Title:
New Site Maps Reports of Sexual Harassment in Egypt
Description: This is
a VOA Special English Technology Report.
See text below
Text:
A new website plans to use social media to help
women in Egypt fight unwanted sexual attention. The
website is harassmap.org. The idea is to offer
different ways for women to report sexual harassment
as soon as it happens. For example, they could send
a text message by phone. Or they could report
incidents directly through the website or through
e-mail, Facebook or Twitter. The website will then
map the reports with different colored dots. Purple,
for example, represents unwanted touching. Blue is
for loud, offensive comments or whistling. Rebecca
Chiao helped create HarassMap. She says most of the
reports gathered during testing include more than
one offense. The site also lists whether or not a
report has been confirmed.Mrs. Chiao is a former
employee of the Egyptian Center for Women's Rights.
In two thousand eight the center released a report
on sexual harassment in Egypt. Researchers
interviewed more than one thousand women. This
included more than one hundred foreigners living or
traveling in Egypt. Ninety-eight percent of the
foreign women said they had been sexually harassed.
So did eighty-three percent of the Egyptian women.
Rebecca Chiao says harassmap.org will help warn the
public about areas where there is a high risk of
harassment. It could also help police identify areas
where security should be increased. And she says the
system will provide another important service.She
says the system will send a response to the person
reporting the harassment. It will include a list of
services that the woman can contact if she needs
help with legal aid, making a police report or
finding psychological help.The women will also be
able to share their stories online with other
victims of sexual harassment. A similar project was
launched in two thousand five in New York City.
Victims can go to ihollaback.org to share stories of
"street harassment" and to upload pictures of
accused offenders. There are now ten Hollaback!
websites around the world and more are planned.
Earlier this month, Hollaback! released an
application for the Apple iPhone that lets users
report harassment as soon as it happens. For VOA
Special English I'm Alex Villarreal. You can find
our reports online at voaspecialenglish.com. You can
also find us on Facebook and Twitter at VOA Learning
English.
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personally reviewed this video and found it appropriate for
the news section of English Global Group. This
is a Voice of America video which covers an interesting
topic in Special English. I would appreciate some feedback from both
students and teachers about this video. You can comment in
the window below using any of a number of different services
including Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, and Hotmail.
