Street Sexual Harassment: Experiences and Attitudes among Young Spanish People

Abstract

Violence against women (VAW) is gender-based violence directed at women and girls on account of being female that can take on multiple forms and manifest in different contexts. Among the many possible forms of VAW, this article focuses on “piropos”, a type of stranger harassment situation. Specifically, the objectives of this study were two-fold: to analyze the usefulness of a tool to evaluate social attitudes towards this form of VAW and to analyze the influence of sociodemographic variables and prior victimization (whether as a witness or victim) on attitudes towards this type of violence among Spanish youth. An opportunity sample of 538 young Spanish people took part in this study. They filled out a sociodemographic data sheet, a victimization questionnaire designed ad hoc, and a questionnaire on attitudes towards “piropos”. The results obtained indicate that the questionnaire was adequate for use as a tool to evaluate social attitudes towards this type of VAW and suggest its applicability for future studies on attitudes towards “piropos” as a type of stranger harassment situation in a Spanish context. Moreover, the results on victimization not only corroborate the magnitude of street sexual harassment in Spain and a direct effect of gender on the perception of the violence experienced, they also reinforce the need to further investigate new aspects. Regarding attitudes towards “piropos”, the results obtained indicate that, in general, participants demonstrated negative attitudes or rejection, and these feelings were particularly strong among women.

Perceived Barriers to Effective Coverage of Health and Social Services for Sexual Violence in Young Adults in Spain

“…Tis is aggravated when there is alcohol consumption, as it increases the feeling of blame, exempting the aggressors from responsibility [13]. Tools that encourage proactive responses by witnesses could help victims identify SV [30].…”

Development and validation of the Multidimensional Gender Inequality Perception Scale (MuGIPS)

“…The mean scores for all items were above 2 and under 6, except for Items 6 and 8, which belong to the Violence dimension. We decided to keep these items for their conceptual, practical, and contextual relevance, given that they are related to sexual and street violence against women, two key aspects of gender inequality and gender violence highlighted in Spanish society [ 33 ]. Before conducting exploratory factorial analysis (EFA), we excluded two items because of the high response rate (> 5%) to the answer option “I prefer not to answer”(deleted items 1 and 2), one item because of its low correlation with the rest of the items on the scale ( r < .300; deleted item 4), and two more items following the experts’ qualitative criteria–one of them was evaluated as too general (deleted item 5) and the content of a second one seemed to correspond to another item already included in the final selection (deleted item 3).…”

Personal Traits of the People Who Help: The Case of Bystanders to Violence against Women

“…The information was gathered by means of a questionnaire that included: Questionnaire to evaluate the experience as violence witness designed ad hoc, which included a four-point answer scale (1: No, never; 2: Yes, on one occasion; 3: Yes, on more than one occasion; and 4: Yes, regularly), with the participants having been witness to 4 types of violence: robbery, intimate partner violence against women (defined in the questionnaire as physical, psychological, and/or sexual aggression against a woman perpetrated by her male partner or ex-partner), street harassment (defined in the questionnaire as unwanted comments, whistling, or touching that had taken place in the street or in public places or public transportation) and sexual harassment (defined in the questionnaire as verbal or physical sexual behaviors, such as comments, jokes, touching, etc., that had taken place at work or in an academic setting). It should be noted that intimate partner violence against women and sexual harassment are defined according to the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence [ 17 ] and Spanish laws; and street sexual harassment defined as in previous research (see Ferrer et al [ 78 ]). Characteristics of People who Help Questionnaire scale (CPHQ) [ 77 ].…”