Written submission from Plan International UK (SPP0071)

Executive Summary

1. Plan International UK runs the worlds’ largest global girls’ rights campaign ‘Because I am a Girl.’ This evidence is based on our research for the report ‘The State of Girls’ Rights in the UK’ (2016) and subsequent desk research and focus groups with girls across the UK.
2. Plan International UK delivers a global programme for girls called ‘Safer Cities’ including in the UK.
3. From our research, girls are clear that public sexual harassment is an almost universal part of growing up. Without exception, all of the girls Plan spoke to had stories of harassment, intimidating behaviour and being made to feel uncomfortable in public spaces. They described the fear, shock and shame this caused them, and the impact this had on where they went and what they felt free to do. Being harassed on journeys to and from school or college was common, and many had changed routes to avoid this kind of behaviour.
4. Girls felt frustrated that their experiences were minimised, and that harassment was normalised. They were frustrated when adults focused more on girls’ personal safety than on the behaviour of harassers. They were very keen to see more done to develop awareness of this issue, and work to prevent it from happening.

Our Recommendations in summary

5. Harassment is part of a wider culture of gender inequality, and these behaviours should be seen as on the continuum of violence against women and girls (VAWG).
6. Further data is required to improve the overall picture of how pronounced harassment is amongst young women, particularly where there may be links with their ability to travel freely to education and work. This must also give attention to intersectional experiences of harassment.
7. Collectively, we should move towards social and intergenerational disapproval of these behaviours, rather than excusing, ignoring or minimising them, and send a clear message to girls that they should not have to tolerate this.
8. PSHE/RSE should be used to explore the parallels between respect, consent, and gendered power dynamics in both intimate relationships and interactions with strangers. Space should be created to explore issues of masculinity, the pressures boys face to participate in these behaviours, and the role they can play as bystanders.
9. Whilst reporting may play a role in the solution, this is unlikely to capture the full range of these behaviours and may fail to reflect the age dimension to the problem due to the low likelihood of girls reporting.
10. Those in positions of trust or public responsibility, such as public transport and security staff, could have a greater role to play in responding to this problem. Training or guidance specifically for these groups should be explored further.
11. The importance of bystanders, the supportive role they can play, and how to react when someone discloses harassment could help contribute to a more supportive environment in which girls feel validated and their experiences recognised.
12. Given how extensively girls and young women of all ages are affected by public harassment, they must be involved in developing policy decisions and solutions to the problem.

About Plan International UK

13. Plan delivers a global programme for girls called ‘Safer Cities’ including in the UK. It runs in various cities including Cairo, Kampala, Hanoi and is being developed in the UK. Here girls map their city and indicate their experiences of harassment and where they feel safe, as well as what changes they would like to see to their local area.
14. Our 2016 State of Girls Rights in the UK report found that being young and female in the UK comes with specific challenges and that place and location matter. One of the strongest themes to emerge from the report was that of street harassment of girls. Plan is currently exploring girls’ experiences of sexual harassment in public places in more depth, and our submission reflects the findings of this work.[1]

The scale and impact of sexual harassment of women and girls in public places

How widespread is sexual harassment of women and girls in public places and what form does it take? Do we know whether this has increased or decreased over time?

15. Sexual harassment in public spaces is a pervasive part of girls’ and women’s lives. A third of adult British women report unwanted physical contact of a sexual nature in public, and two thirds report receiving unwanted sexual attention (such as wolf whistling, sexual comments, staring or exposure) or feeling unsafe.[2]
16. Whilst there is limited data about the scale of harassment for girls and young women specifically, the problem is likely to be significant. Ninety per cent of British women report their first experience of street harassment before the age of 17, 71 per cent before the age of age 15, and 10 per cent before they turned 10.[3] Thirty-seven per cent of 11 to 16-year-old girls, and 63 per cent of 17 to 21-year olds, report street harassment often or sometimes.[4]
17. Without exception, all of the girls Plan spoke to about this subject had stories of harassment, intimidating behaviour and being made to feel uncomfortable in public spaces. The most commonly reported behaviour was being shouted at or ‘cat called’, followed by frequent incidents of unwanted touching, invasions of personal space, or being followed. A worrying number reported incidents of more serious physical and sexual harassment, including being grabbed, groped, and masturbated at.
18. Girls talked about the backlash they could receive if they ‘rejected’ unwanted approaches, with harassment often turning into verbal aggression. They felt that harassers exploited the perceived vulnerability of younger women, thinking they could “get away with it” more easily as girls were less likely to “fight back” or report.

