Stop Street Harassment

Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming

Participate in a study for Dr. Fairchild’s research

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Dr. Kimberly Fairchild is working on another study that’s relevant to making public places safer and she needs your help!  Here’s her request:
In this study, you will watch a short, randomly selected video of an individual and make decisions and predictions about his/her behavior and emotions.  The survey should take approximately 20 minutes to complete and all responses are strictly anonymous. http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/InternetResearch

Thanks for helping out with this important academic study.
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Two street harassment surveys

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Please help researchers who are studying street harassment by taking their online surveys!

#1:  Via HollaBack NYC:

Louise Dreier, a graduate student at Columbia, is doing research on how street harassment affects the ways women use and exist in New York City and how the built environment affects street harassment.Lord knows this field needs more research, and quick! She has agreed to share her findings with Hollaback readers. Help her out by taking her quick survey!

(Note this survey is only for women in NYC to take)

#2: From Dr. Kimberly Fairchild and her students:

I’m conducting a study on the ability to predict another person’s actions and personality and we need participants. Our research suggests that even from limited information people can make accurate judgments about the dominant traits, emotional reactions, and behaviors of other people.  The survey takes about 10 minutes to complete.  If you are interested in participating, follow this link: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/armstudy

(This survey is open to anyone. Also, note that it is a different study from the one I posted about a few weeks ago)

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Street Harassment Activism in History

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Because the internet is helping fuel discussions about and activism against street harassment, it can be easy for those of us in a young generation to think this is a new issue no one has addressed before. But women have been speaking out against street harassment for a few decades. For women’s history month, I want to point out a few of them on the scholarly side and acknowledge their work.

  • In 1981, Micaela di Leonardo wrote an article called “Political Economy of Street Harassment.” It’s the earliest place where I’ve seen the term street harassment used in the context of men harassing women because of their gender.
  • In 1984, Cheryl Benard and Edith Schlaffer conducted the first – and really the only – study on why men harass women. They published their findings in  an article called “The Man in the Street: Why He Harasses,” found in the book Feminist Frameworks.
  • Cynthia Grant Bowman wrote an extensive legal piece on street harassment called  “Street Harassment and the Informal Ghettoization of Women,“ for Harvard Law Review in 1993.
  • Carol Brooks Gardner led the first full-scale study on what she terms public harassment by studying 500 people in Indianapolis. Her findings are published in Passing By: Gender and Public Harassment (1995).
  • In 2002, Deirdre Davis wrote about street harassment and African American women in the article “The Harm that Has No Name: Street Harassment, Embodiment, and African American Women” published in Gender Struggles: Practical Approaches to Contemporary Feminism.

Each woman paved the way for later research on the topics. I have a full list of articles and books I’ve come across that deal with street harassment on my website if you’re interested in learning more.

Thank you to each of these woman (and to everyone I didn’t list but who have worked on this issue) for helping us get this far in addressing the widespread problem of street harassment.

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Harassed on the way to school

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As the news reminds us almost daily with abduction stories like Jaycee Dugard’s, most Americans realize children are at some risk for abduction from strangers and, as a result, fewer parents allow their young children to go to school alone (though the figure of abductions is smaller than people may realize: 112 children are kidnapped by strangers per year).  I don’t think people realize, however, how many girls and young women are followed, verbally harassed, and touched by boys and men as they wait for a school bus, walk, or ride the subway to and from school, particularly once they reach puberty.

Last fall I conducted an informal online survey about people’s experiences with street harassment and over 900 people responded.  In an open-ended question where people could share a story, many females mentioned the harassment they had or do receive en route to or from school.

“When I was a freshman in high school a girlfriend and I were followed home by a car of teenage boys who shouted remarks and the occasional lewd comment. We veered off our route and onto the campus of the elementary school where we went to a former teacher’s classroom and asked her if we could stay for a while, until we felt sure those guys were gone.”  – 20 -29 year old Anglo American young woman in Murfreesboro, Tennessee

“One day in 8th grade (when I was 13), I was running late. The train was crowded, but I had to get on. As I shoved myself in, a fat man suddenly came out of nowhere and wedged himself in behind me… He started rubbing his crotch against my leg and panting. I was so scared, I didn’t know what to do or say. When the train reached the next stop and a lot of people got off, I tried to get away from him. He followed me and continued rubbing his crotch against my leg … He didn’t stop until more people got off and I finally found a seat.” – 13-19 year old Asian American young woman in New York City

Of the 811 females who took my survey, 22 percent said they were first harassed by men in public when they were ages 0-12, 40 percent said ages 13-15 and 25 percent said ages 16-19.

Unfortunately, harassment of girls on the way to and from school is a global problem, from England to Italy to Brazil to Mexico to Egypt to Mauritius to India to Japan to Canada.

For example, in large cities in Japan, men groping women on the subway is a huge problem. According to a recent article in The Japan Times, last year in Tokyo alone there were 2,000 reported groping cases (and it’s a vastly underreported crime). Most of the attacks occurred during morning rush hour and almost half of the women targeted were in their 20s and more than 30 percent were teenagers.  To combat this problem, there are women-only subway cars and PSAs telling men to stop groping.

Another example is in rural areas throughout African. A recent news story detailed how only an estimated 20 percent of children who enter primary school in rural Zambia complete Grade 12, in large part because of the long distances that they must travel (up to 13 miles) which is tiresome and also places them, particularly girls, at risk of assault and rape. To enable more school attendance, Chicago-based World Bicycle Relief is donating bicycles to children in Africa to help them stay safe as they travel to school.

In the U.S., to combat parents’ fear of child abductions, SafeRoutes works to enable children to more safely travel to school by foot or on bus in an effort to reduce traffic congestion, etc.

I think, however, people need to pay more attention to how boys and men are treating older girls going to and from school.  My research has shown that street harassment impacts females of all ages but, the harassment of teenage girls upsets me the most because I believe they are the most vulnerable to believing this is how women are supposed to be treated and the least likely to know how to respond or protect themselves.

And it should not be girls’ responsibilities to have to protect themselves; boys and men must stop preying upon and harassing young women.  I’m currently writing a book on this topic which will explore ways to accomplish this goal.  In the meantime, here are suggested strategies to share with the young women in your life about dealing with harassers and, if you are a parent or in a position to mentor youth, please especially note #7 for ways to help stop harassment overall.

(cross-posted at AAUW’s blog)

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