- Elizabeth Johnston
Welcome to the Efus podcast, a podcast produced by the European Forum for Urban Security in collaboration with the IcARUS Project. I'm Elizabeth Johnston, the Executive Director of Efus, the European network of 250 local and regional authorities dedicated to urban security. Today, I'm very happy to welcome Dr. Barbara Holtmann, Director of Fixed Africa in South Africa, who has worked in community development, gender equity. and community safety across the globe for more than 20 years, as well as Àngels Vila Muntal, Director of Prevention Services in the city of Barcelona in Spain. I'm very glad we can meet today remotely. So we will have Barbara in South Africa, Angie in Barcelona, and myself in Paris having this conversation around gender issues in public policies and specifically how the gender perspective intersects with urban security. What does it mean, in your opinion, to have a gender-inclusive approach, and why is it so crucial? And is it true that a city that is safe for women is safe for all? Barbara?
- Barbara Holtmann
A city that is safe for women is safe for all. What a wonderful slogan that is, and what a fabulous dream it is. Coming from South Africa, we've had 30 years since Nelson Mandela actually dreamed of exactly that, a society in which everybody was safe from each other, where we could trust one another and where we could believe that we could do anything we wanted, whoever we were. And that certainly remains my dream.
- Elizabeth Johnston
Angie?
- Àngels Vila Muntal
Before answering this question, we have to know that the wall of security, with notable advance in the recent years, is still a very masculinized world. So the efforts to implement a gender perspective within the security policies will be greater in comparison with other areas. To incorporate this gender inclusive approach means considering and addressing the different needs, experiences and challenges faced by all the genders within the city. So security policies are base policies because that's been for many times on this way. So we need to pay attention on the fears, on the reactions, on the needs related to security that women face because they are different than the ones that men experience. Within Barcelona we have several nationalities represented, but when we receive reports, there are nationalities that they never report gender violence to the police. We know that something happens within these communities, but the general policies of security don't reach them. So we have to adapt our policies in order to reach these communities because there are women suffering them, that they don't ask for help, they don't report to the police. So generalist policies for women don't work.
- Elizabeth Johnston
How does the priority that the city of Barcelona has given to gender equity translate into the prevention services for the city of Barcelona?
- Àngels Vila Muntal
In Barcelona, we had some factors that aligned. On the one hand, there was a new management in the security area that was very clear about the importance of incorporating the gender perspective. Besides, we had a generational change in certain commanders of the police and firefighter structure that facilitated the process. The first thing that we did was to create a cross-cutting working group within the area with the participation. of the experts on security and safety, plus the experts on gender, on violence against women, on feminisms of the whole city council. So working together allow us to establish the objectives and we tried to make everyone feel comfortable with the decision. So perhaps we didn't go as fast as we wanted to be, but But all the steps have been steady. Another important thing is that we had economic resources for training, for building new facilities with gender perspective, to acquire new equipment. So this is very important. And the most important thing is that we have the leadership of our general manager. From the direction of our area, we have the implication. This is very important because sometimes we have the technical staff very motivated but working a little bit alone.
- Barbara Holtmann
I think it's really interesting that Angie talks about making everybody comfortable with the decisions. In my view, it's unlikely that everybody is comfortable with the decisions because however hard we try, change is difficult. And I think change is particularly difficult for men for whom things have not changed for a very long time. And I don't think there's anything wrong with a bit of discomfort when it comes to changing gender status and the focus on gender in cities. So I think it is obvious that for... decades, generations, women have been very uncomfortable in these circumstances. And I think women deal with things very differently. They have very different perspectives to men. And it takes a long time. And as you said, you're not going fast, which I think is a very good thing. It takes a long time for men to truly understand that their circumstance has changed. And in a way, we need to measure that. progress. We need to have progressive indicators that show us the ways in which men's behavior changes and therefore the way that they begin to deal with women differently and show them a different kind of respect.
- Àngels Vila Muntal
I agree with Barbara about the issue of discomfort. Discomfort is part of the process. What I mean is that it's very difficult to work with permanent discomfort. We try to make everyone comfortable. I'm sure that not everyone will be absolutely happy because we are removing the structure, we are removing something that has been established for many years. But we try to reach some type of agreements. For example, in the case of quotas for accessing or promoting, in the case of officers, firefighters, you know that it's a controversial issue, once discussed, appealed, it has been already internalized and people do not discuss it now. Perhaps they don't like it at all, but it has been accepted. So this is the first step. So now it's easier to work because working with permanent discomfort, it's not affordable for any organization, I think.
- Elizabeth Johnston
Angie, you mentioned the political leadership, also the role of political leadership. And I wanted to ask you if you felt the discourse around the gender-based violence had changed globally and in your cities and in the cities that you've served, because we know how important also giving sort of the momentum and the direction that we want and the vision for the cities that we want is in fighting and supporting the services, as you said. Barbara, how do you feel in your experience about working with the IcARUS cities? Would you like to react to that point of political leadership?
- Barbara Holtmann
Yeah, I think political leadership is possibly the hardest place to make the change. When we see a program like the one in Nice, which offers women in particular, but any victims, the opportunity to report if they are harassed or if they feel fearful in public spaces. and broadens the report base so that we are talking about people who work in bars, people who work in restaurants, people who are close to the public spaces where women probably are most vulnerable, then that perhaps is a really strong message to the politicians and a very important message to politicians. I have experienced many politicians who completely ignore the issue. of gender. Because it's, again, we come back to the question of comfort. It's uncomfortable. And at this very moment, we're seeing in America, for instance, a test of the American people and whether or not they are going to bring themselves to put a cross next to a woman as president. I think that when we deal with politicians, we need to vote on these issues. We need to be loud. And I think that the advocacy for women and women's safety has become much louder. It's become much younger too. And I think that that will make a very big difference in terms of the changes that we see going forward. But there's always resistance to change. And in this instance, since women have been characterized as victims for so long, it's very difficult. to make that complete shift to saying women don't want to be characterized as victims. And two things need to happen for that. change to happen. The one is that they need to stop being victimized. And the other is that they need to be in positions of leadership and decision making.
