 Fy am iddo wrth being Pardon. The second meeting of the Young Women Leave committee. It is a very unique Committee that the Parliament is supporting in partnership with Young Women's Leave, which is a leadership project that 38 young women right across Scotland are taking part in. Some are on the table, and others are with us in the public gallery at the back. Today's session will run until approximately 12.25, and may I welcome those who're watching online. ddim yn fawr i'r ffordd i gael i'r ffordd ar y Rhwyng Nhaertydd. Mae ymgyrchu ymddig i Llyfrgell yn Ffèl iawn i ddweud am y cyfle hwnnw, a dwi'n gweithio cyfnodd fel hynny o'r rhaglen cyffredinol yn fawr, wrth i ddweud o'r ffordd i ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud. in their communities around the country to hear the voices and experiences of young women in school. At today's meeting, we'll be hearing the results of that work, and I am very pleased to welcome our first panel, who will tell us about the online survey that they undertook. That's Katrina Carter and Alexandra Stevens, and I would invite you to make some opening remarks of up to 10 minutes, please. Thank you very much. Overall, our survey received some really, really good, thoughtful responses, and it was full of lots of really well-structured comments as well. It confirmed a lot of the ideas that we discussed in the last committee, and it also brought forward a few new ideas that we hadn't thought of ourselves. An overview of the responses that we had for the pupils survey, we had 104 responses, and for the staff survey, we had 63 responses. On the demographics of the survey that we had, one of the big focus of the survey was to get responses from people who were living in rural areas, and that worked really, really well. We got 47 per cent of our responses from rural areas, which we were really happy about. On the rest of the demographics that we had a breakdown of, we had 62 people who said that they identified as being quite Scottish. 61 per cent of our responses said that they saw themselves as being straight. 16 per cent saw themselves as being batasexual, and 7 per cent saw themselves as being lesbians. On the staff demographics that we had, we had, again, quite a decent rural response. 29 per cent viewed themselves as coming from rural areas. 65 per cent saw themselves as being quite Scottish, and 81 per cent viewed themselves as straight. On the overall summary that we had of responses, it was broken down into the four themes that we discussed in the last committee section. Some of our survey responses moved on to theme 1. They viewed that the behaviour of the groups, which were most commonly seen to be harasserers, was often explained away as being part of lad culture. The most common age group that reviewed as being sexual harasserers were boys aged between 11 and 15. That was often seen as being a product of societal norms and the fact that it was almost expected that boys of that age behaved in that way. The largest reason given for that behaviour was a lack of education on their behalf, which is something that we will touch on a little bit later. Again, that has been a product of an education system that does not equip its staff or pupils adequately to confront that behaviour. Those were responses that we were given in the first section of the survey, and those were the consistent themes that kept coming up. As a result, what we saw to be happening was the psychon continuing of behaviour going on challenge and unpunished, and then it just becomes expect and normalised. We also found that pupils felt quite strongly that they did not feel comfortable discussing sexual harassment with staff. On the other hand, staff felt very comfortable discussing instances of sexual harassment with pupils. 63 per cent of pupils said that they would not feel comfortable discussing an instance of sexual harassment with staff, whereas 77 per cent of staff said that they would feel comfortable discussing an instance of sexual harassment with pupils, iawn i'w ddiogel yn fach o'r ffordd, ac mae'n gwybod i ddechrau bod eich cymdeithasol yng ngyfrifiadau a chyfrifiadau yma yn 14-15, ac i wnaeth i'w ddiogel yn wedi cymdeithasol am d資 culturen neu amdegwyd o'i ddefnyddio'r ddychel. Wyddo'n ddefnyddio bod roi'n ddefnyddio'r ddimen i ddefnyddio'r ddefnyddio'r ddychel er mwyn i'r llun pan wnaeddaeth gael ddimen i'w ddiogel i ddychel. Blwyddyn, mai in получится i ddigit verticala ffemiliaig talud hynny y dymedlu a byddwch ynWhen апresweld Ion1 ka bowtul pob wahab feddwl ohywr, mae pob bydd wedi cyfrwain fel gwasanaeth amser a dingi Official Office, nu aww.] Diolch i acronymu �ا phryd yn cyframeiant nifer o bobl o baith, spinol ac beth ddynteg, ond mor embid hyung ar hynion laen. got it out of the incidents, but both groups felt that the curriculum needs improving included issues surrounding consent and respect in relationships. That's an area in which we saw a strong link in the misogynistic and problematic behaviour that is manifesting in the young men that we are talking about right now. We also found that over all, teenagers were quite savvy when identifying instances of sexual harassment, so about 70 per cent of them identified instances correctly, even in its more well-disguised forms. Teachers were good at identifying instances of sexual harassment themselves, but they didn't give pupils as much credit as they deserved when identifying instances of sexual harassment, so 40 per cent of staff thought that pupils would misidentify instances of sexual harassment, which indicates that perhaps discussions around sex education might be too simplistic, and we should focus more on nuanced issues surrounding relationships rather than just the bare bones of safe sex. As young people are entering into relationships at a much younger age than the curriculum facilitates for, it's essentially failing because it's not designed to be appropriate or relevant for its audience. In terms of next steps, which was probably the largest focus in part of the survey, we got a lot of qualitative answers for this section of the survey, and there were a lot of really, really good ideas. Some of those were brought forward in our last committee session, but there were also some new responses that we found really, really interesting. In terms of next steps, what pupils really wanted to see was to have a trained, named contact in school with whom they could go to about issues, so 90 per cent of the pupils that we spoke to said that that was something that would really, really help them. They wanted this person to be someone who was specifically trained and specifically equipped to give advice, so not even necessarily to give advice on the prosecution or on the reprimands of the offenders themselves, but just advice in terms of how they go about dealing with these instances and how to negotiate them in a school setting. From staff, there is an 84 per cent response rate of support for this as well. What staff interestingly said about this was that what they wanted to see more of was not necessarily an individual