Written submission from Rape Crisis England and Wales (SPP0088)

Executive Summary

• Sexual harassment is part of a continuum of sexual and other violence against women and girls, almost entirely perpetrated by men and boys.
• Condoning harassment creates a conducive context for other forms of sexual violence.
• Violence against woman and girls is a cause and consequence of sex inequality.
• Harassment is considered the most common form of sexual violence that women and girls experience. The most recent ONS figures show 3.7% of men and 19.2% of women reported experiencing indecent exposure or unwanted sexual touching - just two forms of sexual harassment – from strangers since the age of 16.
• In a survey, 90% of women reported that their first experience of street harassment occurred before age 17; 71% reported the first experience before age 15.
• Sexual harassment has a broad set of impacts:

-          as a degrading, humiliating, and harmful experience in itself,

-          as part of the creation of a conducive context for the objectification and humiliation of women and girls and for the condoning and excusing of all forms of sexual violence, and

-          as part of the framing of sex-based inequality, reducing women’s rights to speak in, move in, and use public spaces.

• It is a gendered crime not solely because it is perpetrated overwhelmingly by men against women, but because the impact on male and female victims is so different; women and girls are much more likely to report being intimidated and to change their behaviour as a result of the threat or reality of sexual harassment, which women fear may lead to additional forms of violence
• We recommend

-          that the Government’s Violence against Women and Girls Strategy should specifically address the issue of sexual harassment in public spaces

-          the creation of a specific offence relating to ‘upskirting’

-          Ring fenced funding for specialist sexual violence support services.

Rape Crisis England and Wales

1.      Rape Crisis England and Wales (RCEW) is an umbrella organisation representing 45 centres across England and Wales whose primary purpose is to provide specialist support services for women and girls who have experienced any form of sexual violence.

2.      Rape Crisis services are engaged in both the prevention of sexual violence and the provision of support to victims. Rape Crisis services typically deliver prevention workshops with young people in schools. This is work which challenges young people’s norms and ideas about acceptable behaviour in relation to relationships between the sexes, including attitudes to and treatment of women in public spaces. Rape Crisis are able to deliver and facilitate this work effectively because they have developed extensive expertise in specialist support provision. This submission is informed by our experience of delivering these frontline services.

Definitions

3.      In this submission we use the Equality Act 2010 definition of sexual harassment as "unwanted conduct of a sexual nature which has the purpose or effect of creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment". Examples of sexual harassment can include but are not limited to wolf whistles, verbal comments, following and staring.

4.      We consider sexual harassment to be part of a continuum of sexual and other violence against women and girls, almost entirely perpetrated by men. Professor Liz Kelly, discussing the use of the concept of a ‘continuum’ of violence by a number of researchers, notes that it refers to the

basic common character underlying the many different forms of violence: the abuse, intimidation, coercion, intrusion, threat and force men use to control women.[1]

Harassment is often regarded as a ‘low level’ offence. However, condoning harassment creates a conducive context within which other forms of sexual violence may occur.

5.      We consider that violence against woman and girls is a cause and consequence of sex inequality. We note that the United Nations Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women, Preamble paragraph 6, links violence directly to women’s inequality:

[V]iolence against women is a manifestation of historically unequal power relations between men and women, which have led to domination over and discrimination against women by men and to the prevention of the full advancement of women, and ... violence against women is one of the crucial social mechanisms by which women are forced into a subordinate position compared with men.

6.      We agree with the United Nations analysis of violence against women and girls and the role of government:

as an outcome of gender discrimination that shapes social, economic, cultural and political structures, rather than being independent of them. As a consequence, the State is obligated not merely to protect against violence, but rather to eliminate its “causes”—that is, gender discrimination at structural, ideological and operational levels—as well as to bear the responsibility for addressing its consequences.[2]

How widespread is sexual harassment of women and girls in public places and what form does it take?

7.      Underreporting is an intractable problem in sexual violence, but harassment is considered the most frequent and common form of sexual violence that women and girls experience. The most recent ONS figures show indecent exposure or unwanted sexual touching - just two of the possible forms of sexual harassment – affected 3.8 million victims in total. 3.7% of men and 19.2% of women reported that they had experienced this from strangers since the age of 16.[3]

8.      In a survey[4] of more than 800 women in the UK, 90% reported that their first experience of street harassment occurred before the age of 17, with 71% reporting that the first experience occurred before they were 15. 10% reported that it happened first before they turned 10 years of age. 87% reported changing their route as a result of harassment, and nearly 80% chose different forms of transport, for example, calling a cab instead of walking or taking the bus. 74% said that they had been followed by a man or a group of men in a way that had made them feel unsafe during the past year; and 20% of them had experienced this more than five times.

9.      A growing location for harassment is in the virtual world, where women are subject to high levels of abuse. This can range from image based sexual abuse - so-called ‘revenge porn’ – posting revealing pictures online without consent – to harassing women, including women in public life. Research by Amnesty International found Diane Abbott had received almost half of all abusive tweets sent to female MPs in the run-up to the general election, clearly demonstrating the fact that sexual harassment intersects with other forms of harassment, in this case racialised sexual harassment.

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

10.  The Committee on the UN Convention of the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) has recently issued its General Recommendation 35 on Violence against Women which notes inter alia the impact of violence on women’s human rights:

Women’s right to a life free from gender-based violence is indivisible from and interdependent with other human rights, including the right to life, health, liberty and security of the person, the right to equality and equal protection within the family, freedom from torture, cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment, freedom of expression, movement, participation, assembly and association.

All these rights are jeopardised to varying degrees by sexual harassment.

11.  Sexual harassment therefore has a broad set of impacts:

- as a degrading, humiliating, and harmful experience in itself,

- as part of the creation of a conducive context for the objectification and humiliation of women and girls and for the condoning and excusing of all forms of sexual violence, and

- as part of the framing of sex-based inequality, reducing women’s rights to speak in, move in, and use public spaces.

