In France, there is no chance that a woman will never be the victim of harassment with a sexual connotation during her life. None. It’s a fact, it’s deplorable, and it’s not improving, despite the many actions implemented by institutions and associations. If it seems difficult, even impossible, to change the mentality of the perpetrators of such acts, society must nevertheless protect their victims. Here again, the devices are not lacking, meeting more or less success. In Lille, it is the copy-paste of a British initiative, called “Ask for Angela”, which is currently being tested in public transport.
According to the government, “8 out of 10 young women are afraid to go out alone at night” and the majority of women surveyed “have already been harassed or followed on the street and on public transport”. A confirmed assertion, in March 2021, by an Ipsos survey for L’Oréal Paris and the NGO Hollaback, which shows that “80% of women in France have already been victims of sexual harassment in public places”. Conversely, this same survey shows that only 20% of women victims of harassment were able to find help. It is on the basis of a comparable observation that in 2016, London City Hall and its Metropolitan Police have set up the “Ask for Angela” system in bars and discotheques and approved companies.
A “real need to create refuge areas”
In Lille, the movement “bars without relou” or the local branch of the association “Stop street harassment” have fizzled. We have also seen, in 2021, certain retailers of the Française des jeux (FDJ) turn into places of refuge for harassed people. Public transport is not left out. In 2019, Ilévia, had set up the stop at the request of the buses and set up “exploratory walks” to determine what was at the origin of the feeling of insecurity of the travelers. Angela’s experimentation stems directly from this. “The real need to create refuge areas in the event of sexist or sexual assault has been highlighted by these marches,” says Héloïse Gerber, responsible for inclusive mobility at ilévia.
In the Ilévia agencies at Lille-Flandres and République station, people who are victims of harassment will be able to take refuge by pronouncing the code word “Angela”, and receive “suitable help” from specially trained agents. If, of course, victims can request assistance from any network call terminal without saying Sesame, Héloïse Gerber believes that “the Angela plan facilitates the call for help in real time with its key message , easy to convey and understand.