Indonesia: A guide for women journalists subject to sexual abuse

Results of an Association of Indonesian Journalists (AJI) 2022 research on "Sexual Violence against Indonesian Female Journalists" has shown that 82.6 percent of the respondents admitted that they had experienced sexual violence throughout their journalistic careers. AJI has published a guide in March 2023 to support women journalists who are subject of sexual abuse.

Copyright AJI

"Not many victims of sexual violence dare to speak out. Even if they dare to speak out, sometimes the cases stop halfway because there are no specific regulations in the press company to handle cases of sexual violence. Not to mention, if the perpetrator has a higher position such as a senior at work to a resource person who has a position such as an official or minister", said Sasimito, Chief of AJI.

Sexual harassment (occurring offline and online) consists in sexually offensive or derogatory comments, body shaming (ridicule/negative comments about body shape), sexual and explicit text messages and audio-visuals, as well as catcalling (sexual harassment through verbal expressions in public places). Meanwhile, sexual assault (occurring only offline) consists of experiencing unwanted sexual physical touch, being forced to
touch or serve the perpetrator's sexual desires, and being forced to have sexual intercourse.

According to a research conducted by PR2Media and AJI from September to October 2022 among 852 female journalists from 34 provinces in Indonesia,  82.6% (704) of respondents said they had experienced sexual violence throughout their journalistic careers.

Of the 852 respondents, 57.2% said that their office did not yet have a standard operating procedure (SOP) to deal with sexual violence against female journalists.

AJI has developed a guide to assist newsrooms in developing SOP for handling sexual violence including key principles and mechanisms to support the victims.

For more information, please contact IFJ on +32 2 235 22 16

The IFJ represents more than 600,000 journalists in 146 countries

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