Don’t Forget About Street Harassment
This global problem has continued during the COVID-19 pandemic
Global cases of COVID-19 have surpassed 137 million and the World Health Organization says infection rates are climbing in every global region. In addition to harming people’s health and taking lives, the pandemic is also causing an increase in crises like poverty and hunger, children out of school and domestic violence. One of the other social issues that’s intersecting with the pandemic is gender-based street harassment.
L’Oréal Paris and survey firm IPSOS recently released the results of a 15-country study documenting over 15,000 women’s experiences with street harassment. First, the results reiterate that this is a pervasive and global problem as 80% of women across the countries said they’ve experienced it in their lifetime.
The results also show how much this violation continued during the past year of the COVID-19 pandemic, even with all the quarantines, lockdowns, social distancing, and increases in people working and going to school remotely. Around one in three women (31%) said they faced street harassment last year. This figure is 46% for those ages 18 to 34.
Thinking about the last year, 50% of respondents said they did not feel safe in public spaces at all. Among these women, the reasons they gave for feeling unsafe included: not being able to see people’s faces behind masks (51%), the fact that there are fewer people around (36%), and many shops are closed (10%).
People changed their lives in the last year because of street harassment. For instance, 75% said they avoided certain public spaces and 54% specifically said they avoided some forms of public transportation.
A unique feature of being in public spaces this past year is that many or most people wore masks. This did not help the situation of street harassment. Instead, 72% of women felt harassers were emboldened because of the increased anonymity a mask gave them.
This survey isn’t the only one to show that street harassment has continued to be a problem for many during this time of the global pandemic.
- In a recent survey in Dublin, Ireland, 6 out of 10 women and girls under age 20 said they faced street harassment just during the previous week.
- In the U.S., recently Stop APPI Hate said there were 3,800 reports of harassment and hate made by Asian-Americans in the last year, including street harassment, with women comprising 68% of those making reports.
- Also in the U.S., a survey released in December found that waitresses were facing an increase in harassment, with a common comment from male customers being, “Take off your mask so I’ll know how much to tip you.”
On the extreme end, last month, 33-year-old marketing executive Sarah Everard was attacked and murdered by a police office in the UK while she was traveling home from a friend’s house. This struck a nerve as so many women fear their own death as the worst-case scenario when men they don’t know comment on them, follow and grab them in public spaces. When news broke that Sarah was missing, thousands of women shared their own stories of assault and street harassment by men.
A representative study of women in the UK released around the same time backed up their stories — 97% of young women in the country reported having faced street harassment as had 80% of all women.
As we continue to try to stop the spread of COVID-19 globally, it’s important to not overlook the reality that street harassment continues to be a crisis affecting millions of women’s lives. It restricts their access to public spaces and makes them feel less comfortable and safe there.
Sharing stories and documenting the problem is an important step toward ending it as it helps make it visible to those who create policies and run programs. You can speak out this week during the 11th annual International Anti-Street Harassment Week. Use the hashtag #stopstreetharassment on social media.
Learning how to speak up when we witness street harassment is also important. In the L’Oréal Paris survey, 42% of women said they had seen street harassment occur in the last year. In partnership with Hollaback!, L’Oréal is hosting on-going free, one-hour zoom training sessions on how to be an active bystander.
Teenage girls are the demographic that faces some of the highest rates of street harassment. Listening to them is crucial, and it’s wonderful that their stories are informing new campaigns in Dublin and the California Bay-Area.
Engaging men and making it socially unacceptable to harass people in public spaces is surely the most needed response to this global problem. In the UK, a group of men launched a new campaign inspired by Sarah’s tragic story called All Men Can. Already they’ve sponsored 6,000 digital billboards across the country telling men how to be part of the solution. Other groups that focus on men include Men Can Stop Rape, White Ribbon Project, MenChallenging, and Men Stopping Violence. Men must guide other men and change our culture.
We all want to see an end to the COVID-19 pandemic. Millions of us also want to see an end to street harassment, a problem that has been here before and during the pandemic and one that will continue to be here after it ends if we don’t act now.