contact but just lots of different contacts within school that could be trained in these issues, so pupils had more than one place to go to, so it wasn't just a case of having one person, it was a case of having lots and lots of different people in school that pupils could go to with this. Interestingly enough, another few responses often said that this wasn't the place of teachers and that they wanted a specific trained person to come in from the outside, so that's obviously an area for discussion moving forward, but that was something that I, that we certainly found to be quite interesting. There is also a great deal of support for there to be a safe space in school, so staff supported this idea a lot more than pupils necessarily did, so 94 per cent of staff were in support of this being something to be brought into school or at least trialled. Of course, there was a call that the entire school environment should be a safe space, however, obviously having a specially set out safe environment for girls or for those wanting to go into is something that was viewed as being really important. There was also an overwhelming sense from staff that they didn't receive the training or support that they need to discuss those issues effectively with their young people. From staff, there was a lot of focus about wanting policy or legal advice to discuss those issues because they don't know where they stand in terms of what advice they can give, and that was certainly their call. A few people's noses wanting specific policy changes, but it was more staff who kind of wanted to know their rights and their grounds for which they can give advice and exactly how they can support. This was echoed by pupils, and they wanted to know their rights more in terms of how they report instance and who those reports would go to. A lot of people's voices didn't just want their parents to be notified right away—that was something that was quite a big concern to them. They wanted to know that their reports would be made in a confidential environment. Staff also cited the importance of education being cross-curricular and having a way to engage pupils with it. Things that they suggested were workshops and community or parental involvement. What they meant by it being cross-curricular was that it didn't want it just to be focused on sex education, but it wanted to be something that was across the entire curriculum so that it wasn't undermined in other areas of the school. That links into the whole-school approach that we were discussing in the last committee session. Overall, the key themes that emerged were that there needs to be an overall overall of the whole education system for pupils and specifically for the training of staff, with a focus on it being inclusive, relevant and robust to investigate an attitude change and cultural shift within the education sector. In order for this to be effective, staff need to be supported with the appropriate policies and models to ensure that they can provide solid advice and education to their pupils. Thank you very much. That was extremely interesting to me. I'm sure that it was to everyone else. I'm sure that there are many questions. If you indicate to us, we will try to accommodate you. I would like to ask the witnesses about what the incidences of sexual harassment as relating to race, gender and sexuality within the online survey. We found, surprisingly, that there was not a huge amount where people felt that it was relating to sexuality. I will touch on the other issues in a second. 56 per cent of pupil responses believed that sexual harassment was most commonly targeted at heterosexual people. 25 per cent believed that it was targeted at homosexual people and only 3 per cent at bisexual. Other respondents indicated that there was often no preference or that sexuality was sometimes unknown. In terms of it being related to transgender individuals, there again wasn't a huge amount of data about that. It was only around 1 per cent that identified that as being an issue. Again, it was indicated as being uncommon for sexual harassment to have a same sex element, so 59 per cent of respondents disagreed with that as being an important factor. In terms of there being a racial element, there was a slightly larger response to that. 34 per cent of responses thought that that appeared to contribute. In terms of staff and what they felt about that, 50 per cent of those responses said that it was directed at heterosexual individuals. 28 per cent of them believed that it was targeted at homosexuals, but they often indicated that sexuality was unknown or not believed to be a factor. Staff deemed it fairly common for harassment to be directed at individuals of the same sex, so 29 per cent believed that. 36 per cent felt that that was not a key factor, so that was an overall summary of what we found. Again, it was a similar response in terms of there being a racial element, so 33 per cent of staff deemed that there to be a racial element in harassment, but 36 per cent believed that that was not to be a key factor. You mentioned that 63 per cent of people were unhappy to speak to staff about those issues. Did they give any specific or overriding reasons as to why that was the case? The survey was worded. It was more that they just felt uncomfortable, so people felt uncomfortable speaking to a member of staff about a sexual or intimacy issue. 63 per cent also said that they were not confident in staff's ability to answer, so it was a comfort and a confidence thing that we found being the most prolific factors there. We did identify that as an area where there could be further research. Pupils were too enthusiastic about the idea of a safe space to go when you are experiencing any of those issues. Did you get any indication of what that might be, if there was any stigma around that idea? Where are pupils voiced? I want for a safe space. They were very keen for it, but I think that where pupils were most focused on was getting unnamed contact in school. That might well tie into being connected to having a safe space in terms of this person also representing a safe space to go to discuss that. It might have been a miscommunication on our behalf. We may not have articulated it well enough to say that a safe physical is, for example, a room to go into rather than just a metaphorical safe space. That was the response that we had, whereas staff in particular viewed this more as a lunchtime group or something. It was perhaps a miscommunication in terms of what it meant. Is it on this particular point? I'll come back to you, Zoe. Moving forward, if we were going to make recommendations at the next meeting from your findings, what would be the key elements that we want to cover in a training session that we could offer to staff that would touch on the key things that we want the students to be taking away? What was quite important was teaching staff and the ability to use inclusive language to make lots of different groups feel comfortable to bring their issues and ideas forward. It links into the whole safe space in terms