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Article Contents

Introduction, masculinity, gender norms, gender-based violence and intersectionality, perpetration of street harassment, who is perpetrating street harassment ‘it’s always men’, from ‘lacking understanding’ to something more ‘deep and sinister’ - individual causes for engaging in street harassment, ‘it’s easy, there are no conceivable consequences’: the cultural sanctioning of street harassment, ‘it’s just men sort of showing themselves as the superior gender’: masculinity, power and street harassment, environmental facilitators and tools of harassment, ‘they feel like they can get away with it’: the use of cars and mobility, acknowledgements.

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‘Why did he do it? Because he’s a Fucking Bloke’: Victim Insights into the Perpetration of Street Harassment

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Sophie Hindes, Bianca Fileborn, ‘Why did he do it? Because he’s a Fucking Bloke’: Victim Insights into the Perpetration of Street Harassment, The British Journal of Criminology , Volume 63, Issue 3, May 2023, Pages 668–686, https://doi.org/10.1093/bjc/azac029

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Despite the pervasive nature of street harassment, there is currently little research exploring who perpetrates street harassment and why. Drawing on interviews with Australians who have experienced street harassment, we examine their insights into perpetration. Participants identified individual-level, social/cultural, structural and contextual factors that facilitate street harassment. While existing theoretical explanations of gendered violence help to account for the perpetration of street harassment, these were not sufficient in accounting for participants’ experiences. Participants often drew on gendered, aged, classed and racial stereotypes in their perceptions of perpetrators. We argue that a nuanced understanding of power that accounts for multiple, intersecting forms of marginalisation is needed to understand who perpetrates, as well as who is perceived to perpetrate street harassment.

A flourishing body of work has demonstrated the pervasive and harmful nature of street harassment ( Logan 2015 ; Fileborn and O’Neill 2021 ). 1 Street harassment comprises routine, often mundane, intrusions including actions such as catcalling, wolf-whistling, prolonged staring, sexualized comments and unwanted touching, alongside more subtle interactions such as imposed, non-sexualized conversation ( Logan 2015 ; Vera-Gray, 2016 ). Public harassment can include actions that are sexualized and gendered, as well as those driven by homophobia, transphobia, racism, ableism and so forth. Thus, an intersectional lens is needed in accounting for the nature and lived experience of street harassment ( Crenshaw 1991 ; Davis, 1994 ; Fileborn and O’Neill, 2021 ). The fluid and contextual nature of street harassment contributes towards its normalization and trivialization, with such encounters often constructed as ‘complimentary’, ‘friendly’ or ‘flirtatious’ in nature ( Quinn 2002 ; Fairchild 2010 ; Fileborn and O’Neill 2021 ). While in certain contexts such behaviours may be experienced as welcome (or, at least, ambivalent), the harms of street harassment have been extensively documented ( Bastomski and Smith 2017 ; Vera-Gray 2018 ). Yet, despite the growth of research in this field in recent years (predominantly focused on the experiences of cis-gender, heterosexual women), we know comparatively little about those who engage 2 in street-based harassment ( Fileborn and O’Neill 2021 ).

Theories of masculinity have offered critical insights into why men perpetuate gender-based violence ( Morris and Ratajczak 2019 ). However, this has primarily been in the context of domestic and sexual violence, with limited research applying theories of masculinity to street harassment. While street harassment can be understood as a manifestation of gender-based violence ( Fileborn and O’Neill 2021 ), this phenomenon also has distinct qualities that warrant a focused analysis. As we note above, at least some iterations of this behaviour are trivialized, normalized and heavily contested as a form of harm. In contrast to other forms of gendered violence, street harassment appears to be predominantly perpetrated by strangers. In the context of this study, racist, homophobic, transphobic and other forms of harassment were included. While theories of masculinities and gendered violence are helpful in making sense of this phenomenon, they are not sufficient to fully account for these diverse experiences.

To contribute towards the limited body of knowledge on perpetrators of street harassment, we examine findings from interviews with 47 individuals who had experienced street harassment in Victoria and New South Wales, Australia. Participants’ accounts provide vital insights into who perpetuates this behaviour, and the social, cultural and environmental factors that enable harassment to occur. As Clark and Quadara (2010 : viii) argue in relation to sexual assault, ‘victim/survivors … provide an important and under-utilised perspective on perpetration’, and this logic similarly underpins our work. However, while we aim to centre participants’ perspectives and experiences, what actions ‘count’ as harassment—and, subsequently, whose behaviour is seen as a ‘problem’—is not neutral. These accounts illuminate the social production of street harassment, as much as they inform us about the lived ‘reality’ of who engages in this behaviour and why. Ultimately, we argue that participants’ accounts simultaneously provide much-needed insights into perpetration, while also perpetuating other power relations and inequalities. Further, we contend that theories of masculinity provide a useful, but insufficient, framework for understanding street harassment. In contrast to the quote from a participant, Dave, in the article title, it is not just ‘because he’s a fucking bloke’. Rather, our findings point towards the need for multi-faceted, intersectional and nuanced accounts of perpetration that work alongside theories of masculinity.

Researchers have frequently drawn upon theories of patriarchy and masculinity to understand gender-based violence, with men using violence as a tool to reinforce their dominance and the subordination of women (see Morris and Ratajczak 2019 ). However, these theories have most often been applied in studies looking at domestic and sexual violence, with masculinities under-theorized in relation to street harassment. Drawing on Connell (2005 : 71) and Butler (1990) , we understand gender as a complex, fluid and historically situated form of social organization. Gender is not a static identity, but something which is performed and constantly achieved through bodily comportment, discursive acts, social interactions and so forth. The performance of gender is intertwined with other social structures including class, sexuality, race and culture, with multiple and competing constructions of what it means to be a ‘man’ or ‘woman’ at any given time ( Butler 1990 ; Connell 2005 ).

