Gender-related street harassment

A study conducted in Rotterdam in which more than 900 women of different backgrounds partook, concluded that 68% of them had been subject to street intimidation. https://www.rotterdam.nl/wonen-leven/straatintimidatie/aanvullend-onderzoek-plegers-straatintimidatie.pdf What was considered street intimidation? Whistling, staring, complimenting someone's looks, calling out with belittling or sexual terms (such as 'baby' or 'slut'), asking for sex, physically following someone because of their gender, and so on.

Perpetrators do this either solitarily, or in a group. In the same study, it appeared that people who catcalled on their own were primarily between the ages of 18 and 45. The distribution was relatively even over the categories within this range: the age group 18-25 years old contained 35% of perpetrators, 25-35 years 34%, and 21% of perpetrators were between the ages of 35 and 45. However, the number of catcallers in a group was striking: 61% were between the ages of 18 and 25 years old - significantly younger.

Are women the only ones subjected to this? No. Research conducted by CBS, which focused on men and women nationwide, shows that one-third of men have been on the receiving end of public harassment by a stranger, compared to two-thirds of women (figure 1). This 33.4% compared to 66.8% also looks different in reality: figure 2 shows a clear contrast in the frequency of forms of intimidation. For men, being yelled at or shouted at was the most occurring form, whilst for women, all options had relatively high frequencies. More than half of the women who experience the top three most occurring forms of intimidation have also had this happen to them three or more times. 9.3% of women even experienced being whistled at more than ten times.