Who are the perpetrators and the victims, and how does it happen?

19. Women are overwhelmingly the targets and men overwhelmingly the ones perpetrating harassment.[5] There is very little publicly available or centrally collated data, however, that provides a comprehensive picture of public harassment in the spaces in which it is perpetrated, the nature of harassment, or the age or identity characteristics of those experiencing it.
20. Girls we spoke to described being harassed by boys and men of all ages, with teenage boys and young adult men harassing them most frequently. Many girls we spoke to described witnessing or experiencing the harassment of girls aged eight and upwards. Girls in uniform appeared to be a particular target, with girls describing feeling fetishised by “older men targeting school girls”.
21. Wider inequalities and prejudices also shape experiences of harassment.[6] LBTQI girls told Plan about intersecting experiences of sexual harassment, homophobia or transphobia; girls of colour described racialised sexual harassment; and young women with disabilities described a pronounced feeling of vulnerability to harassment due to a combination of gender, age and disability.
22. Spaces where girls identified harassment taking place most frequently were: busy and central areas; areas with large populations of students and young people; places where people are in close proximity and it can be hard to identify a perpetrator, particularly on or waiting for transport; when walking or jogging; in specific public spaces where groups of men congregate (e.g. an underpass or cluster of shops); and in and around bars and venues, as both customers and staff.

What is the impact of sexual harassment on the lives of women and girls? Are there other effects, such as on bystanders, or on society in general?

23. Potential harassment can have serious implications for girls’ freedom, autonomy and perceived safety.[7] Girls described multiple ways in which they changed their activities or behaviours in response to the risk of harassment, including regularly limiting their access to certain places and taking alternative journeys. They spoke about moderating how they looked, trying to avoid drawing attention to themselves or feeling anxious about what they wore.[8]

What gaps exist in the evidence about sexual harassment in public places?

24. Further research is needed to understand the true scale and nature of girls’ and women’s harassment in public, including the intersectional harassment experiences of particular groups, such as trans* people.
25. Whilst the important role of bystanders was stressed by both expert participants and young women in our research, what roles bystanders can play and in what contexts is less well understood and would benefit from further investigation.
26. There remains limited research into men who harass; their motivations, the social role it plays or how they may benefit from it. Further work should be done with boys and men to better understand the role public harassment plays in masculinity formation, to help develop strategies to challenge these behaviours.

Why does sexual harassment of women and girls in public places happen?

What are the factors (including social and cultural factors) that lead to sexual harassment of women and girls in public places?

27. Experts Plan spoke to suggested that these behaviours allow men to ‘prove themselves’ in peer groups, and that men stand to gain more by maintaining this status quo than by challenging it. Girls also felt that harassing women served a certain social purpose between men, enabling them to “demonstrate their manhood” or elevate their social status.
28. The minimisation of harassment can perpetuate the behaviour, with girls not wanting to speak out for fear of having their experiences dismissed as trivial, complementary or a joke. Older people, including family members, were identified as “not getting it”, having “grown up thinking it was normal”, and this perception gap further undermined girls who spoke up.

How do men and boys learn what is acceptable behaviour? 

29. The mantra ‘boys will be boys’ was frequently referenced as providing a benchmark that excused public harassment, and ‘lad culture’, ‘banter’ and ‘lad games’ – also reflected in popular culture - were identified as drivers. Those we spoke to felt there was a general failure among men to provide good role-modelling to younger generations, or to ‘police’ their friends behaviour.

How can negative attitudes and behaviours be changed?

