Contact Holly to request her to speak at your campus, library, school, bookstore, or community event.
Stop Global Street Harassment: Growing Activism Around the World
Available: In hardcover for $37 and $35 for ebook
“In Holly Kearl’s new book, she powerfully and compellingly analyses the scale and breadth of the problem of street harassment and presents the reader with an uplifting snapshot of the activism being undertaken to tackle it. This is a hugely important global exploration of a seismic shift in our attitudes and responses to a universal experience. For some readers, the scale of the problem as Kearl describes it will be shocking. For others, it will be horribly familiar. But the campaigns and strategies she outlines for taking back the streets will fill every reader with hope, energy, and a powerful urge to be part of the solution. This is an important book and a compelling call to arms.”
—Laura Bates, Founder of The Everyday Sexism Project
“This book represents a major breakthrough in exposing the pernicious, prevalent, but long-ignored form of oppression that is a barrier to freedom and full equality for women around the world. It offers comprehensive analysis and research, is clearly written, and presents useful tools and information for those seeking change. It addresses misogyny and the related issues of race, culture, and gender identity with great insight and originality.
In the mid-1970s when my colleagues and I were defining and organizing around the issue of sexual harassment in the workplace, the problem of street harassment seemed too complicated and daunting for us to tackle. I am grateful to Holly and a new generation of women activists and researchers who have taken the fight to a new level to raise public awareness and change public policy and ingrained prejudice and behavior.”
—Susan Meyer, Former executive director of Working Women United Institute
“As Holly Kearl documents, street harassment is not a new problem. What is new is the strength of community activism and government support to end street harassment. This book updates us on the current fight against street harassment and the progress that has been made in the last five years. Understanding the role street harassment plays in perpetuating gender inequality and patriarchal power is crucial to improving women’s lives across the globe.”
—Kimberly Fairchild, Associate Professor of Psychology, Manhattan College, Riverdale, NY
“Stop Global Street Harassment is a sensitive and harrowing examination of the frequency, severity, and implications of a global pandemic disproportionately impacting girls and women: street harassment. Holly Kearl, activist and founding leader in the Stop Street Harassment movement, interweaves a powerful narrative combining global perspectives from social science research, personal narrative, and journalistic/social media accounts, resulting in an intersectional pièce de résistance. Kearl’s work is the most comprehensive work on the issue of global street harassment to date.
A compelling read and a brave indictment of hegemonic privilege, Stop Global Street Harassment represents a living account possessing the power to ignite a global audience by underscoring the experiences of untold activists, researchers, students, and parents throughout the world. This crucial work culminates with practical solutions and policy prescriptions that will not only inform NGOs and governmental entities, but also serve to inspire those individuals who live with street harassment on a daily basis, most of whom possess non-dominant identity statuses. This work is a call to action. Readers will be inspired not only to listen for the untold voices that have yet to be heard, telling their tales of the daily harassment they face in simply navigating public spaces, but also to work for change within their own communities. Stop Global Street Harassment is a must read.”
—Dr. Jennifer L. Martin, Assistant Professor of Education, University of Mount Union
“What an excellent resource Kearl’s book is for activists and scholars! Stop Global Street Harassment: Growing Activism Around the World should be read by feminist leaders far and wide; it would be a great reading selection for those teaching courses that address global issues, social problems, social movements, and gender issues. Holly Kearl has written an easy-to-read, engaging book about street harassment and the movement she helped develop to document and end it.”
—Laura S. Logan, Assistant Professor, Hastings College
Stop Street Harassment: Making Public Places Safe and Welcoming for Women
Available: Since 2010 on Amazon.com, for $13.50. It’s in more than 500 libraries worldwide.
“The other reviewers have brought up many of Kearl’s best qualities as a writer and as a practical tactician for the inequalities of public places. I’d like to add a sentiment of my own and to point out a virtue of Kearl’s too often neglected: As well as a fine and inspiring writer, Holly Kearl is one of those individuals who provides readers with new thoughts about and plans for how to live our everyday lives, and this is so whether we are women or men. She does something more and much rarer. She is a model analyst of and theoretician about everyday life and about gender relations. Kearl’s work should be read by those who think about theories of how we experience the social world, as well as by those who wish an invitation for how to change the social world.”
– Carol Gardner
Professor of Sociology and Adjunct Professor of Women’s Studies and American Studies, Indiana University-Purdue
Author of Passing By: Gender and Public Harassment
“I bought and used your book to help me write my thesis (thus far). The amount of research, theory, strategies, HUMOUR, life experiences, etc you used in it made your book my primary resource. I cannot thank you enough for bringing this solution to life.”
