According to a survey, more than four-fifth of young women have been sexually harassed. It warns that most women have lost hopes that the abuse will be dealt with.
86% of women between the age of 18-24 said that they had been subjected to sexual harassment in public places, 11% of women chose to stay quiet on this question while only 3% of women didn’t recall any experience of harassing behaviour.
According to a survey published in a report by all-party parliamentary group (APPG) for UN women, 71% of a woman of any age told that they have an experience of being subjected to sexual harassment in public spaces.
Claire Barnett, executive director of UN women UK, said that “it’s a human rights crisis and just to keep saying that this issue has no solution, is not enough for us. This needs to be addressed now.”
The survey of more than 1000 women carried out by YouGov exposed the lack of faith in UK authorities’ to deal with sexual harassment. 96% of the respondents did not report the incident with 45% saying that it won’t change anything.
“We think that we are a leading light in progress but we forget to address the problems regarding gender violence that still happens to women and marginalised groups everyday,” said Claire Barnett.
Founder of Everyday Sexism Project, Laura Bates said ” if you talk about wolf-whistling or street harassment, you’ll be titled as “feminazi” and accused of overacting. This is the reason why most women think that they won’t be taken seriously if they report the issues regarding harassment.”
Laura Bates pointed to TUC/ Everyday Sexism Research which states that 52% of women faced sexual harassment during work and only one of the five women reported this issue. Three-fourth of the woman told that nothing had changed while 16% of women said that they were treated even worse as a result.
The normalisation of the idea that a woman’s body is a public property in public places, is at the root of this issue. We need to shatter this normalisation through our policies if we want to change the condition,” said Laura Bates.