Testing the Hypothesis, Part 1

1. The opportunity that I would like to pursue is of sexual violence against women under 30.
2. In the United States 1 in 5 women between the ages 12 and 30 because most of these women did not have an accessible tool of defense at the time or did not know how to physically defend themselves.
• The Who → Women in the United States
• The What → They experience acts of sexual violence
• The Why → They do not know the proper way to defend themselves under those conditions.
3. As a 20-year-old female, I experience sexual harassment and unwanted sexual attention almost on a daily basis. This topic is very important to me as just recently I had the experience of someone sexually harassing me in my place of work. I had known everything I have even been taught, about standing strong and not letting people talk to you a certain way. However, when it actually happened, I did not know what to do; the person being a customer, I did not know if I could ask him to leave or if I had to sit there politely as they spoke to me. I know many people around my age and older who have experienced things like this. And it is not just women, “1 in 3 women and nearly 1 in 4 men have experienced sexual violence involving physical contact at some point in their lives (1).” People need to know how to defend themselves or have access to things that can help them in times of crisis. “Research shows that 59% of women who ever walked down an alley alone always or often feel unsafe doing so, while 50% feel similarly about walking alone at night. Women are at least twice as likely as men to always feel unsafe going to a stranger’s house alone (23% of women vs. 6% of men), taking a trip to a foreign country alone (24% vs 12%), or getting a taxi or ride-share by themselves (13% vs 4%). Data also suggests roughly one in five (21%) women say that they always or often feel unsafe when going on a first date. Only 9% of men experience similar feelings about being unsafe on a first date (2).” Even if you specifically do not ever face a sexually harassing experience, you still likely suffer from the impending fear that it will one day happen. This is an opportunity, there is a large target audience of women who want a feeling of reassurance, that they have something to do, should this problem ever arise for them.
4. Talking to people about this opportunity enlightens you to the commonality of people who if not fear the possibility, then have experience first hand what it is like to be on the receiving end of  sexual harassment. Everyone that I spoke to found this to be a very prevalent problem in today's society. One thing I noticed was in talking to the men; even though men are subject to sexual violence, when speaking to them they spoke as if it only pertained to women, and most men I spoke to did not fear the possibility of it happening to them. This made me question ‘Why?’. Why do men not fear this yet women do? Is this a culturally inflicted fear that women have or is it an innate form of self-preservation? What can we do to help relieve people of this fear; not in a way that makes them careless, but in a way that makes them confident that they could handle themselves in that situation?

Citation:

(1) https://www.cdc.gov/features/sexualviolence/index.html

(2) https://today.yougov.com/topics/lifestyle/articles-reports/2019/03/28/women-safety-sexual-assault-awareness