of pupils knowing that staff are able to discuss those issues in a way that is inclusive, safe and relevant. Use of language is something that came up. From a staff point of view, the focus was really on policy. It was in terms of knowing exactly what rights they have within school to help a pupil to what degree they feel they can give advice and what advice they can give. We got the impression that staff did not necessarily know where the line was in terms of what they could report that would have to then be taken further and what could be reported in terms of what we can then give advice from that. For staff, it was definitely policy, but for pupils it was more of a use of inclusive language and just knowing that the staff have the knowledge to help them. Alex Andrews Sorry, can I just add? There seemed to be a general assumption among staff that pupils were not as educated in sexual relationships as they are. For staff to be able to recognise that pupils are entering sexual relationships from a younger age and experiencing the nuances of sexual harassment and sexual relationships at a much younger age, there might be more of an open discussion around it. As I said, not just sticking to the bare bones of this is sexual health, this is what you need to do to protect yourself, etc. Follow-up, Zoe? You talked about the value of looking at relationships, as opposed to specifically the sexual element of them. Do you have anything from the data that would be… Do we have any key principles? Do we have any essential areas where people are lacking knowledge that we can go and do further research into? The first question that we asked when we talked about that topic was how do you feel discussing relationships or intimacy with a partner? It is more about discussing the emotional intelligence relating to our relationship. Where pupils felt that the current curriculum was strongest was in terms of discussing contraception. That was what we referred to as the bare bones of sexual relationships. It is more about respect and consent, etc. That is what we felt the education system should focus on. I can fit in a quick question, Mina, if you still wish to ask it. I wanted to ask if you found any information on differences with young women and girls living in rural areas. Unfortunately, that was not something that came through too strongly in the data. Although we did have a very good split, a few of the comments when we were looking at the data at the end of the survey, girls from rural areas certainly did not feel that they had the access to the resources that they needed. That was certainly something that came up. Again, there was just an overwhelming sense that the education that they were getting provided with and the resources that they had access to just were not appropriate for what they needed. Overwhelmingly, there was just a sense of that throughout all of the responses. Although it is probably more problematic for those coming from our rural backgrounds in terms of the physical and logistical access to that support, it was just something that was consistent throughout all of the responses. I am going to ask our deputy convener to do a quick summary of what we have heard. I think that it is clear that there is a will from school staff and young people to come up with positive and workable solutions to those problems. Thank you for giving your thoughts on that. Thank you, deputy convener, and thank you very much to our panel. That was fascinating and a great start to today's meeting. I suspend briefly to allow that change of witnesses. Welcome to our second panel this morning, who will be discussing the online campaign that they have been running over the past month. Welcome, Eleanor Soper and Katie Williams. Please give us your introductory remarks. Thank you, convener. When we designed the social media campaign, we went in with the intention of highlighting awareness of the survey and the focus groups that we would be running, and we also decided that it would be really important to have people share their personal stories. As we have seen on the back of things such as the Me Too campaign, this kind of personal sharing creates a really big impact and highlights issues within our society. So what we did initially was we set about and got personal testimonials from people within our own peer groups in order to make these into infographics, and we also took evidence from the First Committee session and created those into infographics as well in order to raise awareness of our campaign, and Katie is going to go in now and tell you about the things that we found. By 23 March, we finalised the campaign and the content that we were going to share. Overall, Twitter performed better—was the better performing platform—as every post received interaction at some point, with seven posts being shared over ten times or more. Logo one was retweeted 40 times and shared on Facebook 17 times, which says the YWL committee needs you. It's time to expel violence against women and girls in school. Raise awareness and share your story using our hashtag that we created at Scotland School VAWG. The prominent accounts that shared it were North Lancanshire Council, Orkney Rape Crisis, Mindwaves, Maureen Watt MSP, Shetland Rape Crisis, East Ayrshire, Perot Network Scotland, Chloe White MSYP and Dandy Council. Our second most popular received 40 retweets and it was promoting focus groups within Scotland that showed the times and places. The post said to join the conversation about sexual harassment in schools at one of our focus groups. The infographic that stated girl's attitudes of age 2017 found that 24 per cent of respondents felt enabled to engage in sports school due to sexual harassment. That was shared on Twitter 14 times and was shared on Facebook four times. The prominent figures who interacted with that were Kirsty Strickland, Rape and Sexual Assault Centre Perth and Kinross, Fife and Rape Sexual Assault Centre and also Cricaldi. We used the hashtag in accordance to Transvisibility Day to help promote our campaign and that one was shared 12 times on Twitter and gained a strong reaction from prominent individuals. That was including Shetland Rape Crisis, Volunteer Glasgow, Ocney Rape Crisis, RGU Gender Equality and Feminism Society and John Bell and Christine McKelvie. Ten out of the 21 of the content that was included of the surveys and encouraging people to share their experience averaged around four retweets on Twitter. As in terms of the responses, six of the stories that were shared on Twitter in comparison from two on Facebook, four came from the Young Women's Leadership Committee, two members from outside the committee shared their own responses as well. We discovered that although the tweets in Facebook posts were popular online, we were lacking people giving the responses directly to us. Therefore, we created a form where people can share their experience anonymously by just putting a little experience or sharing their story on there. From that, we gained 11 responses, which we deemed successful. One of the members from the