– Erika Scholz
York University student
An organizer of SlutWalk Toronto
“I wanted to congratulate you on all of your wonderful work on street harassment. I couldn’t put your book down this past weekend! I have to say, it really was astonishing how widespread street harassment actually is. I guess I never really gave it much thought.”
– Diana Branco
Government worker
“I’m enjoying your book–if I can use the word “enjoying” to describe what I feel. My daughters and my future daughter-in-law will take the book after I read it. Sheri, my oldest daughter, wants it for Spring Break. She has two daughters, 11 and 16. When they finish it, I’ll give it to my niece. It will be well read.”
– Marcia Posner
AAUW member
“Holly’s book on street harassment is an excellent piece that has a perfect balance of anecdotes and statistics, showcasing how prevalent the issue of street harassment is. She is very knowledgeable on the topic and on raising awareness on the issue. I highly recommend reading her book as well as having her speak at your organization.”
– Dienna Howard
Writer and activist
“Kudos to Holly Kearl! Stop Street Harassment is the kind of research I love – insightful, thorough, and so useful. Holly takes a good clear look at the reality of women’s lives. Her analysis of the power dynamics of street harassment is right on the mark…Holly’s summary of the smart, nonviolent tactics that actually work to stop street harassers is a gift to women around the world.”
– Marty Langelan, past president of DC Rape Crisis Center and self-defense expert
Author, Back Off! How to Confront and Stop Sexual Harassment & Harassers
“This book is a must-read for students on college campuses and may be suitable for inclusion in a women’s studies, gender studies, or sociology course. While focusing on a specific version of street harassment—that perpetuated by men on women—it opens the reader’s mind to how pervasive the problem is and illustrates how deeply rooted gender segregation is in America. Its goal is to awaken (and reawaken) readers’ desires to work toward a more progressive society where women and men see each other as humans rather than as objects for individual or public consumption. The book should incite activism and civic engagement on campus to bring positive changes in an area that affects many women’s daily lives.”
– Association of American Colleges & Universities
“I suggest that everyone—women and especially men (because street harassment needs male allies)—pick up a copy of Kearl’s book to understand the complexities of street harassment and why it should not be ignored any longer. More importantly, though, after reading Stop Street Harassment, think about what you can do to stop street harassment in your own community. Because street harassment is not going to go away—and the time to take action is now!”
~ Gender Across Borders Blog, cross-posted on Elevated Difference
“Public space should be safe space. But all-too-often it’s not. In her important book, author Holly Kearl explains how street harassment interrupts the basic right we all have to move freely through our everyday lives. Stop Street Harassment provides powerful information about gender-based assault and helps us put an end to this problem — now!”
– Shira Tarrant, PhD
Author, Men and Feminism
Associate Professor of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, California State University, Long Beach
“Holly Kearl has written a thoughtful and important book. She not only compellingly establishes the breadth and the depth of the serious problem that is street harassment, but offers sensible, practical, and successful strategies and solutions. Stop Street Harassment is reassuring and empowering.”
– Nancy Unger, PhD
Author, Fighting Bob La Follette: The Righteous Reformer
Associate Profess of History, Santa Clara University
“Holly Kearl’s book is a must-read for anyone who believes it is a woman’s human right to feel safe in public. Using women’s personal stories and scholarly research, Kearl explains why men ‘cat-calling’ women isn’t flattery or flirtation, but public harassment of women that can range from disturbing to downright deadly. Share this book, especially the women’s stories told within, with anyone who needs to learn more about street harassment and its dangerous effects on women.”
– Danine Spencer
Feminist Activist and Blogger
“Kearl’s scholarly book is written with articulate ease. She has the gift of writing about weighty subjects in a straightforward and engaging manner, that will hook the professional, the student, and the young teenager who is either the potential victim of or potential perpetrator of street harassment. My 21 year old nephew picked up the book to read and within a minute was totally engaged, oblivious to the chaos around him in my house full of guests, he just read and read.
Kearl gives a voice to those of us who have come to accept cat calls, groping and unwanted male advances as just a part of life we have to put up with. This book will empower victims of street harassment by giving them practical, safe suggestions and solutions. It will also help those of us who have been frightened on the streets, the subway, in parks, or at the mall, feel less alone. Kearl has given a voice for all of us, with the countless stories she has gathered from women around the world. As a young adult fiction author who works with teenagers across the country, I can highly recommend this book for any teenager in your life, as well as women and men of every age. a great empowering read!”
– Beckie Weinheimer
Author, Converting Kate