30. There is an urgent need to work with young men to improve their attitudes, knowledge and awareness about how unwelcome stranger harassment is and the impact it can have on girls’ lives. Given the young age at which public harassment is frequently first experienced, efforts to raise awareness and communicate messages about the unacceptability of this behaviour must start from a young age.
31. It was suggested that exploring gender stereotypes, masculinity and mental health with boys could serve as an appropriate gateway to open up conversations about harassment. This work should aim to increase empathy for girls’ experiences, and to understand how to support women if they disclose harassment.
32. Social marketing campaigns to challenge social norms and develop a common understanding of what defines harassment in the context of gender inequality, racism and homophobia, could play a role in challenging public harassment.

Preventing and responding to sexual harassment of women and girls in public places How should the Government tackle sexual harassment in public places?

33. Public harassment of girls and women should be seen as a set of behaviours on a continuum of sexual violence against women and girls (VAWG). Government should expand the definition of VAWG to include public harassment and update local and national strategies to refer to this kind of experience in order to tackle it.
34. Street harassment is not generally covered in PSHE/RSE in schools, however it can serve as a helpful entry point to discuss these and other experiences further along the scale of gender-based violence. An increased focus on exploring gendered power dynamics in PSHE/RSE, for both boys and girls, could help address this problem.[9]
35. Government should take a lead in national data collection on the scale and nature of sexual harassment, including public harassment where possible, that includes data on young women’s experiences specifically.
36. Government, national, devolved and local must ensure the inclusion of girls and young women in the development and implementation of action plans to tackle sexual harassment in public places.  They offer a critical perspective ensuring that adopted measures address emerging issues in real time.

What are the police, local authorities or other bodies doing to tackle sexual harassment in public places? Who else has a role?

37. Formal police reporting can be an excellent tool for intelligence gathering and building a strong evidence base. The criminal justice system can be particularly helpful for some who may feel that their experience has been taken seriously if they are able to report, sending a symbolic message that this behaviour is not tolerated. The findings from research into the effectiveness of introducing misogyny as a hate crime in Nottingham should provide a helpful steer on whether this approach is effective and should be applied at a national scale.[10]
38. The ‘every day’ experience of street harassment, however, frequently means that girls and women think that incidents are too minor or trivial to report and much harassment is likely to remain unreported. Pursuing a criminal justice response to street harassment may also perpetuate social and racial injustice, or fail to meet the needs of victims.[11] Children generally under report to the police, so an approach that focuses on reporting alone is likely to miss out a wide range of experiences, including that of girls.
39. There are a number of other people in positions of social responsibility who may witness harassment or who girls may want to report to, including in schools or universities, on public transport, bouncers or security guards. People in positions of authority could be further involved in the response to harassment.

Are more or different laws needed? Or do existing laws need to be better understood or enforced?

40. More could be done to raise awareness of girls’ rights, of what kinds of behaviours might constitute a criminal offence or be considered a police matter and provide information about where to go if they did want to report an incident. As much of this behaviour falls outside of a criminal justice framework, however, it is critical to consider measures beyond the legal system alongside this.

Is current support adequate for victims of sexual harassment in public places?

41. The inaction of bystanders to street harassment can play a key role in the impact an incident has. Girls most commonly said they wanted someone to “check in” with them or an acknowledgement of what had happened to them, but only a few had positive examples of people doing so. In many cases, bystander inaction became part of the problem – intensifying feelings of embarrassment, frustration, shame or anger.
42. More work is needed to understand the impact and effectiveness of bystander interventions or the role these could play in prevention. Potential bystanders should be encouraged to feel a sense of responsibility and learn more about appropriate bystander strategies.[12]

Are there good practice examples or innovative thinking about tackling sexual harassment in the public realm either in the UK or internationally?

43. As part of Plan International’s Safer Cities project, young women aged 15 to 19-years-old in Melbourne, Australia, developed a tool called Free to Be, to enable them to map harassment incidents, amongst other positive and negative experiences, and report this to city decision makers.[13] Tools that promote online reporting can be an empowering informal justice mechanism through which girls’ and women can share their stories, be heard and supported in a safe space.

March 2018