RGU Feminist Society shared their story of feeling humiliated after being harassed at school. They said, "'I personally experienced this throughout secondary school both in Tonsnia and in Britain. It was embarrassing and you personally felt ridiculed when they would go for you. You couldn't stop them because it was betrayed as funny and you just don't know how to take a joke. It got to the point where they would unhook my bra. How is that okay? Make it known that this ridiculous and harassing act is not funny and should never be accepted. Teach your children not to invade anyone's personal space and to certainly never subject any girl to this humiliating experience. Change the way people perceive normalised acts of harassment." There were more experiences of girls feeling embarrassed or bullied than actual sexual violence. From our responses, we had sex relating to sexual harassment. One said, "'I had to walk to the canteen to get my locker. Every time I passed a group of sixth year boys who somehow found my phone number, they would text me messages like, "'I can see your pants. You shouldn't be wearing a thong. I'd love to see more.'" One that relates to the feeling of humiliation came from another anonymous ascender. She said, "'When I was 14, a guy who fancied me made up a rumour that my boyfriend gave me oral sex at school. The Asian kids at school were all friends so the rumour spread quickly. I was terrified of my older brother finding out. The rumour put a strain on my relationship and affected a lot of my friendships.'" A response through Chote came from a woman who told her experience of sexual harassment at school. She said that, "'I remember in primary school the boys had shiny shoes. He only wanted to dance with the girls who were wearing skirts at the disco. I remember an adult making jokes about how back in their days boys tied mirrors to their shoes so they could see up the girl's skirt. Upskirting is not new.'" Through our social media campaign, it was seen and supported from a lot of other organisations that also used our hashtag and included others of their own. There are a range of accounts that showed continual support, as they liked and shared many of our tweets and contained the hashtag ScotScoreVAWG. One that we would like to give a mention to are to the Orkney rape crisis and gender, Shetland rape crisis, White Ribbon Scotland and Glasgow's Women's Library. MSPs and councillors including Kim Long, Christine McElvie, Maureen Watt and John Bell also shared our tweets. We received a tweet from PGRN Scotland who raised awareness on their own. We received a lot of retweets, but some people who we had contacted prior to the launch of the social media campaign put out their own tweets in support of it. PGRN Scotland tweeted that this is a great initiative to make the problem of VAWG visible in our society, help young women in Scotland to raise awareness by sharing your story of VAWG in schools so that we can all address this together. Orkney rape crisis, which we are also very heavily involved in, used the hashtag on multiple occasions. One tweet sharing that gender-based violence is happening in Scottish schools and Young Women's Scot wants to hear the experiences of both staff and pupils. We also had two other prominent tweets that featured the focus groups in Orkney, which were really important as we were keen to make sure that we were hearing from those in rural areas. Prior to the launch of the campaign, we contacted all of the local authorities in Scotland as well as every elected official, as well as charities that dealt with young people and feminist issues, sexual harassment issues. Companies such as North Lanarkshire Council, Shetland rape crisis, Zero Tolerance, the RGU, Feminist and Equality Society and Children in Scotland also treated their own posts to help to promote the survey and to get people involved in our campaign. We also sent out a press release and there were articles written about the campaign in Hollywood Magazine, Glasgow Live, Third Force News and Common Space. Those articles were shared by people such as James Dornan MSP and Ian Welsh OBE. Those reached quite a wide audience, which was especially helped by being featured in Engenders Friday Feminist 5 publication that goes out every week. We are happy to answer any questions that you have. Yes, who would like to kick us off? I think that you have stunned everyone with all this. Based on the lessons that you have learned in the social media campaign, if we were going to do research for recommendations on a sex ed update, what would be the lessons learned that you would want to apply? What are the key mediums that we would focus on if we had some funding? Obviously, like Katie said, the best platform that we used was Twitter, which is the most interaction and storytelling, the most visibility. We would probably highlight a lot more on Twitter with that. We used promotion on both Twitter and Facebook, so we spent some money promoting those to make sure that they were appearing on people's feeds. I think that the most successful part of the campaign was the fact that people were taken to the survey. I think that that was really important in making sure that we were getting that really good data from this, where story sharing obviously serves a great purpose in highlighting just why this issue is so important. Getting those recommendations from the survey was something that we felt really strongly that we needed to make sure was happening. Hannah Dynlitha. That may not be the data that you have, but in terms of the organisations that promoted and shared the campaign, did you find that there was a geographical pattern? Was it more rural or more urban areas? Were there any regions that were particularly engaged with it? No. We had the most interaction from urban-based charities. Obviously, they are charities such as Gender Zero Tolerance, which have outreach programmes that go into rural areas. We didn't have as much engagement, as I guess we would have liked from rural companies, but they are much smaller companies, so it can be more difficult to do that. However, we did have postings on some of the local authority websites, which was really useful. A few high schools also shared our posts on Facebook and Twitter, some of which were in quite rural areas. I don't have the exact location now, but we did have some interaction from that, and hopefully, given that 47 per cent of the respondents of the survey, we did somehow reach those people. It is probably something for next time to reach out to more rural companies in rural towns throughout Scotland. Do either of you have a personal view on why engagement through Facebook doesn't do as well as through Twitter? I do, so I believe that it is something like the average age of a Facebook user is now in their 40s, and that is just due to the fact that, when Facebook started, it was young people that used it, and now a lot of this, so my partners and nephews are 14 and they don't have Facebook. Unfortunately, while we were reaching out to a lot of staff and parents, there