We draw on Connell’s (2005) concept of hegemonic masculinity to understand the gender practices which reinforce patriarchy through the subordination of women and other men deemed to be lower on the gender hierarchy (such as homosexual men) to maintain the dominant position of (white, able-bodied, cis-gender and heterosexual) men. Hegemonic masculinity refers to the version of masculinity that is valourized and upheld as ‘ideal’ ( Connell and Messerschmidt 2005 ). As most men will not inhabit the hegemonic masculine ideal, men may engage in complicit masculinities—where they support and condone hegemonic masculinity, without embodying all its qualities themselves—to reclaim their masculine position ( Messerschmidt 1993 ; Kimmel 2008 ). Violence towards women in both the public and private spheres is often understood as a mechanism to maintain and reinforce hegemonic masculinity and gendered power structures. Sexual violence is understood as a tool through which men can establish their dominance not only over women but also over other men to attain social status and power (see Fahlberg and Pepper 2016 ).

Alongside this theory of hegemonic masculinity, attitudes and norms relating to gender and sexuality at the individual, societal and institutional levels can work to normalize and justify gendered violence. For example, that men are dominant in households and relationships and have uncontrollable sexuality ( Flood and Pease, 2009 ). Rape myths also reinforce gendered norms around sexual violence such as that women are ‘asking for it’ through getting drunk or wearing revealing clothing and that men cannot help themselves and are merely responding to women’s sexual invitations ( Burt 1980 ; Franiuk et al. 2008 ). These gendered norms and attitudes are supported in institutional and organizational contexts, and through social networks and peer groups, including participation in homosocial male peer groups which reinforce tolerance for violence against women ( DeKeseredy and Schwartz 1993 ; Flood and Pease 2009 ). There are also cultural and socioeconomic dimensions to gendered norms. Attitudes towards violence against women vary across different cultures and countries, and lower socioeconomic status and poverty has also been associated with higher risk of intimate partner violence and more accepting attitudes towards violence against women ( Flood and Pease 2009 ). Finally, we take an intersectional lens to our analysis, understanding that street harassment is not simply an issue of men’s violence against women, but the product of intersecting patterns of sexism, racism, classism, ableism, homophobia and transphobia ( Crenshaw 1991 ). We understand that these dimensions interact to shape the experiences of victims of street harassment, but also shape who is perceived to be a perpetrator, as we explore throughout the findings.

Whilst there is a growing body of research exploring experiences of street harassment, there is only limited research on who perpetrates, for what reasons, and what resources are drawn on in facilitating harassment. Research suggests that it is men who most commonly engage in street harassment ( Stop Street Harassment 2014 ). DelGreco et al. ’s (2021) study with 348 undergraduate students in the United States found that all men they surveyed reported engaging in some form of street harassment, suggesting that it may be normalized for this cohort. Rosenbaum et al. ’s (2020) study with men in Nepal found that 22% of the 219 respondents admitted to intentionally harassing women in public, with their behaviour aiming to intimidate, shame, terrorize, control or assault. However, several studies have also found evidence that women do engage in some forms of street harassment ( Meza-de-Luna and Garcia-Falconi 2015 ; Armstrong 2016 ). Thus, while it seems likely that men disproportionately engage in this behaviour, we must be careful not to use ‘gendered’ synonymously with ‘men’. Rather, there is a need to examine the different power structures and contextual factors that might underpin engagement in this behaviour by men and women (and differences within these categories), in addition to gender diverse and non-binary people.

Additionally, studies have found that class and race shape people’s perceptions of who is engaging in harassing behaviours, with men from lower socio-economic backgrounds identified as ‘more likely’ to perpetrate harassment ( Dhillon and Bakaya 2014 ; Alcade 2020 ). Fileborn’s (2016) work on unwanted sexual attention in licensed venues found that participants typically ‘othered’ perpetrators and believed that this behaviour was disproportionately engaged in by men from different social and cultural backgrounds to themselves, even if this was at odds with their lived experiences. Whilst there is limited research on race and class in terms of who perpetrates, there is clearer evidence to suggest that engaging in street harassment is shaped by sexism, misogyny and adherence to particular masculinities ( Fileborn and O’Neill 2021 ). Henry’s (2017) study with self-professed harassers presented five central motivations that led perpetrators to engage in street harassment: normalization, sexual objectification, women’s position in society, to punish women, and because the perpetrators believed that they were oppressed—with this final motivation suggesting that men might use harassment as a way of (re)claiming ‘lost’ power, in line with Kimmel’s (2008) concept of aggrieved entitlement (see also Flood, Dragiewicz and Pease 2020 ; DelGreco et al. 2021 ). Further, men who have strong beliefs about gender roles, conform to traditional notions of masculinity, who are oriented towards social dominance, and have hostile attitudes towards women are more likely to engage in and be tolerant of street harassment ( Wessleman and Kelly 2010 ; Mellon 2013 ; Walton and Pedersen 2021 ).

