Most women in rural communities still lack ownership over their bodies and the power to make informed choices about their sexual and reproductive health needs, partly due to their limited access to essential reproductive health services.

Naruthai Tansukasem, 20, became a singer in the girls-led band, ‘Siamese Kittenz’, at age 12, with a passion for stage performance and dancing. After being in the group for six years, she quit because of the online harassment that’s all too common and often unaddressed in the entertainment industry.

Maya Tutton, 21, co-founded the Our Streets Now campaign in the United Kingdom with her sister Gemma to demand the right of women and girls to feel and be safe in public space.

Cindy Sirinya Bishop is a Thai supermodel, actor, TV host and activist, who’s challenging social attitudes around sexual violence and the treatment of victims. She created an exhibition with UN Women, which sparked a public conversation and social media campaign, #donttellmehowtodress in Thailand about sexual harassment and assault.

For far too long, sexual harassment and violence have been normalized in college campuses across Guatemala, creating a pervasive rape culture. Armed with new data and research, students and leading and shaping public opinion for recognizing sexual harassment as a crime.

Law graduate and Thai women’s rights activist Thararat Panya, 23, used her experience of sexual assault to drive change at the Thammasat University in Bangkok.

Every day we have the opportunity to examine our behaviours and beliefs for biases that permit rape culture to continue. From the attitudes we have about gender identities to the policies we support in our communities, we can all take action to stand against rape culture.

On 24 September, on the margins of the UN General-Assembly, UN Women hosted an interactive data lab to showcase the new Women Count Data Hub, the first of its kind to provide public access to gender data that can be used to monitor progress on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

UN Women today launched a publication to support the fight against end sexual harassment, entitled “What will it take? Promoting cultural change to end sexual harassment”. The publication focuses on the influence of beliefs on actions and offers guidance to policymakers, employers and universities on how to achieve cultural change and address this scourge making sure that the needs of the victims and survivors are at the heart of all efforts.

Across the globe, women workers rise each day to power our world. They build, create, and drive progress across all sectors. Yet for millions of women, workplaces are sites of insecurity, abuse and vulnerability. For far too long, the working world has been dominated by unequal power dynamics that endanger the safety and security of women, but change is underway.

Catharine A. MacKinnon is a radical feminist legal scholar and Advisor to UN Women’s Executive Coordinator and Spokesperson on Sexual Harassment and Discrimination. As an expert in sex equality, women's rights and gender crimes, specifically sexual abuse and exploitation, she pioneered the legal claim for sexual harassment as sex discrimination in the United States of America and has worked to raise awareness of sexual abuse as a violation of equality rights. MacKinnon also represented Bosnian and Croatian women survivors of Serbian sexual atrocities in 1992, establishing the legal recognition of rape as an act of genocide.

Guatemala is now part of the European Union and the United Nations led “Spotlight Initiative” to eliminate violence against women and girls and harmful practices in more than 13 countries worldwide. In 2019, through the Spotlight initiative, UN Women will continue supporting actions as part the Guatemala City Safe City Programme and launch initiatives to safeguard women against sexual harassment in two new municipalities: Cobán and Chinaultla.

In Thailand, women are no longer willing to stay silent and live with a culture of rape. Launched in 2015 by a young activist, the ThaiConsent campaign is opening spaces for men and women discuss consent.

Thai supermodel Cindy Sirinya Bishop is the founder of a campaign to stop victim-blaming, which has galvanized women all over the country. She is now taking the campaign to different platforms, public events, and universities in Thailand and abroad.

The following is a statement from the Executive Director of UN Women, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, regarding the sexual misconduct allegations involving a UN Women staff member.

The Office of Audit and Investigation of UNDP has completed its investigation into the sexual misconduct allegations involving a UN Women staff member.

Following our earlier statement on our website, the investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct involving a UN Women staff member by the Office of Audit and Investigations (OAI) of UNDP is nearing its completion and UN Women continues to urge for the speedy finalization of the investigation process.

Feminists, gender experts and UN officials came together to discuss promising practices to curb sexual harassment and assault in a UN Women-organized “Feminist Think Space” from 30 to 31 July in New York.

The Quezon City Local Government held the Street Art Painting Project in partnership with UN Women Safe Cities Metro Manila Programme. In bright, bold colors, the student artists painted the roads from the entrance to the main building of Quezon City Hall with words and images depicting the problem of harassment and calls for everyone to help build safe public spaces. “Stop Violence against Women,” was among the painted appeals.

Purna Sen is UN Women’s Director of the Policy Division, and has been recently appointed as the UN Women Executive Coordinator and Spokesperson on Addressing Sexual Harassment and Other Forms of Discrimination. In an interview, she explains her new role and what UN Women is doing to address sexual harassment within its own workplace and in the UN system.