weren't as many young people engaged on Facebook, which is just the state of how social media is today, so we just weren't reaching those people. We did also have quite a lot of interaction on Instagram, however, unfortunately, the way that Instagram works, we were unable to post links, so while we had the hashtag and we used all the infographics on Instagram, they weren't able to click on any links that would take them to the survey, but we do know and we had quite a large spectrum of likes on Instagram, we do know that it was reaching young people just where they went from there. We weren't able to track just because of the way that that platform works. I'm sitting here just fascinated by all of this, because I wouldn't have a clue. I post things on social media, and if one person likes it, I'm like, yeah. But I understand that there's something called reach that my staff tells me about, that if you get maybe a hundred shares or whatever, that the reach of that can be quite phenomenal. Is that something that you were able to track in any way? The posts that were getting retweets at the most, I found once you got maybe over about six, then you had about an hour of it just booming, and I was getting notifications. If I had posted it with the hashtag, I think on one of mine I got 14 retweets from one of my posts, but it was just within one hour, one person would share it, and if they had a bigger following it would expand, but I think you have a timescale with these posts. Whereas something on Instagram, because of the way that the algorithms work, even if it's posted a few hours or a day before, it will still come up on your timeline, whereas Twitter doesn't really. I think with tweets that you've got to make sure that you're posting within the same, within the certain time to make sure that you get the reach. Yeah, I'll digest some of that. Thank you, Katie. I'm sure that it's all very straightforward to the rest of you. I just find it so amazing. Yes, Meena. Related to the reach, I was wondering if you had statistics about the amount of people who've seen these posts, because I know at least on Facebook and I believe Twitter, you can see how many people have seen a post, clicked on a link, that sort of thing. We can give you that information in the report that we'll be producing, but we don't have the exact numbers of how many people have seen it. At the moment, we only have the numbers for retweets and likes, but that's certainly something that we'll be looking to get more into for the next committee meeting. Audrey. So, in the interest of wanting to reach newer audiences and people who aren't already talking about it, were you able to go into the data and qualitatively look at what proportion of the likes, responses or just general activity was coming from people who hadn't explicitly stated on their profile or from their organisation that they were working in combating violence against women and girls? How many were new or didn't have hashtag feminist on their profiles? For that one, quite a lot of the engagement that we had was from people who were already interested in the issue. The kind of most success that we have of reaching people that maybe weren't as involved was through the anonymous responses. Obviously, we don't have any way of tracking that, but through the anonymous responses, we got quite a lot of input from girls in the BME community, which we were able to assess just through what they shared. It was to do with their ethnicity, so it's something that we'll be looking into further just to see where we're reaching those people who aren't already engaged. Michelle. Is there anything that, when it comes to the next stage of this process, the reporting that you've learned from that experience that you would do differently with the social media to share the findings? Katie. Probably just try and get in contact, direct contact, with other groups, with other organisations through social media, people who aren't hashtag feminist, and just directly speak to them and say, would you be interested in learning about this and try and maybe help them, encourage them to share our campaign as well? Yes. How much participation did we have from men based on, are you able to track that at all? A lot of the people who retweeted it were organisations. We actually had quite a large interaction from White Rib and Scotland, who are a campaign of men fighting to end violence against women, so they obviously have a really large following of men, and they retweeted a number of our posts and talked about us on their feeds, so we know that we were able to reach a large male-dominated audience through them, which we're very grateful for, but in terms of likes and retweets, again, that's something that we'll get into further when we produce the reports. I was quite interested in what you said about the age profile of Facebook users now, as opposed to Twitter and Instagram and all those other things, and I wonder if Eva or Naomi or Iona had agreed with that, or did you use Facebook? Eva? I will use Facebook to look at the group chat, such as the one that we have for this, and a couple of other ones from school, but other than that, I don't look at the feed or the timelines or anything. I do. Twitter is good, and it's not as popular as platforms like Instagram and Snapchat, but it's really good, and it is used by young people as well. Ah, Naomi. I'd say that I definitely use Instagram the most, but if I'm going to talk about a serious issue or look at stuff about a serious issue, I always go on Twitter, and I'm not on Facebook, really, at all, except for those to be in the group chat with this. Iona. I am a real Facebook user. I use it more than I use Twitter, but I don't use my social media that much, so I don't really know, but I am on it. Ah, that's interesting. Can I ask our deputy convener to wrap up this session before we move on to the next one? Sure. It's been great to hear about the reach that you've had with young women across Scotland and the visibility that you've brought to this topic, as it affects us specifically in Scotland. Can we thank you as well? I'll suspend briefly to allow a change of witnesses. Welcome to our third panel. It's a large panel, so can I ask the panel that, when questions are asked, you indicate to me which of you you think is best placed to answer that particular question, and then others can perhaps come in in the back if they wish. Welcome to Faria Said, Hailey Maxwell, Erin Wembo and Emily Davis. I'm going to talk about the focus groups that have been held across the country. Our aim was to collect information on reporting sexual harassment in schools, so we managed to conduct focus groups all across Scotland in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Fort William and Kirkwall in Orkney. We collected data from a diverse group of young people from both major cities and rural Scotland. The focus groups were smaller, which allowed for fuller discussions and a safe space for women to give their opinions. We gathered data from four different ethnic backgrounds, three different sexualities and one non-binary young person. Overall, we talked to 27 people. The data was mostly from young school-aged people, but there was also a number of young adults and one teacher. Lastly, participants said that it was enjoyable and informative experience. Our focus groups were widely advertised on all social media platforms and Glasgow Live also shared an article inviting people to attend. Just to share some of our high-level findings, 91 per cent of all participants reported that sexual harassment or gender-based bullying is a problem at school, but only 50 per cent felt that there was a teacher that they could trust to tell. Some appeared concerned about creepy teachers and said that that was a barrier to reporting. 