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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Results of L’Oreal Paris’s 15-Country Street Harassment Study

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L’Oreal Paris, one of our partners for this year’s International Anti-Street Harassment Week, recently released the results of a 15-country study on street harassment. With survey firm IPSOS, they surveyed a representative sample of around 1,000 women in each country between Jan. 25th – Feb. 9th, 2021, so the results represent approximately 15,000 women’s experience.

First, the results confirm once again that this is a pervasive and global problem! Around 80 percent of women across the 15 countries said they’ve experienced street harassment (with the highest figures coming from South Africa – 94% and Mexico – 92%).** The countries included in the survey were: Brazil, Canada, China, France, India, Italy, Mexico, Poland, Russia, Spain, South Africa, Thailand, UAE, UK, and USA.

Personal experiences of street harassment in their lifetime, by country

The results also show how much this violation continued during the past year of the COVID-19 pandemic, even with all the quarantines, lockdowns, social distancing, and increase in working and going to school remotely that came with it. Around one in three women (31%) said they faced street harassment last year. This figure is 46 percent for those ages 18 to 34. Additionally, 42 percent said they witnessed street harassment occur in the last year.

1 in 3 women in 14 countries said they have experienced street harassment in the last year

Thinking about the last year, 50 percent of respondents said they did not feel safe in public spaces! Among these women, reasons they gave for feeling unsafe included: not being able to see people’s faces behind masks (51%), there are fewer people around (36%), and shops are closed (10%).

75 percent said they avoided certain public spaces to try to avoid street harassment and 54 percent said they avoided some forms of public transportation specifically.

A unique feature of being in public spaces this past year is that many or most people wore masks. This did not help the situation of street harassment. Instead, 72 percent of women felt harassers were emboldened to harass because of the increased anonymity a mask gave them.

It is clear that street harassment continues to affect so many women’s lives in really significant and scary ways — the murder of British woman Sarah Everard while she walked home last month emphasizes this reality too.

L’Oreal Paris is partnering with Hollaback! to host free bystander online training sessions called Stand Up! to help combat this widespread problem. Check out the programs being offered this week and join one if you can!

Sign up for a free, interactive 1 hour Zoom training on standing UP against street harassment

** This survey only focused on women, ages 18 and up, and if teenagers and pre-teens were included and persons of all genders from the LGBTQ community and other targeted communities, I’m sure these figures would be even higher.

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2019 SSH Highlights

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Thank you for being part of our community to stop street harassment this year!

Here are six of the highlights and efforts YOU made possible!

  1. Produced another national study on sexual harassment in the US, in collaboration with UCSD Center on Gender Equity and Health (GEH), RALIANCE, CALCASA and Promundo. As in 2018, 81% of women and 43% of men had experienced sexual harassment at some point in their life.As part of this survey, we were able to pull out facts on street harassment, which showed over 70% of women have experienced it, the most of any type of sexual harassment. Thank you everyone who donated to make the survey possible!
  2. Contributed to a state-wide survey on sexual harassment in California, led by UCSD GEH and CALCASA. The findings helped influence the California state budget and its allotment of funds toward sexual harassment and violence prevention! Again, thank you to everyone who donated to make this survey possible.
  3. Oversaw our 9th annual International Anti-Street Harassment Week with participating groups in over 30 countries, ranging from Australia to Uganda. Thank you to everyone who took action! Read the new wrap-up report and view the photos of actions.
  4. Helped launch a 4th wave of PSAs on the Washington, DC transit system, one focused on what witnesses to harassment can do if they see it occur. Along with our collaborators at WMATA and Collective Action for Safe Spaces, we did flyering and outreach to alert riders to the new campaign. Thanks to everyone who volunteered.
  5. Conducted the first ever survey on street harassment and age which revealed the shocking difference between how old most women were when they first faced street harassment (middle school) compared with their male harassers (usually at least in their 20s or 30s, if not older). It is important for this disturbing and very wrong dynamic to be part of conversations about ending street harassment. Read my Ms. Magazine article about the findings and why they matter. Thank you to everyone who took or shared the survey.
  6. Funded another year of the National Street Harassment Hotline, run by our partners at the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network. Thank you to everyone who donated toward the cost or shared the hotline information.

Additionally, our work was covered by a range of media outlets like Newsweek, USA Today, Runner’s World, Shape and The Economist. The media interview I’m most proud of is the one I did for NowThis News about the sexual harassment and assault of women with disabilities.

Looking forward to next year, please mark your calendars for the 10th International Anti-Street Harassment Week from April 19 to 25, 2020!

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Study: Sexism like Street Harassment Affects Young Women

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Via Refinery29:

“Young women who experience sexism are five times more likely to suffer from clinical depression, a new study has found.
The study also found that women aged between 18 and 30 are more likely than those in any other age group to experience sexism – be it at school, work, on public transport, in taxis or outside of the home.
More than four in five young women who said they’d experienced sexism reported being subjected to street harassment.
“I think it’s easier for people to get away with sexism in public because harassing a stranger doesn’t usually have any consequences,” a panel member told the Young Women’s Trust and University College London, who jointly conducted the study. “The victim doesn’t know the other person and probably won’t see them again later.”
The study also found that young women aged between 18 and 30 who experienced sexism were most likely to report mental health problems four years later. Another panel member said: ‘Sexism sits in the core of you and if you try and ignore it and don’t address it, it rots away and the problems permeate to other areas of your life.'”
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New Statewide Study on Sexual Harassment and Assault in California

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Following up on our latest national research about sexual harassment (including street harassment) and sexual assault, here is a statewide report on California.

The headline figure is that statewide, 86% of women and 53% of men reported experiencing some form of sexual harassment and/or assault in their lifetime.

When we looked specifically at sexual harassment across all public spaces, 77% of women and 35% of men had experienced it. Read the full report here!

CALCASA and UCSD Center on Gender Equity and Health (GEH), took the lead on the statewide study, with support from SSH, RALIANCE, and Promundo.

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