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Sexual Harassment

Singapore Women Use VR To Beat Sexual Harassment

„Wow, your shirt is really see-through. Are you wearing matching underwear?“ the man says lewdly.

It’s a virtual reality simulation — but it’s enough to shock 23-year-old Elizabeth Lee into silence as the scene plays out on her headset.

The VR technology is part of the Girl, Talk project which is aimed at helping women fight back against harassment in Singapore.

„I would think that I would respond in a more confrontational way,“ Lee admits. „It felt very physically close… it was just really disgusting to hear such crass remarks.“

Sexual harassment has been a key issue in the city-state’s university campuses after a student at a top institution took to Instagram to recount a story of being secretly filmed in a dormitory shower.

The victim, Monica Baey, felt the perpetrator got off too lightly and her decision to go public has been dubbed Singapore’s #MeToo moment.

There were 56 cases of sexual misconduct involving students from six Singapore universities between 2015 and 2017, according to information Education Minister Ong Ye Kung provided to Parliament last May.

But many students told AFP the real figure is far higher and many incidents go unreported.

Girl, Talk was created by four women — Danelia Chim, Seow Yun Rong, Heather Seet and Dawn Kwan — at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), who felt that while #MeToo had raised awareness there was little to „equip survivors“ on how best to respond in different situations.

„Even if you’re caught in a physically vulnerable situation, being able to evaluate your situation and make choices about how you behave and react can be incredibly empowering,“ the group say on their website.

– ‚Sexual harassment is common‘ –

The VR simulation features five scenarios based on real experiences. They enlisted male friends to act out the scenarios and filmed them.

It was partly inspired by the work of psychologists at a US university, who developed a VR programme to tackle sexual harassment after finding that young women had a stronger reaction to virtual scenarios than conventional role play.

Lee explains: „I think it definitely prepares me better for these various possibilities. It emotionally readies me. I would know what further steps to take. I would know to tell a friend, and get support from the community around me and then go and take further action if it’s necessary.“

„I actually think that it’s (harassment) quite common, just that sadly it has been normalised. When you really go and dissect what people say to you, some of these things are really a bit crass and very inappropriate, and it needs to be acknowledged that it’s not okay to say such things about women’s bodies,“ she adds.

The #MeToo movement, sparked in 2017 by revelations of disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein’s sexual misconduct, has since spread around the world.

Weinstein, 68, was jailed for 23 years in March, after being convicted of sexual assault and rape. Similar allegations have rocked key players in almost every industry from Bollywood and the Italian opera to politicians and the tech giants.

Though the movement was slow to spread in Asia, it has gained traction with Japan, India, and South Korea all seeing high profile cases.

– ‚Wall of silence‘ –

A YouGov survey found more than a quarter of women in Singapore had experienced sexual harassment but only 56 percent had reported the incidents.

However there is no specific law against it — instead such acts are covered by the Penal Code and the broader Protection from Harassment Act, for which the maximum penalty is usually six months in jail and a $5,000 fine.

And while Singapore is regarded as one of the world’s safest cities with little violent crime, cases of molestation increased more than 15 percent to 1,632 between 2010 and 2019.

Sexual assault involving penetration rose from six cases in 2016 to 13 in 2019, but the number of rapes recorded by the State Court dropped from four to two in the same period. Marital rape was only criminalised in Singapore this year.

Baey’s supporters say her revelations helped break down a wall of silence surrounding sexual misconduct in the socially conservative country.

The 24-year-old, who is studying at the prestigious National University of Singapore, took to social media last year to protest, arguing the male student who filmed her received a lenient punishment.

He was given a 12-month conditional warning by police, made to write an apology letter by the university, and suspended for a semester, according to local media.

Many feel her story has fuelled public debate on the issue, while universities have brought in measures to better protect their students.

NTU has introduced a mandatory anti-harassment online module and insisted it is taking a „zero tolerance stance“. The NUS now gives a minimum one-year suspension for serious offences and immediate expulsion for severe cases — previously they had allowed students two strikes before removing them.

Girl, Talk’s VR simulation and other digital campaigns are further breaking taboos and help give women a voice.