70 per cent of participants thought that ethnic minority girls experience sexual harassment more or differently to white Scottish girls, and 62 per cent of participants said the same thing for LGBT girls. 83 per cent of participants said that girls are not to blame for sexual harassment or bullying in schools, and 100 per cent said that, at times, the blame falls on girls when it shouldn't. The majority of girls had a good understanding of sexual harassment before the definition was shared. The groups that took place in the south side of Glasgow were attended by mostly ethnic minority young women who reported links with racism and sexual harassment. The school-aged girls said that many boys felt that many boys in their school were racist and that that was a contributory factor to the sexual harassment experienced by that group. It was also commented that negative stereotypes attached with black women portrayed through media imagery would perpetuate specific sexual assault and gender-based bullying for that group. The hijab-wearing women said that they perceived hijab pulling in schools as Islamophobic sexual harassment because it is essentially forcibly uncovering a girl against her will and without her consent. It is important to mention that the ethnic minority girls said that, just because they are not as open to talk about those issues, due to stigma or culture or whatever else, it does not mean that they are any less engaged or involved with the topic. I conducted the focus group in Fort William. It was attended by white Scottish young women of school age. They informed me that the group should have been larger if they were outside influences while there were less girls in attendance. The young women that did came, were incredibly excited about the experience and were really engaged. They expressed that the experience with sexual harassment was hard because of the population size of their school and the nature of the community. However, when they did attend, they wanted to learn more about sexual harassment as they no longer received any form of sexual education regarding that in school. They hadn't done so for two years and they were off to university in August and they didn't know what it was or how to say no or what it was to say no to. They joined the session and they said that they felt that it was important that their voice was being actively heard and that it was coming from a Scottish parliamentary point of view. The focus group that took place in North Cain Islands took place in Kirkwall in the local youth cafe, which is a valuable community asset and a drop-in service for young people. We were really pleased to be able to include the voices of young people in a remote island setting. We were mostly attended by white young women, including one non-binary young person. It was interesting to be able to include the experiences of misogynist and gender-based violence from a young person who was perceived as female but did not identify as such themselves. The young people expressed worries about reports of sexual harassment not being kept confidential by guidance staff, fear of being called a liar and feared exclusion or bullying from peers as a possible consequence of reporting in school. Young people were also concerned about education around the issue in school, that they felt that teachers themselves didn't understand consent or the law around consent. Young people expressed a desire for more opportunities to talk about sexual violence in gender at school and for more education on the topic. Young people felt that sexual harassment was linked to a broader culture of unrestrained online and offline bullying, which led to young people not wanting to attend school and suffering decreased academic performance. We had to strike a fine balance between collecting young people's views and being clear about confidentiality boundaries while not exposing ourselves to potential disclosures from young people. The issue of child protection meant that we felt that we had to strictly limit the boundaries of our discussion, so we used a platform called Menti, which allowed us to collect live and anonymous answers to some of the questions, as well as compile it to be able to share the high-level data with you. I am sure that there are loads of questions. I was about to shout Audrey, but you were just fixing your hair. The reasons that you alluded to about why less people attended than might have done otherwise? Based on the nature of the area that we live in and to protect the identity of the girls, I cannot fully go into that. A lot of that was due to—some of the feedback that I got after was that despite all the social media campaigns that I shared and filled in the survey, they still did not fully know what sexual harassment was. A lot of the girls that they spoke to at school expressed that as well. One of the things that we did at the beginning of the first group was that we gave a definition of sexual harassment and we discussed it, and they all said that we did not know what it was. If they did not know what it was that they were discussing about, they did not know what the first group was, so that was a bit linked to it as well. That is interesting, Farriah. Do you want to come in on that one? Just also to add that the focus groups took place over the Easter holidays, so we were not able to go into schools. Zoe is doing that eyebrow thing with me. It's I've talked a lot eyebrow, but I'm curious about the use of gatekeepers in getting access to girls. How did we use individuals in organisations in schools to have access to people? If we did, how is that successful and possibly for the future, what are some lessons learned if we were doing these focus groups again for more targeted information? I'm actually the prevention, support and advocacy work at Orkney rape crisis, so I do education around consent and sexual violence with some of the schools in Orkney, so some of the young people were known to me and I have that kind of access already, and Farriah, I don't know if you want to out yourself in where you work. I work at the Muslim Women's Resource Centre, and we have a schools project as well, but there are certain challenges with getting into schools, and it's usually around timing. I think that the approach that we did go for worked pretty well. We tried to speak to youth