1) What is the nature of the problem?

What is sexual harassment of women and girls in public places?

A scope of definitions of sexual harassment are utilized by analysts and in regulation in various jurisdictions. The Uniformity Act 2010 defines it as "undesirable lead of a sexual sort" which has the reason or impact of "creating an intimidating, unfriendly, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment".12 Regulations don't, in any case, fundamentally mirror the full broadness of the issue. Women and girls experience a wide scope of ways of behaving as sexual harassment, including conduct that is undesirable yet not really unlawful as well as sexual assault and other criminal offenses. In this inquiry we have thought about a wide range of conduct that women experience as sexual harassment, whether or not it very well may be viewed as an offense.

13.We caught wind of a wide scope of ways of behaving including undesirable sexual remarks in the road, assault dangers on public vehicle, sexual assault in bars and clubs, racial maltreatment when sexual recommendations were dismissed, men exposing themselves in public, being stroked off at, sexual rubbing on a jam-packed train, and we heard from a gathering of women who had encountered sexual harassment in prison and somewhere else in the criminal equity system. Being yelled at or 'whistled' was the most well-known type of sexual harassment announced by girls and young ladies in research by Plan UK.14 This lady's proof to us about her encounters was normal:

I have been sexually pestered, and suffered physical assault too, many times north of a 30-year duration. The harassment goes from whistles and 'heckles' to my bosoms, base, legs and groin being contacted. These occasions have occurred on transports and trains, while walking or standing in public places during the day, in shops and bars-anyplace where men are available, in fact

These kinds of tireless, regular encounters may not be visible to the individuals who don't encounter them. Sexual harassment of women and girls is so ingrained in our way of life that it is often inconspicuous; it is not generally perceived or understood by men similarly for what it's worth by women since it is, overwhelmingly, women and girls who are the survivors of sexual harassment, not men. Our examination showed that women are more mindful of the recurrence of public sexual harassment and its effect than men are

What is known about victims of sexual harassment?

14.Sexual harassment in public places is overwhelmingly experienced by women and girls. Surveys show that sexual harassment is, in fact, the most common form of violence against women and girls and that young women are particularly targeted:

    A survey published by the EU Fundamental Rights Agency in 2014 found that sexual harassment was the most common form of violence against women across the EU, with 68 per cent of women respondents in the UK saying they had experienced sexual harassment since the age of 15 and 25 per cent having been sexually harassed in the past 12 months;
    85 per cent of women aged 18–24 and 64 per cent of women of all ages reported that they had experienced unwanted sexual attention in public places and 35 per cent had experienced unwanted sexual touching, in a survey carried out by the End Violence Against Women coalition in 2016;18
    A survey of 14–21 year olds by Plan UK in 2018 found that 38 per cent of girls experience verbal harassment including sexual comments in public places at least once a month, while 15 per cent are being touched, groped or grabbed at least once a month;19
    63 per cent of girls and young women aged 13–21 experience (or know someone who has experienced) not feeling safe walking home alone, according to the Girls Attitudes Survey 2018. A range of other findings from this survey indicates that girls feel less safe online than they did five years ago—25 per cent said they had had threatening things said about them on social media compared with 21 per cent in 2013, and 24 per cent had been sent photos or content by people they knew that they found upsetting, compared with 17 per cent in 2013; and
    Recent research by Slater and Gordon shows that, in the last year alone, almost four in 10 women have experienced sexual harassment in a workplace context, showing that the warnings of #MeToo are not being heeded

15.Girls often first experience sexual harassment beneath the age of 18; we were particularly disturbed to hear from various women about the sexual harassment they experienced as a young lady from men and boys.22 One woman let us know that her most awful recollections of sexual harassment were of walking home from school wearing school uniform. She said she had to walk down a bustling road to return home and "it was normal for men to lean out of vans to wolf-whistle or to yell inappropriate things at me. I recollect on one occasion, when I was [under 18 years of age], a man shouting 'Great tits, can I have some pussy?

