Stop Street Harassment

Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming

#MeToo 2024 Study Released Today

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#MeToo 2024 Research Report

Thank you, SSH community who helped fund a 2024 national study on sexual harassment and assault — it came out TODAY!

Roughly 1 in 4 U.S. adults (26%), or more than 68 million people, experienced sexual harassment or assault in the past year alone, with significantly higher rates for women (32%) compared to men (15%).

This #MeToo 2024 Report builds on our 2018 and 2019 surveys. This national study was led by the Newcomb Institute at Tulane University and was supported by Stop Street Harassment, Valor and Raliance. The survey was conducted by NORC in spring 2024, of more than 3,300 U.S. adults over age 18.

READ: Full Report | Executive Summary | Press Release | Survey Questions 

The findings show that despite heightened awareness and prevention efforts from the #MeToo movement that gained national attention in 2017, most women (82%) and nearly half of all men (42%) have experienced sexual harassment or assault in their lifetime.

These abuses often occur as sexual harassment in public spaces, 73% for women and 24% for men.

Over half of women (56%) experience sexual harassment or assault by age 18. Alarmingly, one in five women (20%) first experience sexual harassment or assault before the age of 13 — and most often in the form of sexual harassment in public spaces without intervention.

Notably, it has been 10 years since our 2014 national survey on street harassment, which showed that 65% of women and 25% of men had faced sexual harassment or assault in public spaces. Thus, in 10 years, the rate for women has increased — 65% to 73%, while it has stayed around the same for men — 25% to 24%.

More work is needed to work to stop sexual harassment and abuse, especially in public spaces and especially by men toward girls.

This is unacceptable! We must continue to speak out and work to make public spaces safe for everyone.

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Join International Anti-Street Harassment Week 2022

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In one week, we will commemorate the 12th annual International Anti-Street Harassment Week, led by our partner Red Dot Foundation/Safecity, with support from groups like ChalkBack, StandUp and Right to Be.


We encourage you to speak out about street harassment in whatever way feels safe and empowering to you, from writing chalk messages on local sidewalks to sharing a story on social media or in person to a friend. Every act helps show how pervasive this problem is and how much it negatively affects the lives of so many people. That increased awareness can imbue empathy and spur people, entities and governments to take action — and ultimately help us work to end the problem.

On social media, you can use and/or follow the hashtag #StopStreetHarassment.

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Giving Tuesday – Fund the Hotline

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Over 400 people used our National Street Harassment Hotline this past year to receive emotional support and advice. We are grateful to our partners at RAINN who run the hotline for us and to our donors who cover the costs of running the hotline.

For our Giving Tuesday campaign this year, we invite you to donate $10 or more toward the hotline. The costs of running it go up the more visitors there are, and while the minimum cost per month is $275, every month since April, the visitors and cost has been up, sometimes as high as $1000 per month. Our goal is to raise $5000 for 2022 to ensure we are ready for a continued increase user-ship. 100% of the funds raised will go directly toward running the hotline.

Thank you so much for your help and for ensuring that people in need can receive assistance and support.

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Share Your Story – Safecity and Catcalls Collaboration

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Check out this new collaboration and way to help document street harassment stories –>

No one deserves to face street harassment. We all deserve safe access to public space. This #antistreetharassmentweek Catcalls of NYC and Safecity launched their collaboration so that together they can collect more stories of street harassment.

Catcallsof NYC receives many DMs about their communities’ experiences so that they can provide support and chalk the incidents. But as a volunteer-based team, it is difficult to collect all the stories in one place and organize the data. So this collaboration allows for everyone who feels comfortable to report their stories to the Safecity app, available in the App Store for iPhones and androids and on the website. Catcalls will pick up the stories from there and chalk them. They will still be available for sharing stories on DM, but this new tool will ensure that all the stories contribute to a larger map of street harassment. We wish to make sure that everyone knows the magnitude of this problem. Report your story today.

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International Anti-Street Harassment Week 2021 Begins

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This year is another stressful, scary and unusual one as COVID-19 cases rise in many regions of the world. But speaking out about street harassment during International Anti-Street Harassment Week (April 11-17) continues to be important because it is still happening and affecting millions of lives.

So far, I’ve heard from groups in nearly 20 countries who are or will be commemorating the week by posting information online, collecting stories, holding rallies, hosting tweet chats and zoom trainings and discussions, chalking and demonstrating — and it’s so inspiring to see what’s happened so far! View photos from our album.

Media coverage for the week has already begun to and includes three articles in three countries: Columbia News Service (US), de Gelderlander (Netherlands) and Sunday Midday (India). Also, L’Oreal Paris shared their survey results and posted a video of singer Celine Dione talking about the issue on their IG account!

While most events today took place online (see information about them here), such as a tweet chat hosted by Safecity and an Instagram Live Q&A by Our Streets Now, it was exciting and impressive to see three offline rallies take place in the Netherlands (with masks and social distancing) and in Nashville, TN (USA). See more photos.

Netherlands!
Nashville, TN!

Thank you so much to everyone who has joined or plans to join this week! And if you need some ideas for what to do, here you go!

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