Alarming! Almost all women have been sexually harassed in UK, survey reveals
As per a report by The Guardian, 97% women between the age of 18 to 24 said they had been sexually harassed.
In a highly concerning news, according to a survey from UN Women UK, virtually all young women in the UK have been subjected to sexual harassment. The survey suggests that many women have lost faith that their complaints of abuse will be dealt with.
As per a report by The Guardian, 97% women between the age of 18 to 24 said they had been sexually harassed. Meanwhile, in an alarming figure, 80% of women of all ages said they had experienced sexual harassment in public spaces.
Claire Barnett, executive director of UN Women UK have called the situation ‘a human rights crisis’.
“It’s just not enough for us to keep saying ‘this is too difficult a problem for us to solve’ – it needs addressing now,” Claire was quoted as saying.
“We are looking at a situation where younger women are constantly modifying their behaviour in an attempt to avoid being objectified or attacked, and older women are reporting serious concerns about personal safety if they ever leave the house in the dark – even during the daytime in winter,” she added.
As per The Guardian, the YouGov survey exposes a lack of faith in the UK authorities’ desire and ability to deal with sexual harassment.
In the survey, which was conducted with more than 1,000 women, 96% of respondents did not report incidents while 45% said that it would not change anything. Meanwhile, women who had been groped, followed and coerced into sexual activity said the incident was not serious enough to report.
Laura Bates, founder of the Everyday Sexism Project, a website working to document examples of sexism from around the world, found it unsurprising that women had no faith in an ‘utterly broken’ system.
If you talk about wolf-whistling or street harassment in the UK, you are liable to find yourself on the front page of a tabloid being called a ‘feminazi’ and accused of overreacting, so of course young women don’t think that they’ll be taken seriously if they come forward,” she said.
According to Bates, the reason behind these incidents is the normalisation of the idea that a woman’s body in a public place is public property and young women just have to put up with it.
To want a change, the normalisation has to be shattered through policy and the press, Bates said.