Faculdade de Educação e Psicologia integrated in Sexism Free Night Project
Sexism Free Night is a project funded by the European Union under the EU REC (Rights, Equality and Citizenship) programme, anchored in a consortium involving the Faculty of Education and Psychology (FEP) of the Portuguese Catholic University in Porto, which works to promote an inclusive, safe and varied nightlife for all.
The initiative has its origin in the research project, developed between 2018 and 2019, of the Centro de Investigação para o Desenvolvimento Humano da FEP da Católica in Porto. Financed under the POISE programme - Inclusion and Employment Operational Programme, of the IGC - Commission for Gender Equality, the national project already presented the identity "Sexism Free Night - For an egalitarian nightlife" and implemented several initiatives at national level. The current European Union funding under the ECN programme has extended and adapted, with this European consortium, several of the initiatives already implemented in the past.
The European project is currently carrying out research through an online questionnaire that aims to understand the intersections between sexism and sexual violence, night-time leisure environments and drug use. The data collected will reveal the dynamics of sexual violence that emerge in these contexts and will also identify specific intervention needs in order to denormalise sexism and gender-based violence.
According to the researchers of the Faculty of Education and Psychology of the UCP, at the Regional Centre of Porto, Cristiana Vale Pires and Maria Carmo Carvalho, "the results of this research will be the starting point for the design and implementation of activities in campaigns at European level that aim to promote awareness of these issues among people who go out at night, artists and professionals of the night-oriented".
The questionnaire, subdivided into 6 sections - socio-demographic information, night-time leisure and drug use, mobility, beliefs about sexual violence, experiences of sexual violence, network of resources - and which considers both the pre-pandemic night-time leisure dynamics and those that have emerged in a pandemic context, can be consulted here.