Scheme to help women's safety in venues is welcome - if women are believed

As of next year, many gig venues and festivals up and down the country will have a named contact who sexual violence or harassment can be reported to.

The scheme aims to “change attitudes” by training up staff to create better working and live music environments for women.

On the face of it, this sounds like a great idea. I am fully behind any plan that aims to make things safer for women.

A new scheme will see a named person to report sexual violence and harassment to in Scottish venues. | Isabel Infantes/Press Association

But I do have my reservations about how successful this may be. So often, the people employed to maintain people’s safety at bars and clubs do not have women’s wellbeing at their heart.

I realise that bouncers in bars and clubs have many jobs, not least maintaining safe numbers and making sure no one is breaking any licensing laws.

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Yet so often this automatically takes precedence over women’s safety, leaving women being viewed with suspicion and assumptions they are lying to try and get something.

This is just one example - one of my friends was meeting a man in a bar, and she was a little unsure of the whole thing. Another friend and I went for a drink in the bar next door, and she messaged us to say we needed to come and get her.

The bouncer stopped us at the door and said we could not go in because the bar was at capacity.

Fair enough, so we explained the situation to the bouncer.

You would think the bouncer would have tried to help, maybe even ejected the man inside who made my friend feel like that, but no. He immediately assumed we were trying to dupe him into letting us get inside for a drink.

I can think of so many situations where something similar has happened, and we have tried to get bouncers to help and they have not because they think we are trying to get around their rules.

There is another issue I can think of - in crowded venues like nightclubs, festivals and live music gigs, sexual assault happens all the time. The problem? Often you have no idea which one of the hundreds of people in the venue it was.

Read more: Live music audiences to be given 'named contact' to report sexual violence at gigs

So how do you report that to a named person? Yes it is good for them to get a better idea of the scale of the issue in the venue, but if you cannot pinpoint the person who did it, they are never going to see any consequences.

Obviously the answer here is that men need to do better so this situation never actually happens in the first place. But it does demonstrate why it can be difficult to report something like this in a venue.

I realise things like venue capacity and licensing laws are important, and I am not suggesting these be scrapped. However so often this is deemed more important than women’s safety. On top of this, it can be difficult to know what has actually happened and by who.

So I really welcome this idea, and I am looking forward to going to some of the participating venues next year. I just really hope the training does improve how staff view women’s concerns, as my experience shows they are often not listened to and not believed.