Disclosing Stories project

Despite decades of feminist research and activism, and the very recent attention given to sexual violence through the #MeToo movement, there is still much work to do to prevent sexual violence and respond to it appropriately. Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, certain voices remain conspicuously absent from the evidence-base: we know little about working class women. This is despite higher experiences of sexual violence reported by girls and women from lower socio-economic groups (Macdowall, Gibson et al. 2013). While gender is obviously central to our understanding of sexual violence, we should not focus solely on gender, as this can obscure the lived reality of women from low-income backgrounds. This webinar presents findings from the British Academy/Leverhulme funded ‘Disclosing Stories’ project, in which working-class women who experienced sexual violence told us what life is like as a working-class woman, their disclosure experiences, or decision not to disclose, and how able they feel to turn to resources for support.