Student Chin Hui Shan says: „It made me realise that I face this problem.“

Quelle:

https://www.vrroom.buzz/vr-news/trends/singapore-women-use-vr-beat-sexual-harassment

9. November 2020 0 comment

Examples

Can Virtual Reality Stop Sexual Harassment Before It Starts?

Virtual reality can potentially improve the quality of sexual harassment prevention training.

Combatting sexual harassment in the workplace is no easy feat. This pervasive form of violence continues to affect the lives of women around the world. However, virtual reality might be able to change this. Although the burgeoning technology is in its infancy, it has the potential to be an effective solution for sexual harassment prevention training.

It has been over 40 years since Michelle Vinson, then a 23-year-old bank teller, sued the bank’s branch manager. The Supreme Court ruled in her favor, stating that sexual harassment was a form of discrimination that violated her civil liberties. Still, we hear about the same abuses to this day. From government officials to Hollywood superstars, sexual harassment continues to be a pervasive problem in society.

Could virtual reality be the systemic solution we need for this systemic problem?

The Effectiveness of Sexual Harassment Training

Research shows that 45% of female employees in technical fields have reported sexual harassment in the workplace. Around 35% of women in the US corporate scene have experienced it at some point in their careers. In the same survey, 98% of the companies that were surveyed had sexual harassment policies. However, only 32% of women from these companies feel that inappropriate behaviors are addressed efficiently.

Currently, preventive training solutions include HR-led programs and digital resources from videos, slideshows, and texts. Burgeoning technologies such as virtual reality might deliver more effective results. Since VR is an immersive technology, it has the capacity to show its users first-hand experiences of sexual harassment. Compared to ordinary videos, VR headsets produce a visceral feeling of being in an uncomfortable circumstance.

Simply put, VR creates empathetic experiences. Users feel similar emotional responses that victims of sexual harassment feel in a real-life setting.

How VR Improves Sexual Harassment Training

Regatta VR is an example of a VR training initiative aimed at sexual harassment prevention. It leverages the technology’s immersive properties to mimic real-life scenarios of discrimination and harassment. The company hopes to make HR realize that sexual harassment training isn’t merely a box-ticking exercise.

“Sexual harassment training in the workplace has to be about more than checking boxes or dealing with incidents to be effective,” Regatta VR told us in a statement. “It needs to focus on prevention, on starting a conversation about how men and women can work productively together.”

In the Party Gone Wrong module, users see life from the eyes of a woman. They follow the perspectiveof a female employee after a company event. There, a male co-coworker appears to be too aggressive and intimidating. She reaches out to another male colleague who then helps her out of that situation. Throughout the program, the perspective shifts from the female employee to the second male co-worker. In doing so, trainees learn how to respond appropriately to the aggressor.

Another module puts trainees in the shoes of a supervisor. In this scenario, an employee tells you that your boss just hit on her, prompting you to think about how to resolve the issue. Do you inform HR? Confront your boss? Although the victim is female, the perspective is gender-neutral. This scenario presents a common issue in the workplace. Employees report incidents of harassment. However, companies often fail to respond to it. This module teaches supervisors the importance of building trust, as well as gathering information about the incident.

What to Expect in Future Modules

Currently, their module centers on the female perspective. They do, however, plan on adding more scenarios in the future. They’ve partnered with Indiana University Kinsey Institute to make sure the content they create is valid and relevant.

According to Bill West, founder and CEO of Regatta VR, they’ve yet to create scenarios wherein the male is the victim. But they might at some point.

Can Virtual Reality Prevent Sexual Harassment in the Workplace?

There’s very little research on the effectiveness of sexual harassment prevention training. Since VR initiatives are fairly new, we don’t know for sure how it will change the workplace environment. One thing is for sure: it’s up to organizational leaders to test initiatives such as virtual reality. Only then will we know if VR can prevent sexual harassment.

Quelle:

https://www.virtualrealitypulse.com/edition/daily-oculus-microsoft-2019-10-09?open-article-id=11728683&article-title=can-virtual-reality-stop-sexual-harassment-before-it-starts-&blog-domain=arpost.co&blog-title=arpost

15. Oktober 2019 0 comment