I’d like to point out that I’m a woman but I wanted to post this here because it actually really bothers me. I don’t know how many of you saw a study that came out several months ago in the UK stating that 97% of all women experience sexual harassment but and I’m not expert in statistics but the headlines of this study were extremely misleading and it angers me that people were taking it at face value without actually taking the time to read the documents that can be found online when you research it. This. Study. Is. Not. Accurate. At least in terms of what it’s claiming and it’s alarming how inaccurate it is when they’re making such a massive claim as 97% of all women in the UK have been sexually harassed. Around 32-33 million women live in the UK. This study questioned 1,089.
Out of 32-33 million women, they only questioned 1,089 from ages 18-70 which is an extremely small sampling of a very wide age range of a much larger demographic. Just to put into perspective how large that gap is: 33,000,000 = women who live in the UK 1,089 = women who were questioned for the survey That is literally 0.003% of the entire female population of the UK. If this study were done in Los Angeles, CA, that would be the equivlant of questioning 150 women out of the about 5,000,000 women that live there and claiming that was the experience of all women in that area.
The survey consisted of two questions: 1. Providing the women with a list of actions that could be considered harassment and asking which they’ve experienced in public 2. Whether or not they reported it and why.
The options were of an extremely wide range from being cat-called or wolf-whistled and online comments or jokes to unwanted touching, body rubbing, or groping to being forced into participating in unwanted sexual behavior.

They’re essentially claiming that cat-calling and rape are on the same level as each other. Unsurprisingly, cat-calling came in first.
When asking if they reported it, 98% claimed they didn’t, 44% claimed it wouldn’t have made a difference. While that should prompt a conversation, the study doesn’t at all specify the correlation between which form of sexual harrassment the woman encountered and whether or not she reported it/thought it wouldn’t amount to anything. If a woman has been forced into sexual behavior, groped, received unwanted attention then yes, she should be able to report it without fearing that it won’t change anything but if a woman has been cat-called, received a comment or joke online, or been stared at…are those really worth reporting? There is a big, BIG difference between being yelled at from afar, being stared at, having a joke or comment thrown your direction and it making you slightly uncomfortable and being physically handled in some way. Yet, from the headlines alone, it makes people think 97% of ALL women in the UK (which would be around 3,201,000 out of 33 million) have experienced sexual harassment in a physical sense which in all reality, this study supposedly found that 1,056 women out of the 1,089 they questioned have experienced anything from cat-calling to online comments to groping to rape which again, there’s a very, very wide range there and the study is assuming that everything that the women reported to have experienced were of a sexual nature including simply being stared at and from what I can tell, there was no context requested. Even some of the actions on the list seem to have been presented with zero context and yes, while I agree all of this things should warrant conversations, cat-calling is not equivlant to physical harassment.