How organizers are addressing sexual violence in movement spaces

This article How organizers are addressing sexual violence in movement spaces was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

When Dolores Huerta came out about the abuse she suffered from Cesar Chavez, Jenna Peters-Golden was not that surprised, because they had seen similar situations before. “I feel sadness, of course, for all individuals who are impacted by sexual violence, but I also feel a lot of grief at how much weaker and fragmented our movements and and wins can be because of the role that sexual violence plays inside of that,” Peters-Golden said.

When Peters-Golden was involved in the anti-Iraq War movement as a high school and college student, they both witnessed and experienced sexual violence and harassment, and saw how little recourse there was. Organizers they knew who had experienced sexual assault or misogyny felt like they had to chose whether to leave a campaign or commit to tolerating a culture that normalized those things.

Peters-Golden knew that there needed to be a change, and as a survivor, they wanted to be part of the solution. They got involved in Philly Stands Up, a transformative justice organization that aimed to hold accountable people who perpetrate sexual violence and abuse in movement and activist spaces. 

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Within movements, there is sub-movement to address sexual harm in organizing spaces. Many people who have done this work, including Peters-Golden, say a culture of putting the cause above oneself, or not wanting to make the movement look bad, results in movements becoming spaces rife with abuse. However, there are people who are working to empower survivors, keep organizers safe and hold perpetrators accountable through concrete and actionable steps.

Ana Avendaño, a visiting assistant professor at the City University of New York School of Law who has worked with the labor movement, is one of those working to prevent sexual violence and harassment in movements. She got into the work during the #MeToo movement, when she saw union men being exposed for sexual harassment and then uncovered union staff and leaders harassing workers at a labor-adjacent nonprofit she oversaw, which employed mostly women.

“I began to really study this, because I was shocked that a movement whose mission is to protect workers was allowing the kind of behavior that I saw happen — which was sexual harassment and abuse of young women,” Avendaño said. “The labor movement fights very hard against sexual harassment when it is being perpetrated by employers on the outside, but when they themselves as employers are enabling harassment, then it becomes taboo to talk about it.”

Now, she works to change the culture in organizing spaces to prevent sexual harm. She encourages unions and other nonprofit organizations to rethink the systems that are in place and put in new systems that don’t allow harassment to happen.

Reforming a culture

Avendaño stressed that understanding and reforming the culture of a group is key to preventing sexual violence and harassment.

While a lot has changed since the days that some unions wouldn’t even allow a charter for women workers, some of that male-centered culture remains and is a main driver of harassment, she said. Men still speak over women at meetings, appropriate their ideas and are celebrated as superstars for doing the exact same work that women do — sometimes less. Then there are the more overt examples — like an elected labor leader who, when asked about room accommodations on a business trip, told his staff that he preferred a “cheeseplate, wine and twins,” Avendaño said.

Meanwhile, organizers are taught to put “la causa,” or the cause, before their own personal needs or experiences.

“The culture demands silence, because when people raise issues of internal abuse, what we hear is it’s not the right time, the movement is under attack,” Avendaño said. “That leaves women and other marginalized people very vulnerable to abuse, because they know that either whatever complaints they raise are not going to be heard or they will be shunned for raising a complaint. This is a system that has existed for decades.”

In many cases, Avendaño added, those who do speak up find that their careers are over. 

“That’s the opposite of what the movement should be about,” Avendaño said. 

Avendaño does consulting work with nonprofit and organizing groups trying to transform their culture to prevent sexual harassment and abuse. One tool she uses and recommends is a climate assessment. First, she spends time with a nonprofit or organizing group and speaks with workers to get a sense of whose voice is heard or ignored. Based on what she hears, she creates a large questionnaire to identify points that make up a culture, seeking to understand, “What are the unwritten rules? What are the norms? Who gets resources, who is valued, who gets punished, who doesn’t, who gets away with stuff?” 

After reviewing the responses, she works with leaders and staff to develop systems that address the main issues raised. Solutions can include setting up independent reporting systems, codes of conduct with real accountability, investigations grounded in restorative justice principles and, importantly, education for employees to learn to stand up for each other and challenge harmful norms. 

