Fighting Violence and Discrimination
Advocacy on LGBTQ Rights
The Repeal of Section 377A
We celebrated Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s announcement during the 2022 National Day Rally that Section 377A of Singapore’s Penal Code, which criminalised sex between consenting men, would be repealed. AWARE had for many years lent support to the steadfast efforts of groups such as Pink Dot and Sayoni to advocate for LGBTQ rights, beginning with the removal of S377A. In 2022 alone, we wrote in-depth statements critiquing the homophobic behaviour and rhetoric fomenting in Singapore, for example in a Hwa Chong Institute sexuality education presentation, and at the “Protect Singapore” Townhall held in July.
While the fall of S377A represents an unprecedented leap forward, bestowing much-needed freedom and dignity upon our LGBTQ community, we remain alert to the remaining hurdles that community faces in their everyday lives, such as discrimination in the workplace and at schools.
Queer Violence, Queer Silence
To raise awareness around sexual violence against LGBTQ individuals, we held the online panel discussion Queer Violence, Queer Silence on 28 July 2022. The event was moderated by Lee Yi Ting, a long-time AWARE volunteer and Birds & Bees facilitator. The other speakers were AWARE Executive Director Corinna Lim, Sayoni co-founder Jean Chong and Jaryl George Solomon, an educator, poet and playwright.
Around 50 people tuned into the conversation, which delved into the panellists’ personal experiences with sexual assault, the prevalence of violence against LGBTQ persons in Singapore and barriers that crop up in reporting. The panellists also discussed avenues of support available to LGBTQ persons who have experienced violence, including some queer-friendly psychotherapists recommended by Sayoni. The audience was engaged throughout and expressed a keen interest in seeing more such events and advocacy efforts.
Anti-Discrimination Advocacy
Following PM Lee’s 2021 announcement that Singapore would introduce its first-ever anti-discrimination legislation, we focused much of AWARE’s research and advocacy muscle on examining the extent to which discrimination occurs in Singapore, and ensuring that said legislation could be as comprehensive and effective as possible.
In August 2022, we conducted a national survey on workplace discrimination in partnership with consumer research company Milieu Insight. The survey—Singapore’s first comprehensive survey on discrimination at work—polled 1,000 respondents on their experiences of (i) direct discrimination, (ii) indirect discrimination and (iii) discrimination-related harassment. The findings were astounding: In the previous five years, 55% of respondents had experienced at least one form of discrimination (the most common being race, age and gender). Certain groups, including women, persons with disabilities, racial minorities and LGBTQ+ persons, were also found to be more vulnerable to discrimination at work.
The survey findings were widely covered by news outlets, including The Straits Times, TODAY and Lianhe Zaobao. In addition, various AWARE representatives penned op-eds and Forum letters after the survey launch to bring attention to workplace discrimination:
- “Forum: Upcoming workplace discrimination legislation must combat under-reporting”, The Straits Times, 15 October, 2022
- “Time to retire age discrimination at work”, The Straits Times, 24 October, 2022
- “Workplace discrimination may be more common than you think. Here’s why.”, Southeast Asia Globe, 24 November, 2022
Workplace Harassment and Discrimination Advisory
Relatedly, our Workplace Harassment and Discrimination Advisory (WHDA) service continued in 2022 to provide bespoke, confidential emotional and practical support to workers facing discriminatory or harassing behaviours in Singapore. This year marked the third full year of WHDA’s operation since its launch in 2019.
The service attended to a total of 265 cases in 2022, up by 4% from 2021. This total encompassed:
- A 23% increase in cases related to workplace discrimination. The overwhelming majority of discrimination cases seen in 2022 (85%) involved some form of maternity discrimination.
- A 15% decrease in cases related to workplace harassment and bullying
- A 3% decrease in cases related to workplace sexual harassment
In light of the upcoming workplace fairness legislation, workplace discrimination has been in the media more often. We believe the increased media coverage on this issue may have encouraged more discrimination victims to seek support.
Coercive Control
In commemoration of the 2022 International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women (25 November), we collaborated with artist Charis Loke on a series of comics aimed at raising awareness around coercive control—a domestic violence framework that is as yet little understood in the Singapore context. This series comprised one primer comic (“Identifying Coercive Control”) which provided a brief overview of coercive control, as well as three narrative strips (“Couldn’t you see what was going on?”, “Who’s going to look at you?” and “The kids don’t love you.”), loosely adapted from the experiences of coercive control survivors assisted and interviewed by AWARE.
These comics were well-received on social media, garnering more than 165,000 impressions and 17,500 engagements across platforms in three months. More meaningful than the numbers, though, were the many comments and messages we received from users—some of whom had experienced or witnessed coercive control in their own lives, and were recognising the fact for the first time. “Th[is] was hard to read. But let me tell you this is MORE common than you think,” wrote one user. Another said, “thank u so much for this series as someone still healing from an abusive relationship”.
Online Harms
Technology-facilitated sexual violence (TFSV) remained a special area of interest to AWARE in 2022. For one, we continued our annual analysis of TFSV cases seen by our Sexual Assault Care Centre in the previous year. Of the 227 new TFSV cases in 2021, image-based sexual abuse featured in 1 in 2 cases; meanwhile, the perpetrator was someone known to the survivor in a full 189 cases. AWARE’s Shailey Hingorani also served on the Ministry of Communications and Information’s Sunlight Alliance for Action, focused on closing the digital safety gap and establishing support mechanisms for victims of online harms.
Furthermore, in August we made a submission to the Ministry of Communications and Information’s public consultation on the Enhancing Online Safety for Users in Singapore, which proposed measures to improve online safety for Singapore-based users of social media services. Apart from highlighting gaps in the proposed measures for user safety and reporting mechanisms, we made recommendations based on our experiences supporting survivors of TFSV, as well as relevant legislations and bills in countries including Australia and the United Kingdom.
Subsequently, the Online Safety (Miscellaneous Amendments) Bill was tabled and passed in Parliament. This Bill included several promising provisions aimed at closing the digital safety gap. In response to the tabling of the Bill, we published a statement reiterating some unaddressed recommendations, for example: clarifying take-down processes, requiring social media services to create resource centres for young users and expanding the Bill’s scope of coverage to include SMS services, MMS services and direct messages. We await further developments in 2023.
Sexual Assault First Responder Training
In our fourth year of running Sexual Assault First Responder Training (SAFRT) sessions for the public, we attracted 305 participants across nine sessions. Over these in-depth sessions, participants were equipped with the skills to be effective first responders for the sexual violence survivors in their lives. As usual we received stellar feedback from attendees, who praised the “engaging” instruction and the “practical” tips covered.
We also held our third run of the Train-the-Trainer programme for SAFRT in October and November. A total of 10 trainers (including members of the LGBTQ community, students working on combatting sexual violence, counsellors-to-be, a legal professional and others) were trained to deliver SAFRT to their own community groups, or co-deliver training with AWARE facilitators.
CEDAW 2022
In October 2022, AWARE submitted a shadow report as part of Singapore’s periodic review for the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). This marked our fifth submission made to the CEDAW Committee since 2001. Participation by non-governmental bodies in the review process is encouraged by the United Nations as this provides the CEDAW review committee with supplementary information that may not have been included in government reports. AWARE’s 2022 shadow report touched on several of our longstanding advocacy issues including sexual violence, migrant spouses and workplace discrimination, as well as more recent areas of focus, such as online harms.
