Maria Rodó de Zárate, postdoctoral researcher in Gender and ICT, presented the results of a project entitled “Is it my street? Power, fear and young women’s strategies of empowerment in a hostile public space”. The study is funded by Emakunde, the Basque Institute for Women, aimed to analyze young women’s perception of fear in the public spaces in the Basque Country. Through participatory techniques and a feminist theory perspective, the project has explored the experiences and practices of young women as well as the roles and behaviors of men.

In an open event held in Bilbao on 5th July, Maria Rodó de Zárate and Jordi Estivill Castany offered the conclusions of the research and discussed the individual and collective strategies to face fear and sexist harassment in the nightlife spaces. In addition to analyzing the consequences that having a feminist perspective implies for women’s empowerment, they underlined that fear perception is a form of oppression in itself that constrains the free access of women to the public space.