Statistics

Street harassment is an under-researched topic, but each existing study shows that street harassment is a major problem. The following statistics focus on the prevalence of street harassment. The forthcoming book Stop Street Harassment: Making Public Places Safe and Welcoming for Women includes statistics on other aspects of the issue.

Academic & Community Studies | Informal Online Studies

Academic & Community Studies

In one of the first street harassment studies ever conducted, Carol Brooks Gardner, associate professor of sociology and women’s studies at Indiana University, Indianapolis, interviewed 293 women in Indianapolis, Indiana, over several years in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The women were from every race, age, class, and sexual orientation category of the general population in Indiana and the United States. She oversampled women of color to better represent their experiences. Gardner found that every single woman (100 percent) could cite several examples of being harassed by unknown men in public and all but nine of the women classified those experiences as “troublesome.” (1) 

Using a national sample of 12,300 Canadian women ages 18 and older from 1994, sociology professors Ross Macmillan, Annette Nierobisz, and Sandy Welsh studied the impact of street harassment on women’s perceived sense of safety in 2000. During their research, they found that over 80 percent of the women surveyed had experienced male stranger harassment in public and that those experiences had a large and detrimental impact on their perceived safety in public. (2)

Laura Beth Nielsen, professor of sociology and the law at Northwestern University conducted a study of 100 women’s and men’s experiences with offensive speech in the California San Francisco Bay Area in the early 2000s. She found that 100 percent of the 54 women she asked had been the target of offensive or sexually-suggestive remarks at least occasionally: 19 percent said every day, 43 percent said often, and 28 percent said sometimes. Notably, they were the target of such speech significantly more often than they were of “polite” remarks about their appearance. (3)

A 2002 survey of 200 citizens in Beijing, China, showed that 70 percent had been subjected to a form of sexual harassment. Most people said it occurred on public transportation, including 58 percent who said it occurred on the bus. (4)

During the summer of 2003, members of the Rogers Park Young Women’s Action Team in Chicago surveyed 168 neighborhood girls and young women (most of whom were African American or Latina) ages 10 to 19 about street harassment and interviewed 34 more in focus groups. They published their findings in a report titled “Hey Cutie, Can I Get Your Digits?” Of their respondents, 86 percent had been catcalled on the street, 36 percent said men harassed them daily, and 60 percent said they felt unsafe walking in their neighborhoods. (5)

Groping on trains, subways, and transit stations in Tokyo, Japan, is rampant. In a 2004 survey of 632 women who travel during rush-hour in Tokyo, nearly 64 percent of the women in their 20s and 30s said they were groped while commuting. (6) In 2008 in Tokyo alone there were 2,000 reported groping cases (and it is an underreported crime). (7)

In 2007, the Manhattan Borough President’s Office conducted an online questionnaire about sexual harassment on the New York City subway system with a total of 1,790 participants. Nearly two-thirds of the respondents identified as women. Of the respondents, 63 percent reported being sexually harassed and one-tenth had been sexually assaulted on the subway or at a subway station. Due to collection methods used, the report “Hidden in Plain Sight: Sexual Harassment and Assault in the New York City Subway System” is not statistically significant, but it suggests that a large number of women experience problems on the subway system. (8)

The Egyptian Centre for Women’s Rights surveyed 2,000 Egyptian men and women and 109 foreign women in four governorates in the country, including Cairo and Giza, about sexual harassment on Egyptian streets. They published their findings in 2008. Eighty-three percent of Egyptian women reported experiencing sexual harassment on the street at least once and nearly half of the women said they experience it daily. Ninety-eight percent of the foreign women surveyed reported experiencing sexual harassment while in Egypt. Wearing a veil did not appear to lessen a woman’s chances of being harassed. About 62 percent of Egyptian men admitted to perpetrating harassment. (9)

