What makes streets safer for women and girls to walk?
Having a safe city or community for women and girls means safety everywhere – online, in their homes, and on the streets of their town.
Data shows that many women and girls do not feel safe walking the streets at night, including being physically active at nighttime. As we improve our cities and towns, we need to ensure that Queensland places are the safest they can be, well ahead of the 2032 Brisbane Olympics and Paralympic Games, and for a long-lasting legacy.
Register to attend an online presentation of findings: women's nighttime walk
Date: February 6th, 2024 (Placeholder)
Topic: Dr Laurel Johnson, University of Queensland, Zonta Brisbane and Queensland Walks will report back on the pilot project ‘Women’s nighttime walk’ held at Southbank in August in conjunction with Arup and Southbank Corporation during Queensland Walks Month 2023.
In this presentation we will explore:
- Pilot project purpose
- Survey design
- Location and survey findings
- Next steps and applying this work to new Queensland locations.
A Retrospective: Women’s Nighttime Walk pilot
Through a partnership between Zonta Club of Brisbane and Queensland Walks and in collaboration with the University of Queensland and Southbank Corporation we are highlighting the need for safe streets for women and girls piloting the process for collection of valuable citizen science data in a first series of night walks in Brisbane called the Safe Cities Night Walk on 10 August, 2023.
Our aim is to focus on safety for women and girls in the public realm – at transport hubs, in the streets of our town including neighbourhoods and urban hubs such as South Bank and the CBD – so they can be safe to walk where they want.
The best way to understand a place is to walk and talk to the community who live there. That’s why we are doing a series of Night Walks with local communities to understand experience of local place at night, and what is needed to create more inclusive and safe public spaces.
This walk will lead to future facilitated walks with planning experts and professionals partnering for change including global design consultants Arup and its experts on designing spaces for women will help to ensure that we design safe public spaces through urban tactics such as lighting design.
Take action and register for Safe Cities Night Walk on August 10 with a 5.30pm start to walk 6pm-8pm at South Bank Brisbane. [Registrations now closed.]
Queensland Walks is proud to partner with the Zonta Club of Brisbane. Zonta is an international group with thousands of members all working to build a better world for women and girls. We are everywhere – clubs in 63 countries around the world! We are advocates. We tackle the tough issues such as domestic violence, child marriage and the right for girls to be educated.
Why Zonta? We take action to build a better world for women and girls – where women’s rights are human rights and every woman is able to achieve her full potential.
Cities for Women and Girls Research
- https://zontabrisbane.org.au/advocacy/older-women-housing-boost/https://www.arup.com/projects/perceptions-of-night-time-safety-women-and-girls
- https://www.arup.com/news-and-events/making-sydney-safer-for-women-and-girls
- https://www.arup.com/perspectives/shaping-the-female-city
- https://www.arup.com/perspectives/a-city-for-women-not-just-the-default-male