16.Even all the more disturbingly, for certain girls their first experience happens beneath the age of 10. One woman told us: "I have experienced sexual harassment in public since I was a small kid. I recall whenever I first was [under 12]. [ … ] I continued to be sexually harassed almost daily all through my childhood. Many girls in Plan UK's 2016 research portrayed witnessing or experiencing the harassment of girls aged eight and upwards, among whom girls in uniform appeared to be "a particular target, with girls describing feeling fetishised by 'more established men targeting school girls'  This experience then becomes 'normalized' for girls and young ladies; it assists with shaping the messages young men and girls get about what is acceptable behavior among people, and teaches girls to minimize encounters of harassment and abuse

17.Sexual harassment can intersect with different types of abuse, for example, disability-related harassment28 and racialised sexual harassment Marai Larasi, Head of Imkaan, told us "we hear that a ton of black and minority ethnic women and girls are being defrauded in ways that include racialised abuse-being called a black bitch, for example, may be something that happens."30 The available proof about these intersecting issues is restricted in the UK and is an important area for future research.
What is the impact of sexual harassment in public places?

18.Sexual harassment has significant and widespread impacts, both on individuals as well as on society. Sexual harassment in public diminishes women and girls' opportunity to appreciate public life, and can negatively affect feelings of safety, real autonomy and mental health. Being sexually harassed can be a degrading, humiliating, and harmful involvement with itself, however the impacts are damaging all the more broadly. It assists with keeping women and girls unequal by perpetuating a culture wherein they are sexualised; it is the backdrop to a general public wherein sexual violence can be normalized or excused

19.Women and girls often fear and experience retaliation from men and young men perpetrating sexual harassment  Plan UK let us know that girls talked about the backlash they could get if they 'dismissed' unwanted approaches, with harassment often turning into verbal aggression: "They felt that harassers took advantage of the apparent vulnerability of more youthful women, thinking they could 'pull off it' all the more easily as girls were less inclined to 'retaliate' or report.

It is notable that several women asked for their submissions of proof to us not to be published because of fear of retaliation. One woman who was content for her submission to be published depicted how a gathering of men sitting behind her on a transport made sexualised remarks, asking her to come and sit with them. She said she disregarded them and put her headphones in: "Eventually a note landed in my lap which read: 'when you get off this transport we will rape you.' I got off at the most active stop conceivable and went into a shop until I was certain they hadn't followed me

20.While a few men and young men experience sexual harassment in public, harassment guided from obscure men to women and girls has a particular meaning given both the prevalence of sexual violence and the routine ways where obligation is placed on women and girls themselves for preventing it. Dr Fiona Vera-Gray enlightened us regarding the habitual 'safety work' women perform, often unwittingly, for example, taking particular courses or doing explicit things, for example, wearing headphones or looking down This 'safety work' came up repeatedly in the proof we got from individual women. One woman told us: "I'm hyper-aware of men while running, particularly when I'm on a road with no other person around. A 2014 overview found that 87% of women revealed changing their course because of harassment and nearly 80% picked various types of transport, for example calling a cab instead of walking or taking a bus One woman in her forties said she actually has striking recollections about being sexually harassed in her twenties and educated us regarding the impact it had on her:

I was scared of going home that evening convinced that I was being followed. I resided alone and was scared of being home and terrified of going out too. I changed my behaviors and began walking alongside or behind different women or families with the goal that I wouldn't be alone. I will always remember the fierceness and then, at that point, the fear of what happened

21.Women also let us know that they questioned themselves, questioning whether anything had happened, or blamed themselves.40 Women's self-uncertainty and self-blame, reflecting a culture of casualty blaming, was also featured in Sian Lewis' research about sexual harassment on public transport: "women scrutinized their own behavior and job in the incident-did they encourage it? Did it happen because they'd been drinking? Because they were wearing a short skirt? Because they smiled?' Unwritten standards' for women and girls to protect themselves become accepted as 'presence of mind', meaning that society places the onus on them to avoid putting themselves in 'risky' situations When sexual harassment is trivialized or treated as no biggie, it can reinforce the issue. Casualties would rather not speak out in case they are informed that what they experienced is trivial, a joke, or a compliment

22.One of the impacts of sexual harassment can be that girls feel that they don't control their bodies in public spaces and that they are viewed as sexual items, if the experience is explicit.44 Emma Renold, Professor of Youth Review at Cardiff College, let us know that a portion of this experience is plain, for example, being asked to be seen naked, whereas some is about the fear of being raped, assuming being followed

23.There is little proof, in any case, about how young men experience being the perpetrators of sexual harassment.46 Women have been informed that they have to accept sexual harassment as part of their lives for generations-perhaps this is the reason it has not been adequately examined. The impact that sexual harassment has on women is not routinely set out for men and young men to consider. Laws and strategy send inconsistent messages, Parliament grants pornography and prostitution to be legal in certain circumstances, and local councilors permit sex shops and strip clubs in their networks, all of which routinely shows women in a sexualised and often vulnerable setting. Plan UK let us know that a lot greater attention ought to be given to male socialization and "how practices of male dominance and sexual predatory behavior are established."Our exploratory research showed that youngsters hold some concerning ideas about orientation norms

Who perpetrates sexual harassment and why does it happen?

