Women suffer and endure while the world screams and men shout at them. From being harassed and wolf-whistled at on the street, to discrimination in the workplace and serious sexual assault, it is clear that sexism had become normalised.
Sexist hate speech is often treated as a harmless and non-serious issue and women are explicitly or implicitly told to bear with it. The aim of sexist hate speech is to humiliate, silence or objectify women,to undervaluetheir skills andopinions, to destroy their reputation, to punish them for not following a certain behaviour.
Hate speech often leads to various forms of non-verbal harassment (such as groping, inappropriate staring, wolf whistling, grooming, upskirting, etc.) justified by the patriarchal set of mind and the dissemination of degradingmessagesabout women or girls, violent and hypersexualised images and the expectations about women and men’s sexuality and roles in society. Lack of awareness and unwillingness to address the problem also contribute to a climate of impunityforabusers.
Sexual harassment towards women: a European overview
Violence Against Women survey by FRA recorded all cases of violence against women across the 28 Member States of the European Union (EU). It is based on interviews with 42,000 women across the EU, who were asked about theirexperiences ofverbal, non-verbal and cyber forms of harassment. The map shows the level of any form of sexual harassment reported by women state by state.
% of women harassed (all forms of sexual harassment) since the age of 15.
DATA SOURCE → FRA 2014
a.
Offline Experiences
Everyday women around Europe face a various form of harassment that are normalized forms of sexism. These forms of violence (verbal and non-verbal) are so common to become normal and women complaining about it are seen as overreacting,lacking of sense of humor, or considered a bit frigid or uptight and need to learn to take a compliment.
Perpetrators & different forms of sexual harassment
The study cunducted by FRA asked to the interviewed women which kind of harassment they experienced and to indicate the different types of aggressors. The results show that the majority of the cases of harassment are provoked by strangerswho often expose women indecently fostered by a disinhibition effect and lack of restraint.
CORRELATIONS BETWEEN PERPETRATORS AND TYPE OF ABUSE + FREQUENCY OF ABUSE.
DATA SOURCE → FRA 2014
VERBAL vs. NON-VERBAL
The survey identifies different forms of harassment against women that can be clusterized in two different typologies: verbal and non-verbal violence.
Verbal forms of harassment
- Sexually suggestive comments or jokes;
- Inappropriate invitations to go out on dates;
- Intrusive questions about the private life;
- Intrusive comments about the appearance.
Non-Verbal forms of harassment
- Inappropriate staring or leering;
- Sending or showing sexually explicit pictures;
- Somebody indecently exposing themselves to a woman.
% of women harassed since the age of 15.
DATA SOURCE → FRA 2014
VIOLENCES
VIOLENCES
Emotional response
The survey shows the different emotional responses of women in the immediate aftermath of the violence. As a result of the violence 70% of women interviewed felt angry and annoyed.
% of emotional response to incidents of sexual harassment since the age of 15.
DATA SOURCE → FRA 2014
Psychological consequences
On a large scale the initial response to harassments tend to have very severe consequences on a psychological level that lead to complex lifestyle changes linked to interrelationship difficulties, anxiety and panic attacks. The wide spectrumof consequences caused by sexual harrasments highlights the impact they have on women’s everyday life, forcing them to modify their status quo also after a long-time distance.
% of psychological consequences to incidents of sexual harassment since the age of 15.
DATA SOURCE → FRA 2014
b.
Online Experiences
Online misogyny is a global gender rights tragedy. It is routine for many women to be harassed and verbally assaulted on the Internet. It happens on social media platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and many others affecting moreor less seriously women’s mental health as an actual real-life violence.
Cyberharassment in Europe
% of women experiencing cyberharassment since the age of 15.
The online world is not immune to many of the human rights abuses that women face offline. In fact anonymity facilitates the spread of harassment online. This kind of abuse includes direct or indirect threats of physical or sexual violence,discriminatory abuse targeting one or more aspects of a woman’s identity, targeted harassment, and privacy violations such as doxing or sharing sexual or intimate images of a woman without her consent.
The Six countries Case
Correlations between percentage of harassed women and type of abuse. Sample: Denmark, Poland, Italy, Spain Sweden, UK.
Amnesty International’s research on six European countries (Denmark, Poland, Italy, Spain Sweden, UK) showed that women experienced a variety of abuse and hatespeech on social media platforms. Online abuses are mostly made by people who theydon’t know personally at all. Threats of violence against women online includes both direct and indirect threats that can be physical or sexual in nature: the comments made by the perpetrators have sexist, racist, misogynist and homophobiccontent.
DATA SOURCE → Amnesty International 2018
Online Perpetrators
For the online survey the perpetrators are divided by level of intimacy with the victim. The closer ones are the partner and the people the victim know personally, followed by people known online and friends of friends or family. For everystate the wider category is the stranger people, who often take advantage of their anonymity to harass women. The survey shows that for the majority of the countries the most frequent perpetrator is a stranger, while the intimate onevariates considerably from state to state.
Values for perpetrators of online harassment by country.
DATA SOURCE → Amnesty International 2018
Psychological consequences of digital experiences
% of psychological consequences of online harassment.Sample: Denmark, Poland, Italy, Spain Sweden, UK.
The alarming number of cases of harassment and hatespeech that women are having online shed a light on its consequences too, with women around the world reporting stress, anxiety, or panic attacks. Social media platforms, especially forwomen and marginalized groups, are a critical space for individuals to exercise the right to freedom of expression. That’s because online violence and abuse are a direct threat to this freedom. And this is something that remains away whenyou log out.
DATA SOURCE → Amnesty International 2018
Platform and policies
Hate speech is an unfortunate common occurrence on the Internet and in some cases it culminates in severe threats to individuals. Most women feel that social media companies need to do more. Social media platforms, especially for women andmarginalized groups, should be critical spaces for individuals to exercise their rights and opinions. On the contrary, online platforms are frequently a place where violences and abuses are often directed to this kind of people threateningtheir freedom of expression.
% of harassed women by social network and opinions on their policies.
DATA SOURCE → Amnesty International 2018
Wrapping up
Violence against women undermines women’s fundamental rights such as dignity, respect, gender equality and access to justice. What emerges is a picture of extensive abuse that affects many women’s lives but is systematically under-reportedto the authorities. Stopping hate and fear will not be easy. But the guiding principles of conscience and human rights have proven to be powerful motivators in the past. There is the need to act against violence against women and to gobeyond the narrow confines of criminal law, ranging from employment and health to the medium of new technologies.