LGBT+ women don't feel welcome at Pride events, study suggests

With LGBT+ Pride season in full swing, a new survey has revealed at that Pride may not be serving all LGBT+ people equally.

Research collated by Her, a social networking and dating app for LGBT+ women, reveals that many women do not feel welcome at, or even plan to attend, their local Pride events.

Barbara Galiza, head of marketing at Her, explained:

We went into the survey without any expectations. It was very nice to see so many women still see a big importance in Pride, but disappointing very few considered going themselves.

31 per cent of the LGBT+ women respondents said they didn't feel comfortable or welcome at Pride, according to their findings.

Split into categories, this translates into 43 per cent of bisexual women, and slightly more than a half of self-identified queer women, reporting that they don't feel comfortable or welcome at Pride.

These numbers became even worse when it came to actually attending marches. Although 74 per cent of respondents said they lived in towns or cities where Pride parades took place, just 40 per cent had plans to go. Over a third had never been to Pride at all.

Galiza thinks the problem may be that Pride events are too focussed towards men.

I think it's a cycle where women will go to these events, not see many women there, and not go back a second time.

89 per cent of respondents still believe Pride is an important event, but this makes it even more worrying that so many choose not to attend. One Her user who answered the survey, Sandra, opened up about Pride's significance in an interview withBroadly. She stated that "the challenges we face as women are different than men". She continues:

There's no doubt the LGBT+ community can achieve much more if we're together. We should also be aiming for equality within ourselves.

HT Broadly

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