24.In the UK, as somewhere else on the planet, men and young men are overwhelmingly the perpetrators of sexual harassment in public places.Promundo, a global organization that deals with masculinities and orientation equality, has led one of a handful of the examinations to zero in on perpetrators of sexual harassment in the UK. Its 2016 investigation of young fellows' perspectives about manhood (which included representative samples of in excess of 1,000 young fellows each in the UK, US and Mexico) observed that perpetration of harassment starts youthful and takes many structures. Nearly one in three of the youngsters reviewed in the UK had made sexually harassing remarks to a woman or young lady they didn't be aware in a public place-like the road, their workplace, their everyday schedule, or an online space-in the past month One woman let us know that it was the age of the perpetrators that had such an impact on her:

As the young men passed me one of them grabbed my left breast. They then, at that point, ran off. The young men were [under 18]. The incident left me feeling exceptionally shaken and vulnerable. The thing I wouldn't move past is that the young men were so young.51

25.Promundo observed that young fellows who sexually harass come from all income levels, all educational backgrounds and all ages, however that the most grounded factor in the perpetration of sexual harassment was attitudes about what it means to take care of business. These were measured using attitude statements, including "folks ought to act solid in any event, when they feel scared or apprehensive inside," and "a real man could never say no to sex". Youngsters who held the most sincere convictions in what Promundo allude to as 'poisonous' standards of manhood were nearly multiple times as prone to have harassed, as young fellows who least trusted in these norms

Research in England for the Kids' Commissioner on youngsters' attitudes to sexual assent saw that as, for some, young fellows, collecting 'man points'- rating from their companions is reliant upon persuading and often harassing young ladies to send 'sexts', and on sharing pornography with each other.

This is upheld by other research.54 NUS Women's Officer Hareem Ghani remarked that "what a many individuals are not talking about is orientation standards the way that developments of masculinity and the way we often consume media that portrays a hyper-masculine image, takes care of into sexual harassment.

26.Given how little research has been done on this in the UK, we wanted to test further the factors underlying sexual harassment in public places. The exploratory research we commissioned proposed a significant relationship between faith in traditional male orientation standards and acceptability of public sexual harassment.

27.Understanding the factors that add to sexual harassment is an important prerequisite for developing powerful arrangement answers for the issue. Some work has been done internationally to distinguish these factors, including a framework created for the European Commission in 2010.57 This said that sexual harassment is more probable in social orders that devalue women in such ways, and in social orders where damaging orientation generalizations and ideas about what it means to take care of business are ingrained. A tendency toward selfishness with respect to men about their entitlement to behave in certain ways is an important factor. Lack of sanctions for sexually harassing behavior and the existence of opportunities to perpetrate also contribute.

28.Sexual harassment affects the existences of nearly every woman in the UK. Most experience harassment eventually; many start to encounter it when they are still youngsters, and are harassed regularly to such an extent that it turns into a routine part of everyday life. In any event, when sexual harassment is not taking place straightforwardly, memory or fear of it affects women's behavior and decisions and confines their opportunity to be in public spaces. This is not acceptable, and women and girls ought not be supposed to get through it. It ought to matter to us that women and girls are regarded, not compelled to change the way they live to avoid daily sexual harassment and abuse. The Public authority has a responsibility to show leadership in eradicating sexual harassment and making public places safe.

29.The damage done by sexual harassment should be better reflected in approach and law. There should be a consistent reaction in approach and law to sexual harassment, not putting the onus onto women and girls to adjust their behavior. The Public authority ought to involve our findings and those of other available research as the basis for developing its own collection of information about the underlying factors contributing to perpetration of sexual harassment. This is essential for informing all strategy that is relevant to women and girls' safety in public places. In the following chapter, we will examine the ways where such approach ought to be made and co-ordinated.