is an American journalist and social-political activist who emerged as a nationally recognized leader of second-wave feminism in the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Steinem was a c ...

. The director is Lauren Wolfe and the associate editor for Women Under Siege is Shazdeh Omari. The project is organized under the WMC, but operates independently, with contributions from individuals, corporations, and foundations.

Background

Women, and sometimes men, who are in areas of combat are at risk of being used as a tool of warfare. Rape and

sexual violence Sexual violence is any sexual act or attempt to obtain a sexual act by violence or coercion, act to traffic a person, or act directed against a person's sexuality, regardless of the relationship to the victim.World Health Organization., World re ...

are used in order to humiliate and intimidate individuals, families, and groups of people. Sometimes commanders and leaders of

troop A troop is a military sub-subunit, originally a small formation of cavalry, subordinate to a squadron. In many armies a troop is the equivalent element to the infantry section or platoon. Exceptions are the US Cavalry and the King's Tr ...

s consider women to be "a spoil of war". The issue of stopping rape and sexual violence during wartime is problematic because it has remained "profoundly invisible". Even in countries with support systems to help victims, rape and sexual violence are under-reported. Additionally, many women decide against accusing their attackers because of the legal process,

shame Shame is an unpleasant self-conscious emotion often associated with negative self-evaluation; motivation to quit; and feelings of pain, exposure, distrust, powerlessness, and worthlessness. Definition Shame is a discrete, basic emotion, d ...

, fear, stigma, or worry they will be disbelieved. It is even worse for women in war zones and refugee camps. Many women in areas of conflict are terrified of talking about sexual assault. Because these crimes are unreported or are effectively invisible, they are not addressed.

History

The Women Under Siege Project was started by

in 2012 in order to document violence against women taking place during violent conflicts. The idea was inspired by two books: ''Sexual Violence Against Jewish Women During the Holocaust'' by Sonja M. Hedgepeth and Rochelle Saidel and ''At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape and Resistance - a New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to Black Power'' by Danielle McGuire. After reading these two books which address sexual violence, Steinem wondered if there were lessons to be learned from both history and current affairs; and also, if information were more widely available and people were aware of the issues, if rape and gender-based violence could be prevented in the future. Steinem has said that "suffering has to be visible and not called inevitable or blamed on the victim before we can stop it." Steinem decided to start a website to increase awareness about the issue. In creating the website, Steinem hopes to create connections between outbreaks of violence against women and that hopefully society will stand against rape and sexual violence and not see it as "inevitably part of war". She says that "by making clear that gender-based violence is political and public, it admits that sexualized violence can be changed." Rape and gender-based violence being used as tools of conflict and war can't be addressed if the issues are not documented or discussed.

Website

Women Under Siege's website includes blogs about current violent activity and also first-person accounts from those who have experienced violence. Lauren Wolfe has interviewed women from around the world about their experiences. Entries are not always about current events; Jamia Wilson wrote an article for the website about women and sexual violence during civil rights protests. Steinem emphasized that the website can also help women realize that they are not alone and give them a voice. The original content created for the site was praised for its blunt and honest reporting on the issues by ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

''. In 2014, Wolfe reported that many people found her website while conducting "troubling" web searches. Some of the searches included phrases like "how to rape a woman" and "are women to blame for rape?". Wolfe said that these types of searches show how important education is to combating sexual violence.

Research

Women Under Siege conducts detailed research and presents case studies on their website. They are currently attempting to quantify the number of

sexual assaults Sexual assault is an act in which one intentionally sexually touches another person without that person's consent, or coerces or physically forces a person to engage in a sexual act against their will. It is a form of sexual violence, which ...

that occurred during the Ukrainian conflict, but numbers are difficult to record because the police in the region "strongly discourage women reporting rapes". Other projects include using data from the International Men and Gender Equality Survey (IMAGES) to address the issue of rape in the

Democratic Republic of the Congo The Democratic Republic of the Congo (french: République démocratique du Congo (RDC), colloquially "La RDC" ), informally Congo-Kinshasa, DR Congo, the DRC, the DROC, or the Congo, and formerly and also colloquially Zaire, is a country in ...

(DRC).

Crowd-sourcing and social media

The project has used crowd-sourcing to create maps which show where sexual assault has taken place. In 2012, Women Under Siege put out a call to people from Syria and those working with Syrian refugees to provide information about rape and sexual assault. The entries were created by collecting information from journalists, human rights activists and individual citizens. Some the reports came via

email Electronic mail (email or e-mail) is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email was thus conceived as the electronic ( digital) version of, or counterpart to, mail, at a time when "mail" mean ...

or by

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

with the hashtag #RapeinSyria. Women Under Siege mapped these incidents, providing over 117 pieces of data for each entry. The data was documented in real time, using a software developed by

Ushahidi Ushahidi is an open source software application which utilises user-generated reports to collate and map data. It uses the concept of crowdsourcing serving as an initial model for what has been coined as "activist mapping" - the combination o ...

. The data was analyzed and put together in a comprehensive report that details a huge amount of human suffering. Not only did the information shine a light on the problem, it also uncovered unexpected findings. For example, the data revealed that Syrian government forces were also largely responsible for much of the sexual violence.

Selected works

*WMC Women Under Siege Project: Syria Crowdmap (2012) *WMC Women Under Siege Project Reports: Sexualized Violence in Conflict Zones
Burma, 2012

Democratic Republic of Congo, 2012

Sri Lanka, 2013

Bosnia, 2012

Colombia, 2013

Nanking, 2014

Mexico, 2012

Libya, 2012

2012 Darfur-Sudan, 2012

Sierra-Leone, 2013

Bangladesh, 2012

North Korea, 2012

Egypt, 2012

Rwanda, 2012

Liberia, 2013

Holocaust, 2012

References

External links

Official website
{{authority control Organizations established in 2012 Feminist organizations in the United States 2012 establishments in the United States Victims' rights organizations Women's rights organizations International human rights organizations Cultural studies organizations Human rights organizations based in the United States Women's organizations based in the United States