Peters-Golden said that it is important everyone in the group contributes to reforming the culture. When it was active from 2005 to 2015, Philly Stands Up did transformative justice work to support activist communities in Philadelphia by helping survivors regain agency and changing the behavior of perpetrators. 

“That requires a commitment from every single member that ‘I’m not going to laugh at that sexist joke; I’m not going to normalize or think it’s okay for us to go get drunk after we canvass and be inappropriate with a field organizer; we won’t give each other passes about flirting with or trying to build relationships with new, young organizers who are coming into spaces,’” Peters-Golden said.

Rethinking leadership structures

One problem with organizational culture can be blind loyalty to a leader “who is equated with the cause,” as in the case of Chavez, Avendaño said.

Peters-Golden agrees that it is important to rethink leadership in organizing and union spaces.

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“When there’s a culture where sexual violence is normalized, especially when leaders are getting away with it  … there’s something really important for us as movements to think about in terms of how we relate to leadership,” Peters-Golden said.

They said that a crucial element is to have channels for feedback to leaders and to have peer-based, rather than hierarchical, relationships within the organization. This is positive for leaders as well, they said.

“Supporting their leadership involves giving feedback: saying that something isn’t okay when we know it’s not okay, ensuring that there are actually expectations about behavior and consequences when anyone, including some of our brightest and most charismatic leaders, don’t live up to agreements or values that hold our movements together,” Peters-Golden said.

Additionally, Avendaño said that there need to be more women in power, especially people who have been personally impacted. However, she said that is not enough, and men also need to be part of the solution.

Amy Livingston, director of the Labor Education Service at the University of Minnesota Carlson School of Management, who also has a background in organizing and works directly with union organizers to prevent sexual violence and harassment within unions and unionized workplaces, agrees, and says that it’s especially important for men to step up in spaces where women are a minority.

“I don’t think that women and gender minorities need to wait for men to get on board, but I do think it makes sense for a union or a worker center to invest in this kind of education to help men understand,” Livingston said. “For the most part, cisgender men often need a little bit more hand holding to get to the point where they understand why gender-based violence at work is something they should care about, even if it doesn’t impact them directly.”

Worker-led solutions

Avendaño suggests that movement groups and unions can look to successful worker-led efforts to prevent harassment and build empowerment on the job, and apply those lessons to organizing spaces.

When Livingston works with survivors of workplace harassment and sexual abuse, she helps them to get justice and regain safe working conditions, and when it comes to those who caused harm, she ensures a fair investigation was done into their misconduct.

“I really prefer teaching about how workers can regain some control over their workplaces through organizing … against gender-based violence, instead of just being in the position of a victim who’s like looking to the police or some outside agency for support,” Livingston said.

She has also conducted in-depth research and interviews to develop bystander intervention training curriculum for members of unions to intervene and deescalate a situation before it escalates to gender-based or sexual violence. She said it is important to build spaces where co-workers can support and trust each other so they have someone to confide in if something happens.

Similarly, Avendaño said that the SEIU-USWW janitorial union in Los Angeles adopted a peer education model of “by the people for the people,” inspired by the promotora model of health care outreach in Latine communities. Members are trained to talk to each other, recognize sexual harassment and understand how to intervene in those situations through a restorative lens by interrupting behaviors. The union also successfully organized in support of a California law mandating that cleaning services pay for worker- and survivor-led anti-harassment trainings.

Additionally, Avendaño points to the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, which has created a robust, quasi-judicial system where workers can file complaints to be heard by tribunals of farm workers, which practically eliminated sexual harassment in the fields.

“Those examples are inspiration that movements need to acknowledge and use as blueprints, start to build from that or come up with others, but also recognize that there is an internal structural problem is the first step,” Avendaño said.

This article How organizers are addressing sexual violence in movement spaces was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

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Source: https://wagingnonviolence.org/2026/04/organizers-addressing-sexual-violence/