groups, and it was mostly just through social media that we managed to get an adequate number of girls together. It's good when you have a young person in the group who's in schools because they can speak to their friends and say, come along. There are challenges with it being school holidays and exam period, and everyone's a little bit stressed and wanting to get their exams out of the way. It's good to keep in contact and good networks with young women who have friends in school and access to other young women through groups like this. Do you like to add anything, Anna? Yeah, that's how I got my contact with a young woman that I know, and she's like, oh, I'm just starting to learn about feminism. I'd like to get involved. So that was her just entering the sphere and wanting to learn more and really engage with it. Yes, Hannah? Were there any common themes across the four different focus groups in terms of our solutions or the problems that they face? Obviously, it was quite a diverse range of places and people, so were there any commonalities? We did have a common theme around how comfortable girls were in speaking about it, and one in particular was how many girls would feel comfortable speaking to their parents about it. Every ethnic minority girl that participated said that they were either not comfortable or slightly with encouragement from a friend, and the only girls that said that they would feel very comfortable speaking to their parents were white. That's one of the themes that we had, and it's just around openness and talking about it by ethnicity. I don't know if anyone has anything to add. Yeah, just a few of the great thing about mentoring a platform that we use is that they could submit answers in a multitude of ways. They could answer the input their age or say yes or no, and they could give their own written descriptions as well. One of the things was the definition. The question was, describe what you think sexual harassment was. The most used words or the ones that came with them often were unwanted, followed by inappropriate and half that are most noted that it was both verbal and physical, so they seemed to have, whether it was before or during, they started to grasp what it was. I think that I can identify links with some of the responses that have been given by the other panels about sexual harassment linking to broader issues of bullying, racism and homophobia, and a lack of understanding across the board from school staff about how to address those issues, how to use inclusive language and to engage those groups of young people whose experiences of sexual harassment and bullying are intensified. That came out from all of our focus groups, that young people really had a desire, that their understanding of those issues and experiences were matched by the responses of the adults that they knew were the people they could go to. Everyone did know what the procedure was for reporting sexual harassment. They all said that we would go to our guidance teacher who would then potentially take it on to the police, so they understood the process but their confidence in the process was a bit varied, and it did link to those other issues. Just before I move on to Farahia here, you said something during the presentation that bothered me, which was that there was not always a confidence that would be kept confidential? Yes, I think that it is possible because potentially in In Fort William the issue might have been similar that in a small rural community there is a perception that people's lives are very transparent, whether that is true or not, whether they had been an instance of a member of staff not keeping appropriate boundaries of confidentiality or finding out whether that would happen. It is a very real fear. Issues of community exclusion or ostracisation were something that affected people's engagement with the focus groups, being seen to participate in them and to share their views on whether the perceived punishment was real or not. It was certainly something that they did worry about. I might be picked up wrong what you said before I go on to Erin and Farahia again there. I thought what you meant was that young people were a bit loath to report to a guidance teacher. Yes, yes, for the same reason, yes. For the same reason, Erin and Farahia. I was just going to jump in there because I have spoken to a lot of young women and young people in general who do not want to go to guidance teachers because there have been cases where cases have not been kept confidential. It is also a case where you go to the guidance space and people see that. They start going, why did you go to guidance, why did you go to guidance or there is a big stigma around it and it just makes young people feel uncomfortable and not wanting to report sexual harassment and bullying. Also just to mention that religion was quite an important factor. The focus groups that took place in Glasgow were mainly attended by Muslim women who all said that they would never speak about this in the house, sex is a taboo topic, there is fear of punishment and things like that and also quite differently from the results that Hailey gathered. Everyone in the Glasgow focus group said that they do not know how to report it, they did not know how to report it in school, they would not feel comfortable reporting it, they just would not know how to even go about it. Do you think that that is because of the fear that the guidance councillor would not keep it confidential and it would get back to their parents? Certainly from Glasgow that was the concern, yes. And I suppose their peers from what Erin said is a real concern. Anyone want to come in on that? I could dominate this for ages. Yes, Hailey. One of the things that did come out that I mentioned was that people felt worried that they wouldn't be believed if they were to report it, that the peers or staff that they reported to wouldn't believe them, which is something that a lot of people who have experienced sexual violence do fear of being disbelieved. It didn't really happen, it wasn't as bad as you're making it out to be, so I think that that's the reason as well that people are not very keen to report it. Is there also an issue about people being judgmental? Is that a big deal and victim blaming? Yes. We found that the study showed that 100 per cent of the respondents did feel that girls' blame was placed upon girls for experiencing sexual harassment, all of the young people thought that that was the case. That's a really interesting response. Was there any discussion in the focus groups about shaming practices perpetrated by teachers or people in positions of authority? Discussions about what people are wearing, my understanding is that in schools teachers will comment on the tightness of shirts or the shortness of skirts. I'm just curious. We just didn't include that in the questions. It wasn't really the nature. I think we could have, when we were all on the phone, trying to discuss the questions, we had a really long list and we could have gone on those areas, but I think what I hope is