The repetition and frequency of sexual harassment is rendered invisible by low reporting and poor data collection. However, because it is a repeated daily experience for women and girls it creates a powerful context that limits their freedom of movement, speech, and autonomy.

Whilst walking …from school last Friday a car of dudes was waiting at traffic lights as I walked past them. They began catcalling and making highly sexist remarks. It wasn’t til they’d driven away that I realised how fast my heart was beating and how scared it made me feel. It was also highly disgusting. The other disgusting thing is that 13 year old boys (same age as me) are always making sexist comments and they have no shame at all.  Winnie, 1st March 2018, posted on the Everyday Sexism website

Who are the perpetrators and the victims

12.  It is a gendered crime not solely because it is perpetrated typically by men against women, but because the impact on male and female victims is so different; women and girls are much more likely to report being intimidated and to change their behaviour as a result of the threat or reality of sexual harassment, which women fear may lead to the most serious forms of violence. Research such as that by Dr Fiona Vera Gray[5] records the response of many women, which is to perform ‘safety work’, that is, adapting their behaviour and movements, habitually limiting their own freedom in order to avoid sexual harassment. Men, in contrast, are much less likely to experience sexual harassment by women as containing a serious threat to their safety, or to change their behaviour to avoid placing themselves at risk of sexual harassment. Furthermore, they are much less likely to be blamed for putting themselves in a position where sexual harassment is possible (e.g. working late and then getting public transport home).

The intersectional impact of other characteristics on women's experiences

13.  The importance of intersectionality is vital in understanding the forms and consequences of public sexual harassment. Sexual harassment can intersect with other forms of harassment such as racism, homophobia, colorism, gender identity, classism, disability amongst others. Women and girls can be targeted in multiple ways. Girls and disabled women are more frequently targeted in all forms of sexual violence.

An illustrative example is Imkaan’s video of young BME lesbians speaking out about their experiences of sexual harassment: https://www.facebook.com/PurpleDrum/videos/753675938159515/. They talk about the impacts of harassment which include limiting their freedom in public space, feelings of shame and disempowerment. They also highlight feelings of lack of safety in public, sometimes to the point that they do not want to leave home.

14.  Young women are statistically more likely to suffer from sexual violence than other age groups. ONS notes that for the last year 

those aged 16 to 19 and aged 20 to 24 were significantly more likely to be victims of sexual assault in the last 12 months than any other age group.

The Children’s Society latest report[6] on children’s happiness notes that girls are                            significantly less happy than boys as they progress through puberty:

girls’ average happiness with life as a whole decreases substantially, starting at a higher point than boys at 10 years old and ending at a lower point than boys at 15 years old.

This is linked to unhappiness with their bodies and appearance, a concern boys do not share. We suggest that this may be linked with a general culture of judging females on their appearance and sexual attractiveness.

Recommendations for action

15.  We do not at this stage recommend that a more specific criminal offence of sexual harassment be created. We see the issue as deeply rooted in public attitudes and systemic inequality. We know that the specialist teams and units within the police and CPS are severely under resourced, which results in significant delays within the criminal justice system. We know that conviction rates relating to sexual offences remain disproportionately low. Given the ties to public attitudes, particularly the construction of gender stereotypes, we believe that resources would be better directed towards preventative action, education and awareness raising in the form of, for example, public campaigns. We recommend that the Government’s Violence against Women and Girls Strategy should specifically address this issue.

16.  However, in relation to criminal offences we do recommend the creation of a specific offence relating to ‘upskirting’, a form of sexual harassment that occurs in public spaces. As the law currently stands there is a gap which results in the CPS being unable to prosecute this behaviour effectively.

17.  RCEW is also aware of the potential for sexual harassment in public spaces to be situated within the context of misogyny as a hate crime. We have considerable concerns however about its workability and implementation.

18.  Online activism helps fill the gap in the evidence base as well as recording and sharing experiences of harassment. This has been most powerfully seen recently in the #metoo movement, but this use of online spaces to raise awareness about sexual harassment, particularly public sexual harassment, is not new.  Online forums against street harassment such as Hollaback[7] and Everyday Sexism[8] provide public space to which people can bring their experiences. These good practices around raising awareness should be supported.

19.  RCEW conducted a literature review in 2016 on the Prevention of Sexual Violence. We consider that there are gaps in research; for example, on what might be effective in changing attitudes; and the impact of pornography on men and boys’ views about the acceptability of sexual aggression.

20.  The Government Strategy on Violence Against Women and Girls 2016-20 cited above acknowledges the concept of embedding Violence against Women and Girls as everyone’s business and the importance of challenging deep rooted social norms that cause discrimination. The Strategy also recognises the greater demand that will create on local services. Both the cost implications and potential savings of prevention work should be clarified to encourage investment in developing an effective measure of success for sexual violence initiatives.

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

21.  While we recognise and welcome some good practice for example the work carried out by Transport Police in their ‘Report it to stop it’ campaign.[9] We welcomed the recognition of the multiple forms of sexual violence which can occur on public transport and the efforts made to validate the experiences around sexual harassment. However, we also feel that not enough is being done to raise awareness and support the women and girls impacted by sexual harassment in public spaces.

22.  Sexual harassment pervades every element of public space. Existing specialist sexual violence organisations such as Rape Crisis Centres, work with experiences of sexual violence across the continuum. As such there is support available for women and girls who experience public sexual harassment. These centres are increasingly operating at capacity and are underfunded. Government should ensure secure, sustainable funding for all Rape Crisis Centres, including funding to not only continue but to develop their services in response to need, such as the development of specialist prevention work directed at public sexual harassment.

March 2018