Other studies have found that men who engage in street harassment place blame on women and girls ( Henry 2017 ). For example, in Zeitz and Das’ (2018 : 1234) study with young men in Mumbai, India one man justified his actions through saying girls had ‘loose morals’. Street harassment can subsequently be understood as functioning to police and control the actions of women (and others) in public space, (re)establishing a hierarchical gender order ( Crouch 2009 ; Vera-Gray 2016 ; Baptist and Coburn 2019 ; Fileborn 2021a ). In contrast, Walton and Pedersen’s (2021) study with heterosexual cisgender men found that men who engage in catcalling primarily do this to express sexual interest and to flirt. They found that most men wanted a friendly reaction from women and hoped that it would be interpreted as a form of flattery, and their intention was not to harm. However, the authors identified tensions between this stated aim, and other attitudes the participants adhered to, such as hostile sexism and tolerance of sexual harassment.

Several studies have illustrated the role that homosociality plays in fostering harassment ( Quinn 2002 ; Grazian 2007 ; Wesselman and Kelly 2010 ; Vera-Gray 2016 ; Baptist and Coburn 2019 ). Grazian (2007 : 222) examined the practice of ‘girl hunting’ in licensed venues—a collective practice performed by young men whereby they ‘aggressively seek out female sexual partners’. Girl hunting, Grazian argues (2007 : 222), serves ‘as strategies of impression management in which young men sexually objectify women’ and as a way of ‘doing’ masculinity at both the individual and group level. The ‘girl hunt’ can be understood as a ritual performed by men for other men to establish a suitably hegemonic masculinity and group belonging, as much as it relates to any genuine attempt to engage in a casual heterosexual encounter (see also Quinn 2002 ). Wesselmann and Kelly (2010) similarly found that participants were more likely to engage in stranger harassment when in a group, suggesting that street harassment may be engaged in as part of homosocial male-bonding, as well as providing an enhanced sense of anonymity. Collectively, these studies clearly demonstrate that masculinities, misogyny and sexism play a central role in why men engage in street harassment.

This paper draws on in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 47 individuals who had self-defined experiences of street or public harassment in Victoria and New South Wales, Australia. These interviews form a subset of data from a project examining victim-centred justice responses to street harassment conducted by the second named author. Ethics approval was received from the University of Melbourne ethics committee prior to commencing fieldwork. Participants were recruited via paid social media advertisements on Facebook and Instagram, in addition to word of mouth, and advertisements shared by key organizations such as LGBTQ + community groups and street harassment activist groups. Participants were required to be age 18 and older, live in New South Wales or Victoria, and to have self-defined experiences of street-based harassment, including harassment occurring based on gender, sexuality, racism, homophobia and ableism. Participation was open to people of all genders and sexual orientations. Forty-seven participants were recruited, and an overview of participant demographics is provided in Table 1 . All interviews except one were conducted by the second named author over Zoom during 2020, with the remaining interview conducted face to face. Prior to the interview, participants were provided with an overview of the interview themes, and a plain language statement and consent form outlining what the interview would involve, the risks of participation, as well as contact details for relevant support services. Participants were able to indicate prior to the interview if there were any topics that they did not want to discuss and were reminded throughout the interview that responses to all questions were optional. For a detailed overview of the project’s feminist methodology and ethical protocols, please refer to Fileborn (2021b) . Interviews took between 1 and 2 hours to complete and were audio-recorded with participants’ consent. Interview recordings were transcribed by an external service provider. Participants were reimbursed with a $100 gift card in recognition of their time and expertise.

Overview of participant demographics

* One participant did not provide their age.

** The terminology used here reflects that used by participants.

Prior to the interview, participants were invited to complete a Google mapping exercise documenting their experiences of street harassment across their life ( Fileborn 2021b ). During each interview, participants were invited by the researcher (the second-named author) to ‘talk through their map’. Further questions were asked to encourage participants to reflect on the nature and impact of their experiences (example.g. the types of harassment experienced, locations that harassment typically occurs in), patterns relating to perpetration (e.g. who typically perpetrates harassment, any trends or patterns across their experiences, and why they think people engage in harassment), reporting and disclosure, and their perspectives on justice and potential justice responses to street harassment. In this article, we focus on findings in relation to perpetration.

Both authors conducted the data analysis on perpetration following Braun and Clarke’s (2021) approach to thematic analysis. This process involved undertaking an initial reading of each transcript, with tentative notes taken to develop a draft coding scheme. Both authors then coded a selection of transcripts to refine the codes and ensure that we had a shared understanding of the data. Each author then took responsibility for coding half of the transcripts each. Inductive and deductive coding was utilized, with descriptive codes based on core categories in the interview questions (e.g. ‘perpetration’, ‘type of harassment’) and themes developed through issues identified in participants’ responses (e.g. ‘masculinity’, ‘cultural norms’ and ‘power’).

We move on now to examine findings in relation to the perpetration of street harassment. First, we explore who was identified as engaging in harassment—including the trends apparent across participants’ experiences, and how the identity of harassers was constructed. Next, we consider participants’ explanations for why people engage in street harassment. Participants’ responses were typically nuanced and multi-faceted, often reflecting the ecological model of gender-based violence, which accounts for causal factors across the individual, community and societal levels. Finally, we investigate the environmental and contextual factors that facilitated perpetration, with these often acting in concert with social and structural causes.