that we were trying to do the reporting on what it was and sticking to that kind of thing. Yes, Audrey. Were there any insightful suggestions or perhaps even wishes or desires expressed by the girls of what they would like to see, not just in terms of change but introduced to cause the positive change? One young person suggested the implementation of an anonymous way to report instances of sexual harassment to a box whereby pupils could put in a piece of card with their name and the details of the incident that would be checked by staff. That would take out the issue of having to be seen to go to the guidance base. They felt that that might be a positive change. We think that the young people really wanted more opportunities to talk about sexual harassment and sexual violence across the board. I think that everyone found that that came out of their focus group. Faria, Emily, then Erin. More education in schools. That's what came about a lot from the Glasgow ones. The girls that were currently at school and the girls that were in school not too long ago said that they didn't receive any education on even what sexual harassment is when they were at school. We asked that question in the group. The main words that came up were, how could your school make it easier? The girls said quite a few of the girls mentioned that. A few of them said that they were doing it in classifierant with male and female. Everyone is on the same page about it all, but it is raising awareness and having a discussion with everyone, not just in separate. Another thing that we discussed was teachers challenging inappropriate language. There are a lot of cases in which teachers turn a deaf ear to the inappropriate use of many words surrounding sexual violence and sexual harassment and learning about things such as feminism in schools. Having a forum to have a case where you are not told what something is but just let your mind run and that's something else that we had a conversation about, expanding your knowledge and lots of different things and interlinking it with sexual harassment and violence. There was a desire for outside agencies to come into schools to deliver training, not just from Rape Crisis Scotland but from LGBT youth and Stonewall. One young person was really keen that agencies that had expert knowledge and training on issues around gender and sexuality and perhaps again for religious and cultural issues to have organisations come in to speak to young people. In the first panel, there was again a wee bit of discussion about whether it was appropriate that the one person to report to should be a teacher, an employer in the school or someone from an outside organisation perhaps, but a named person to use that hackneyed phrase. Is that something that perhaps came through in some of the focus groups too? No, it didn't really come through, but I just think that when you've got half a wooden in a rural area, you don't have the staff capacity. It's quite an impractical thing, so I think that it's good when a few of them said at school that there are certain teachers that you feel more comfortable with. There is certainly one teacher that they would always go to to talk to, so I think that it's only fair that all teachers have the entire knowledge, it's not just one teacher, not one member of staff or everyone just knows everything, everyone's got a base knowledge, so if they don't feel comfortable with that member of staff it's the opposite sex or whatever, they could go to anyone that they feel comfortable with. Just to highlight again how different the results were based on what city the focus group was in, from Glasgow the named person did come up as a suggestion, particularly because from those focus groups it was reported that they didn't have anyone they felt comfortable speaking to, so yes that was a suggestion there. Interesting. Any other questions? No? Oh yes, Lisa, coming in at the last minute. I just wanted to ask Faria, and you mentioned that a lot of the young women you spoke to reported racism from boys in their school. Did they indicate at all how comfortable they would feel reporting racist behaviour? Was there any difference between the sexual harassment element or just the general things that they're having to deal with? One of them was my little sister, so just personally I do know about some of the incidents that happened in their school, and her and her group of friends are quite comfortable to report racist behaviour. I'm not sure about anyone out with that circle, but to be honest we didn't really talk too much about general racism, it was more just the way that it can sort of perpetuate specific sexual harassment for ethnic minority girls. Haley? Can I ask a question about the young people's perceptions of the intensified experience of sexual harassment from marginalised groups? We asked, do you think that BME girls experience more sexual harassment? A lot of the young people said yes that they felt that that was the case, but we also asked, do you feel that young women with a disability experience sexual harassment more than non-disabled young people and they weren't sure? There were gaps in understanding about and with LGBT young people also that the view across the board was even from heterosexual young people that yes, LGBT young people experience more sexual harassment, but disability was an area where there really wasn't an awful lot of understanding and that could be for a number of reasons. Okay, I'm going to ask her, did you want wish to come in there Hannah, you can if you wish. No one else, last chance. No, I'm going to ask our deputy convener to sum up that last session please. Okay, thank you. I think your investigation, you know it's been really enlightening, great word thank you. It's really got me thinking about how young women's potential in school is potentially being stifled by this kind of behaviour and also that their trust in action being taken when they experience it is being damaged at an early age before they go out into adult life and you know how would they then feel about reporting incidences to the police or that when they're older so it sets a really bad tone. I think you've also clearly demonstrated how important it is to consider the diversity of the women that we are engaging through this work and making sure that the solutions really address the all of the issues that affect young women with different identities and also the difficulty in accessing help for rural women and the different level of confidentiality issues there so it's so thank you. Thank you Michelle, thank you to our panel and thank you to everyone who has taken part today. It's been really interesting and I for one am looking forward to seeing all the additional information that will come through in the reports. The committee has a lot to discuss about how to put that report together and our next and final meeting will take place on 18 May and at that point they'll be taking some evidence from Scottish Government officials and agree that final report so I don't have a little gavel but the meeting is closed.