- Elizabeth Johnston
We have still so much progress to make on gender equity, and you both mentioned that. Nevertheless, do you feel gender is an issue of its own, or should it be addressed as part of a broader diversity conversation? Barbara?
- Barbara Holtmann
It's both. I think gender needs to be addressed. both as an issue on its own and as part of the broader diversity perspective. If we really need to move away from women and children, you know, it's as though it's one word. It's always been. And I think that gender is complex and we need to allow it to open up and be what it wants to be. And I don't think that we should insist that we include it in the broader diversity question. I do, however, think that feminism is a gateway to the broader diversity question, because feminists are more inclusive, and feminists tend to understand the value of diversity in a much more significant way, and use the value of diversity. So I think it's more likely that women, for instance, will include... people of other cultures, people of other races, people with disabilities, the elderly, partly because they know them better, because women have always been the caregivers in our society. And so I think that's an area, diversity is an area where women's leadership is incredibly important.
- Àngels Vila Muntal
I agree with Barbara. And just to add something that we are criticizing the security policies. that are generalists because we consider that they don't include or they don't have this particular attention or care towards the needs of women. So about this, we can make the same criticism in front, we can make the same criticism to the generalist policies based only in women, treating women as a corpus, as something general. So women are different for causes of their origin, their age, the political position, many, many issues. So diversity has to be observed, has to be taken into account. One very simple and hackneyed example, in the case of violence against women, we have many nationalities or national regions represented in Barcelona. But there are some communities, large communities, that they don't report to the police. And we know that there are things happening there, but they don't report. So we have to address these collectives in a different way, because the general way that we plan for women, it doesn't work.
- Barbara Holtmann
I think the other thing about diversity in women, if we look at the Turin experience, for instance, is there you see a really diverse, and in fact also in Lisbon. You see that the committees that are working on those projects are very diverse and have strong women's voices in them. And that makes a big difference to what they actually do. We can quite broadly generalize to say that men are more likely to look for hard security measures, whereas women are more likely to invest in social. behavior change and in mechanisms to change the environment and the way that things are. And I think that's a very important point that while I totally agree with Angie that it should not be that only women deal with women gender-based violence or with women victims, I think that in making the policies about how to deal with insecurity, women's voices are essential. If we don't want to go down a road that builds us more and more and more into a fortress. And in many cities, we see that happening. We see the increase of surveillance, of boots on the ground, of armed police, of now drones being used and various other technologies. And that is not a place that we want to live in. We need to remember. what it is that we want for our societies and what it is that we want for our cities. And with women's voices included in those strategies, we're much more likely to end up in a place where we are safe rather than where we are protected by security.
- Àngels Vila Muntal
We are talking all the time about women and sometimes I think that we forget men. We refer to men as perpetrators, but men are part of the solution, a 50% or less of the population, so we have to implicate them in the solution. Because alone, women, we won't be able to solve it. An example, in the units of gender violence in many organizations, They are interrogated by police, female police officers. So, the organization sometimes has the view that these are the units where women work and that deal with the issues or the strange issues that happen to women. This doesn't work because the issues that happen to women, and they are not issues, they are crimes, they are serious problems, they are discrimination, it's not an issue of women, it's an issue of society. Men and women have to participate to be part of the solution.
- Elizabeth Johnston
Thank you very much, Angie, for this also very inclusive view. Barbara, would you like to add or to react to that point specifically?
- Barbara Holtmann
Yes. For me, the issue of gendered police units, of women police units serving women who are victims of particularly gender-based violence, is really problematic. Not only... because we need men to be part of the solution, but also because it downgrades the issue of gender-based violence. If there is something that only women deal with, it tends to be less important than things that men deal with. And it's been tried in many circumstances, and I think it's been shown not to work. I think that it is essential that we don't give up on men. that we don't say women need to deal with these issues, only women can deal with these issues. We have to ensure that we equip men to deal with these issues. It's not a hard ask to be respectful, caring, empathetic, and professional. And we should demand that of all our police.
- Elizabeth Johnston
What a fantastic call to action and mobilization. Thank you, Angie. Thank you, Barbara. So are both of you ready to give you sort of one concluding remark?
- Àngels Vila Muntal
I would like to invite all the cities to analyze the situation of gender within their organization and in particular in the security area and work on transversally with other departments or areas in order to incorporate this view within the regular policies of the organization.
- Barbara Holtmann
I'd like to say that for me, the dream is that one day we don't have to have this discussion. Women are so competent. And as a committed feminist, I have to say that I think the way that women deal with the complexities of crime, insecurity, unsafety, adds such dimension to our work. And we will be safer when women's voices are heard at least equally in the debates.
- Elizabeth Johnston
Thank both of you. As you said, women's voices are essential, and we will pursue it throughout this podcast and through the European Forum's projects. So thank you for participating in this podcast. We look forward to sharing more insights and discussions with you in the future. So don't forget to subscribe to this podcast and be sure to visit the website of the European Forum for Urban Security. Stay tuned for the next episode of the Efus podcast.