Participants overwhelmingly—although not exclusively—described experiencing street harassment from men. Indeed, several participants commented that ‘it’s always men’ who engage in street harassment. However, across the interviews, there was not one clear ‘type’ of man who was more likely to harass. Participants described experiences from men of all ages, socio-economic backgrounds, cultural groups, men alone, men in groups and so forth. For example, Chris (cisgender man, queer, 27). said that his experiences of homophobic harassment were from ‘mainly men, groups of men’. In contrast, Frances (cisgender woman, heterosexual, 27) said, ‘from my experience it’s mainly just been … individuals’. Similarly, some participants believed that younger men disproportionately engaged in this behaviour, while others commented that older men were more commonly the source of harassment. However, individual participants drew boundaries around the types of men who engaged in harassing behaviours, with there being clear age, class and cultural dimensions. This suggests that participants’ perspectives on ‘who’ perpetrates likely (and unsurprisingly) reflect their personal experiences of street harassment, and that certain ‘types’ of men held particular salience as being harassers.

Cisgender-women participants, who typically experienced street harassment from a young age, often identified ‘older men’ as harassers. They described harassment from older men as ‘gross’, ‘creepy’ and ‘disgusting’, and would draw upon the age gap to explain why harassment from older men felt threatening and disrespectful. The age gap was often a way for participants to differentiate between harassment that could be perceived as ‘flirtation’ or an otherwise acceptable, wanted form of sexual interaction:

Those guys they would’ve been like almost the age of my dad, and I think like do these men have daughters, like how can they look at somebody the age of their daughter in like a sexualised way? (Kara, cisgender woman, heterosexual, 22)

However, Reilly (cisgender woman, heterosexual, 36) reflected on whether she would have interpreted a particular incident as harassment if the person had been younger and attractive—factors that have been found in other studies to influence perceptions and experiences of street harassment ( LaRocca and Kromrey 1999 ; Fairchild 2010 ):

What’s interesting, so if this is like someone who you think is quite good looking or something, it’s almost okay, but then if it’s someone who’s like 60 and balding, that suddenly is offensive.

This reflection reiterates the contextual and relational nature of street harassment: the ‘line’ between harassment and flirtation may vary depending on who is engaging in the behaviour, the social and cultural context in which it occurs, and the form the harassment takes. Participants drew on discursive constructions of the sexually deviant ‘creepy old man’ ( Sandberg 2016 ), and social norms pertaining to ‘age appropriate’ relationships to articulate the wrongfulness of these encounters. These discursive positions provided a framework to express the harms of these experiences in an ‘intelligible’ way ( Hindes and Fileborn 2020 ), while simultaneously perpetuating what are arguably ageist attitudes. This is not to discount participants’ experiences nor to suggest that the actions of these men were somehow acceptable. There are also clear power dynamics at play, with these women noting that the ‘power dynamic is even more visible when you’re younger’ (Jen, cisgender woman, heterosexual, 27), with older men also occupying a position of relative power and authority over young women. Rather, these responses provide insight into the production of perpetration: whose behaviours are constructed as acceptable/unacceptable, and in what contexts. Notably, while younger men were also identified as engaging in harassment, their actions were almost never described using terms such as ‘creepy’.

The race and culture of men were also drawn on by participants to describe harassers, in particular ‘Middle Eastern’, ‘Arabic’, ‘Latin’ and ‘European’ men. Whilst some participants openly named the race/culture of harassers, others hesitantly named them but acknowledged that they did not want to perpetuate ‘racial profiling’. 3 White men were also described as harassers, and there were classed dimensions to descriptions of white and/or Australian men who harass. In particular ‘tradies’ (i.e. men who work on construction sites) were consistently named by participants as harassers, to the point where some participants described not feeling comfortable walking past construction sites on their everyday routes. However, it is unclear to what extent this reflects the extent participants experiences of harassment from tradies, or their salience as harassers, given they are constructed as archetypal perpetrators of this behaviour. Discussing a construction site that had gone up near her house, Avery said ‘as a woman, immediately I associate [that] with street based sexual harassment, obviously ’ (cisgender woman, heterosexual, 29, our emphasis). Another participant, who had identified ‘working class men’ as the main perpetrators of homophobic harassment reflected on why he might hold such a perspective, especially given ‘I go quite quickly past these people, and I don’t really get a chance to take a huge look’ (Chris, cisgender man, queer, 27). Chris attributed his perception to growing up in a ‘fairly working-class environment where homophobia was pretty standard’ and questioned whether his perception was ‘me … looking at someone and assessing them from … a class perspective or how much is that just me associating that kind of speak and behaviour with experiences I’ve had before’. This suggests that Chris’ perceptions of who engages in harassment was shaped through the lens of past experiences, with particular ‘types’ of men holding salience as perpetrators regardless of whether this is reflective of his more recent experiences.

In contrast to the claim that ‘it’s always men’, a small portion of participants also described being harassed by women. This behaviour was most often described as racist, homophobic, or transphobic abuse, or judgmental stares and comments, rather than being sexual in nature. However, participants typically noted that harassment from women was rare, or constructed it as anomalous. Chris recounted another experience of homophobic abuse from an elderly woman, an encounter he described as ‘a pretty funny one’:

We were walking hand in hand and walked past an elderly Greek woman who cursed at us and then spat on the floor going kind of like going ‘disgusting, disgusting’, which was very – was very confronting just because I’d never had that experience before.

There are some tensions apparent in this account, notably that Chris found this encounter to be both ‘funny’ and ‘confronting’. While he did not elaborate further on this when prompted, it is possible that this encounter was constructed as an oddity as older women are rarely, if ever, depicted as perpetrators of harassment or abuse. Indeed, this encounter challenges dominant constructions of older women as frail, meek and compliant, in addition to the construction of perpetrators as almost exclusively being cisgender men. Certainly, we do not wish to overstate the extent to which women engaged in harassment—men were overwhelmingly identified as perpetrators, and this reflects what we know about gendered violence more broadly. Nonetheless, women did engage in harassment. Thus, while theories of masculinity are central to understanding the perpetration of harassment, they are not sufficient to account for the full range of participants’ experiences.