In Yemen, the Yemen Times conducted a survey on teasing and sexual harassment in Sana’a in 2009. Ninety percent of the 70 interviewees from Sana’a said they had been sexually harassed in public. Seventy-two percent of the women said they were called sexually-charged names while walking on the streets and 20 percent of this group said it happens on a regular basis. About 37 percent of the sample said they had experienced physical harassment. Like those in Egypt, these survey results implied that being veiled did not lessen the harassment, because wearing a veil in public is so common. (10)

Throughout 2009, the Centre for Equity and Inclusion surveyed 630 women of all ages and socioeconomic status in New Delhi and Old Delhi, India. Ninety-five percent of the women said their mobility was restricted because of fear of male harassment in public places. Another 82 percent said the bus is the most unsafe mode of public transportation for them because of male harassers. (11)

While each of these studies has its imperfections, they all found a high percentage of women had been harassed by men (and many only focused on harassment on the transit system). Much more research on this topic is necessary, but from the studies that exist, it seems male street harassment is a common female experience, especially in cities, where women tend to encounter more people and are more likely to use public transportation.  In my own informal research, I too, have found street harassment to be pervasive.

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Informal Online Studies

Nearly every woman I have talked to about this issue has been harassed by men. Further, every woman can cite strategies, such as avoiding going in public alone at night, which she uses to avoid harassment and assault. To learn more about women’s harassment experiences I conducted two informal, anonymous online surveys about street harassment: one in 2007 for my master’s thesis at George Washington University and one in 2008 as preliminary research for a book. Between both surveys, there were 1,141 respondents. Similar to the other studies conducted on street harassment, nearly every female respondent had experienced street harassment at least once.

In my first online survey, conducted during the spring of 2007, I asked the 225 respondents: “Have you ever been harassed (such as verbal comments, honking, whistling, kissing noises, leering/staring, groping, stalking, attempted or achieved assault, etc) while in a public place like the street, on public transportation, or in a store?” Ninety-nine percent of the respondents, which included some men, said they had been harassed at least a few times. Over 65 percent said they were harassed on at least a monthly basis.

Over 99 percent of the 811 female respondents (916 respondents total) of the second informal survey I conducted in 2008 said they had experienced some form of street harassment (only three women indicated they had not). In one question they could indicate the types of interactions they have had with strangers in public, here is a sampling of their responses.

• Leering
  Ninety-five percent of female respondents were the target of leering or excessive staring at least once, and more than 68 percent reported being a target 26 times or more in their life.

• Honking and whistling
  Nearly 95 percent of female respondents were honked at one or more times and 40 percent said they are honked at as frequently as monthly. Nearly 94 percent of female respondents were the target of whistling at least once and nearly 38 percent said it occurred at least monthly.

• Kissing noises
  Just over 77 percent of women said they were the target of kissing noises from men and 48 percent said they’ve been the target at least 25 times in their life.

• Making vulgar gestures
  Nearly 82 percent of female respondents were the target of a vulgar gesture at least once. About twenty percent said they had been a target at least 51 times.

• Sexist comment
  Over 87 percent of women said they were the target of a sexist comment, and about 45 percent said they’ve been a target of a sexist comment in public at least 25 times in their life.

• Saying sexually explicit comments
  Nearly 81 percent of female respondents were the target of sexually explicit comments from an unknown man at least once. More than 41 percent have been the target at least 26 times in their lives.

• Blocking path
  About 62 percent of women say a man has purposely blocked their path at least once and 23 percent said this has happened at least six times.

• Following
  Seventy-five percent of female respondents have been followed by an unknown stranger in public. More than 27 percent have been followed at least six times.

• Masturbating
  More than 37 percent of female respondents have had a stranger masturbate at or in front of them at least once in public.

• Sexual touching or grabbing
  Nearly 57 percent of women reported being touched or grabbed in a sexual way by a stranger in public. About 18 percent said they have been touched sexually at least six times.

• Assaulting
  About 27 percent of women report being assaulted at least once in public by a stranger.

 

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