Without discounting participants’ experiences of harassment, our discussion here illustrates that sometimes behaviours may have been experienced as harassment in part because of the age, race, or class of the person engaging them. Likewise, participants’ discussions reflect who is front of mind as a perpetrator: these are not ‘neutral’ reflections on their experiences. Indeed, many participants indicated during the interviews that it was virtually impossible to remember all experiences of harassment, due to its routine, mundane nature. These accounts have been curated for a particular audience, in addition to being shaped by memory and perceptions of ‘what counts’ as harassment ( Fileborn 2021b ). These findings therefore present insights into how perpetrators are constructed, with participants’ narratives often working to ‘other’ the men who engaged in harassment, particularly through the reproduction of racial, classed and aged-based power relations. That said, participants were also often highly reflexive, and simultaneously resisted narratives that perpetuated the othering of marginalized men.

When participants were asked why they thought people engaged in street harassment, many drew on individual-level causes in their explanations. Some participants thought that men lacked understanding that what they are doing is harassment due to their youth, education level, cultural differences and/or a lack of insight into ‘what it’s like to be a woman’ (Pearl, cisgender woman, queer, 35). Under this framing, harassment was attributed to men’s genuine misunderstanding of the nature and impacts of their actions which, similarly to participants accounts in Walton and Pedersen’s (2021) study, were interpreted as good-natured (if misguided) efforts at flirtation and courtship. Participants’ comments often touched on perceived differences in gendered socialisation, arguing that men could not comprehend their behaviour as inappropriate because they would personally be flattered by it, have not been socialized to be fearful of strange men in public and have not routinely experienced harassment:

I think men have quite different experiences and they often think that they’d like to be complimented so that complimenting the woman is a nice thing to do. (Rory, agender, queer, 29) I don’t think they would have put any thought into it… they wouldn’t have thought from a recipient perspective like, you know, the woman is obviously not as strong as the men physically that’s how we were made, and its nighttime and you know watch the signs if I’m not asking a question to you is it time to stop talking. (Xanthe, cisgender woman, heterosexual, 30)

As the second quote here illustrates, some participants thought that men were misreading their signals, for example if they smiled or were polite to them. This reinforces the idea that there is a ‘communication gap’ between men and women (or those read as ‘woman’), where men misjudge social cues from women, over-perceiving sexual interest ( Coy et al. 2016 ). However, other participants challenged the idea that men lack understanding or misread signals, saying they thought men knew exactly what they were doing, and that making the recipient feel uncomfortable was part of the aim. As Grant (cisgender man, homosexual, 31) bluntly put it, ‘they know they’re being dicks’.

Participants drew upon the tactics harassers would use to obscure their identity or minimize the likelihood of being observed by others to suggest that men know what they are doing is wrong:

When they’re in a secluded place obviously there’s no judgement … because they probably know what’s happening, they probably understand the things they say aren’t pretty. (Zara, cisgender woman, heterosexual, 28)

Tenesha (cisgender woman, bisexual, 22) pointed to the content and form of much harassment to contest the idea that it could be intended as a ‘genuine’ but misguided complement, saying ‘I don’t think they’re doing it in order to establish a connection with the person they’re harassing … And I don’t think that they’re doing it in a way that they could ever consider complimentary either like it’s always so vulgar.’

Participants drew on affective and emotive factors and attributed the behaviour to men being bored and just wanting to have fun, suggesting that harassment is simply an everyday way for men to occupy themselves. Women spoke of groups of young men being ‘excited’ and ‘riled up’ and engaging in harassment ‘for a reaction’ or ‘for a laugh’. In relation to young men, a small number of participants drew on biological reasons such as brain development and hormones, reinforcing the idea that men cannot control their behaviour due to their biological makeup:

I think it’s got to do with the brain development, I mean they’re not really at that mature age to … understand that what’s right and what’s wrong. (Sarah, cisgender woman, heterosexual, 28)

In other cases, harassers were depicted as possessing some form of ‘deficiency’, with participants variably describing them as ‘stupid’ (Helen, cisgender woman, heterosexual, 36), ‘uneducated, ignorant … with a sense of big ego [and] low self-esteem’ (Ingrid, cisgender woman, lesbian, 66), ‘loser[s]’ (Amy, cisgender woman, heterosexual, 20), and ‘sorry people who have nothing going for them’ (Zara, cisgender woman, heterosexual, 28). Implicit here is the idea that men who occupy subordinate forms of masculinity are more likely to engage in harassment. Some participants also identified more ‘deep and sinister’ reasons for street harassment, such as men harassing for their own sexual gratification, because they knew it would make women feel scared, or because they were ‘gross’, ‘creepy’, ‘sleazy’ and ‘feral’ types of men.

Collectively, these individual-level narratives worked to excuse and downplay the actions of men as either accidental or unintentional, or functioned to paint harassers as deviant monsters, rather than as an extension of everyday misogyny, sexism and heteronormativity. In some cases, participants’ responses construct harassment as a matter of immutable biological traits or deficiencies in individual men. This obscures broader structural issues and facilitates the normalisation of street harassment. Whilst some participants solely adopted this individualistic framing of harassers, these responses were typically in conjunction with some discussion of the cultural and structural drivers that allow street harassment to occur.

Participants viewed street harassment as normalized and culturally acceptable, connecting it to the wider acceptance of gendered violence, and misogynist, homophobic, and transphobic attitudes. They also pointed to the culture of silence and believed that this led to a context where street harassment could go on unchallenged, if not encouraged as acceptable masculine behaviour:

You know if someone tells a rape joke to their friends at a bar and no one says that’s inappropriate, and it’s unacceptable, then they’re going to think it’s fine to do it next time. (Alex, non-binary, queer, 26) It’s probably been normalised so they’ve seen a cycle of their Dad or their friends doing it, so they think it’s okay to do it as well. (Yasmin, cisgender woman, heterosexual, 28)

Some participants also reflected on how this was a context and culturally dependent phenomenon. Some drew on their experiences living or travelling in countries where street harassment was not culturally accepted and routinely challenged when it did occur. In turn, they witnessed and experienced little or no street harassment:

I never got harassed like in [country redacted] as far as I can remember because I think the cultural thing… if someone said anything about someone else the other people would protect you … and I’ve realised in Australia when I first came in that’s not the case. (Xanthe, cisgender woman, heterosexual, 30)

However, participants also drew on experiences living or travelling in countries where (in their view) the culture was more patriarchal and misogynistic. Participants described experiencing greater levels of street harassment, saying that women’s behaviour was more heavily policed in these countries and/or it was more culturally acceptable for men to approach women and make sexualized comments.

I don’t see that as much in western cultures, and because of that misogyny I do think there’s a lot more women are being seen as objects, women are sexualised, women are started at. (Ursula, cisgender woman, heterosexual, 20)

In other contexts, participants believed that some forms street harassment, such as men trying to talk to women on the street or shouting out ‘compliments’, were viewed as a culturally acceptable way for men to try to flirt and ‘pick up’, particularly in European countries. Participants acknowledged that these behaviours might be read as flattery or flirting in other cultures, however they experienced them as harassing:

I feel like it was a culture clash, they thought maybe they were trying to flatter me up by talking about me or looking at me … but it just made me feel so isolated and so creeped out. (Zara, cisgender woman, heterosexual, 28)

In contrast to the notion that men from specific cultural groups were more likely to harass, others painted street harassment as a near-universal phenomenon across cultures, with Bridget (cisgender woman, heterosexual, 24) dryly observing that ‘men are pretty shit everywhere’. It is difficult to disentangle the role(s) that cultural difference might play in shaping harassment. Certainly, as we noted earlier, there are documented cultural differences in adherence to violence supportive norms ( Flood and Pease 2009 ), and it is plausible that this contributes towards cultural differences in the nature, extent and normalization of street harassment. However, it is equally the case that these accounts may be functioning to construct harassment as engaged in by ‘other’ men who are ‘not like us.’

Cultural norms that minimize and excuse men’s behaviour also played a role in sanctioning street harassment. For example, this behaviour was described as ‘locker room banter’ and a case of ‘boys will be boys’ (Donna, cisgender woman, heterosexual/questioning, 18). Age also played a role here, with participants thinking that older men had outdated and entrenched sexist attitudes. As a result, participants believed that older men may feel more entitled to harass women, and that harassment was more normalized and accepted amongst this cohort. These responses illustrated the ways in which street harassment might be normalized in general across Australian culture, but also how it might be normalized and excused in specific ways for particular groups of men.

Participants pointed to the lack of consequences for street harassment, saying that ‘so many men have gotten away with it, they just do it, and nothing happens’ (Yasmin, cisgender woman, heterosexual, 28). This included a lack of social consequences, as participants rarely experienced bystander intervention ( Fileborn 2017 ), but also a lack of institutional consequences, given that many forms of street harassment are not addressed under criminal legislation in Australia, or are poorly responded to when they are legally sanctioned ( Fileborn 2022 ). This lack of repercussions reinforced harassment as culturally acceptable:

I think sometimes people are motivated by the fact that they are not reprimanded earlier. (Reilly, cisgender woman, heterosexual 36) As a lesbian it was much more aggressive and that they had the permission to be like that…almost like the law on their side to that that…well, society’s permission. (Ingrid, cisgender woman, lesbian, 66)

Collectively, participants’ accounts demonstrated the role of social, cultural and institutional factors in minimizing and condoning street harassment. The discussion here has also begun to point to the role of masculinities, and we move on to consider this in more detail.

I think it’s very much tied up in that performative masculinity (Alex, non-binary, queer, 26)

The idea that street harassment was a way for men to perform their masculinity was a common theme throughout the interviews. Whilst the last section described the ways in which cultural renderings of masculinity allow street harassment to occur, street harassment was also described as an avenue for reinforcing and performing hegemonic masculinities. Power was a common reason participants identified for why people engage in street harassment and particularly power relating to gender. Jen (cisgender woman, heterosexual, 27) observed that power imbalances were one of the primary factors facilitating street harassment, saying they had never experienced harassment when they felt they were in a position of power.

I’ve never seen or witnessed or experienced street harassment in that situation where I felt like I had the power, it’s never been like one guy yelling at 6 friends.

Participants’ accounts constructed power as operating in a bifurcated way: harassment could be drawn on to (re)assert power (‘I am going to harass her because I am powerful’, Georgia, cisgender woman, bisexual, 19); or, used to gain power from a position of (perceived) powerlessness (‘They’re all men without a lot of power in some part of their life’, Parker, non-binary, queer, 42). Some participants understood street harassment as a way for men to ‘put women in their place’ and keep themselves at the top of the gender hierarchy:

I think it’s just men…showing themselves as the superior gender by … dehumanising the female gender, I think that’s … where there’s … power (Sarah, cisgender woman, heterosexual, 28) It’s a bit of a power trip to make someone feel small and to make someone feel vulnerable, especially women. I think it’s another way of putting women in their place, you know, we can access you at any time, we can objectify you at any time and any place, you’re not allowed to feel safe like we are. (Tenesha, cisgender woman, bisexual, 22)

This explanation reflects Crouch’s (2009 : 137) conceptualisation of street harassment as ‘a means of maintaining women’s status as subordinate in society’ and a mechanism to exclude and/or control women’s behaviour in public space, and harassment arguably functions in a similar way in relation to other modes of oppression relating to, for example, race and sexuality (see, e.g. Davis 1994 ; Fileborn and O’Neill 2021 ). Indeed, power was discussed by participants in relation to race, culture and sexuality through the policing of difference in public space. Racist harassment, for example, was viewed as a mechanism to uphold white supremacy and white masculinity.

One thing is like supremacy, so most of the people who’ve harassed me in my life have been like white men, white boys and you know when the economic and social system that, you know sets out your life, tells you, is like built for you and tells you that you’re the best… you want to uphold that. (River, agender, bisexual, 19)

Dave drew attention to the pressure on men to be hypersexual and treat women as sexual objects, with street harassment providing one avenue to achieve this aspect of hegemonic masculinity:

Young lads are taught at a young age that in order to fulfil the gender role of what men is, is to then have access to as many women as possible, and have no emotional content, no emotional attachment and just see a body and I can touch that because that’s mine. (Dave, cisgender man, heterosexual, 29)

As well as men asserting dominance over women, some participants also thought street harassment was a way for men to assert dominance over other men, reinscribing hierarchies of masculinity. This competitiveness between men was described as part of ‘male bonding’. Participants spoke about there being a ‘herd mentality’ amongst groups of men, with them ‘egging each other on’ when in groups. Harassment was seen as a way for men to bond and show off to each other:

It’s a dick measuring contest, it’s hey look at me, I can shout out to that lass, and it’s alright, and that makes me a fella, that makes me a bloke, and that makes me a bigger bloke than you lads. (Dave, cisgender man, heterosexual, 29)

Such comments align with the concept of homosociality, and the role that the harassment of women (and other men) can play in establishing oneself as suitably ‘masculine’ to an audience of male peers ( Quinn 2002 ; Grazian 2007 ; Wesselmann and Kelly 2010 ). Indeed, participants were acutely aware of the relational aspect of harassment. As Aaron (trans masculine, bisexual, 36, our emphasis) observed, ‘it’s about being perceived to be asserting dominance over the space’, while Chris (cisgender man, queer, 27) described harassment from men in cars as ‘part of this homosocial bonding ritual’. Others thought that harassing and sexualizing women was a way for men to prove they were not homosexual through the public display of their heterosexuality. This was similarly achieved through degrading and homophobic comments to people who harassers perceived to be LGBTIQ+, casting them as ‘othered’ to reinforce their heterosexual masculinity.

Participants observed how harassers harnessed contextual and environmental features as tools to enable their behaviour. Commonly identified tools of harassment included anonymity, physical features of the environment, having ‘plausible deniability’, and the use of communications technology. For example, crowded environments such as public transport or licensed venues meant harassers could stare, get close and inappropriately touch participants without it seeming out of the ordinary to onlookers:

I was on the way to work, yeah and I was standing up and I think it was quite packed [on the train] and then like a guy came up behind me…and I found it kind of hard to explain too, was because he like rubbed up against me but it wasn’t in a way that I could say that’s what you’re definitely doing. (Nora, cisgender woman, heterosexual, 31)

In this case, the crowded nature of the train in conjunction with unavoidable incidental touch on public transport provided the harasser with plausible deniability about the intent of their actions. Nora said that this ambiguity and subsequent (potential) denial of intent informed her decision not to report the incident to police, suggesting that the various factors underpinning harassment mutually reinforce and co-constitute one another. As public transport draws together large numbers of strangers in a public space, this enabled perpetrators to remain anonymous, making it difficult if not impossible for participants to attempt to hold the harasser to account. As Neupane and Chesney-Lind (2014) have argued, public transport offers men ‘both proximity and anonymity’ with ‘very little risk of social or legal consequences’ (pg. 23). In other cases, a veneer of ‘politeness’ or ‘flirtation’ could provide plausible deniability, with the normalization of harassment thus providing a tool for harassers to utilize. This was particularly the case for harassment occurring in licensed venues and other spaces where some forms of sexual interaction were normal, if not desirable, features (see also Fileborn 2016 ).

These experiences demonstrate how a range of environmental and context-specific features can be taken advantage of by harassers to facilitate and obscure their actions, often working in concert with the broader social and cultural norms discussed earlier in this article. Indeed, the factors driving harassment were often deeply intertwined, and we use the example of car-related harassment to demonstrate how these work alongside each other. We argue that these drivers cannot be viewed in isolation from each other. Rather, street harassment is underpinned by multiple, co-constitutive and entangled structural and environmental causes.

An overarching and significant theme was the use of cars and mobility to perpetrate street harassment. Cars were used to threaten, intimidate (such as following and stalking using the car or driving aggressively) and harass (through beeping and yelling from the car). Thus, the affordances of cars could be drawn on for their communicative function, with the vehicle itself becoming a mode of harassment in the case of actions such as honking, engine revving and aggressive driving:

Just standing there and having young guys in cars…speed past. So, nothing was ever said but you’re like you know it’s for your benefit, you know because you’re the only person standing on the road and all of a sudden a car decides they’re going to start speeding and hoon past. (Fiona, cisgender woman, heterosexual, 31)

Participants recounted many examples of (almost exclusively) men yelling out abuse to women, those who are visibly queer, from a culture different to theirs, or with non-normative bodies (for example, participants discussed harassment relating to visible self-harm scars, and body size):

I got followed by some guys in a ute and it was petrifying [...] they were just driving slowly next to me while I walked and I think that’s kind of worse than saying something because then it was like oh my god what is about to happen (Coraline, cisgender woman, bisexual, 28) The one I get most often is like “faggots” screamed out a window. (Chris, cisgender man, queer, 27)

Balkmar (2014 : 168; 2018) observes that cars have ‘the capacity to reproduce and express gender’, with cars signifying ‘masculinity, power, speed and risk’ (pg. 167), although they can also be sites of gendered contestation and disruption (see also Bengry-Howell and Griffin 2007 ; Lumsden 2013 ). Drawing on assemblage thinking, Balkmar (2014 : 168) argues that we must understand the car and human as co-constitutive of one another, with the car forming an ‘extension of the (male) body’. Using this framework, we can understand car-based harassment as providing a (literal and figurative) site for the performance of hegemonic masculinity—often in a homosocial way, as participants noted that car-related harassment frequently involved men in groups. Utilizing the affordances of the car, such as revving the engine or honking the horn, symbolically communicates the ‘power, potency, mobility and speed’ of the object and its inhabitants ( Balkmar 2014 : 168). Indeed, this is reflected in Donna’s comments above, where the car serves to heighten the perceived power imbalance involved in harassment due to the enhanced mobility and capacity of the man-car assemblage. Engagement in ‘risky’ driving practices is in and of itself associated with the accomplishment of particular masculinities ( Balkmar 2018 ). The experiences of participants suggest that these driving practices can also serve as a form of homosocial performance (when done in the company of other men), and as a means of reiterating gendered hierarchies in relation to women and men who occupy subordinate masculinities (such as Chris, above).

Participants’ thought that cars were used as a tool allowing harassers to quickly escape the situation, affording them anonymity. Certainly, this aligns with Balkmar’s (2018 : 719) observation that the ‘disinhibition and the dehumanizing anonymity afforded by the motor car’ can facilitate other forms of driving-related aggression. In turn, car-related harassment was often fleeting and (at times) ambiguous in nature. As with public transport, this made it challenging for participants to take any action to hold perpetrators to account, and several participants discussed futile attempts to ascertain the vehicle license plate number. Likewise, participants felt that being in a car bolstered harasser’s actions, as the mobility afforded by cars allowed them to evade the consequences of their actions:

They’re much more likely to be rude to me about my scars if they are in a car than if they are on foot, and I really think the reason is if they abuse me on foot then we both have to stand at the pedestrian light awkwardly for 5 minutes. But if they’re driving by in a car [and] they’re at the light, they can yell horrible things at me and whatever and then they can zoom away (Evelyn, cisgender woman, bisexual, 27)

Participants thought that being harassed by someone in a car increased the power imbalance of the situation as they had the power to follow or hurt you with the car, this consequently increased the fear experienced by some participants when a car was involved:

There’s such like a power imbalance, like if you ran — they’ve got a car, if you try and talk back to them — they can follow you twice as fast as you can run. …that imbalance makes me... like if they wanted to, they could hurt me, they could. (Donna, cisgender woman, heterosexual/questioning, 18)

Donna’s comments reflect what Balkmar (2018 : 721) terms ‘traffic hierarchies’, with Donna, Evelyn and Coraline’s position as a pedestrian enhancing the power disparity between them and their harassers. Both Donna and Coraline’s comments draw attention to the potentiality contained in these interactions. While the fear of escalation or ‘something worse’ happening has been identified as a component of the harms of street harassment, these participants’ comments suggest that such fears may be heightened for car-related harassment, given the enhanced capacity of the human-car hybrid to inflict serious physical injury and violence. These findings reflect and add to those of Feely Hutson and Krueger (2019) who found that the use of transportation such as public transport and owning vehicles provided mobility in public space for harassers to inflict and threaten physical harm, escape, preserve anonymity and pursue their targets. Moreover, the use of cars in the perpetration of harassment illustrates the entanglement between the individual, social/cultural and structural drivers of harassment discussed throughout—these factors are deeply intertwined and co-constitutive.

The impact of gendered norms, gender inequality and hegemonic masculinity are vital to consider in the perpetration of gendered violence. In this article, we have extended this analysis to the perpetration street harassment, which has been under-studied so far. To do this, we drew on interviews with individuals who have experienced street harassment, and their perceptions and understandings of who engages in this behaviour and why. Participants’ experiences and reflections identified a wide range of individual-level, social/cultural and structural factors that they viewed as underpinning the perpetration of street harassment. Additionally, participants highlighted the environmental and contextual tools that perpetrators could harness to facilitate their actions and minimize the likelihood of being held to account. Notably, they identified the culture of silence and acceptance of sexist, racist and homophobic violence and the unwillingness for bystanders and authorities to intervene in this type of behaviour. Drawing on the example of harassment involving cars, we illustrated how these factors are deeply intertwined, and cannot be viewed in isolation from each other.

Whilst gendered norms, gender inequality, hegemonic masculinity and homosociality were central to understanding participants’ experiences and perceptions as we explored throughout, we also identified that these frameworks were not s ufficient in fully accounting for street harassment. This is particularly highlighted by the fact that women (whilst rare) were also identified as perpetrators, as well as harassment also being directed at people due to their race, disability, sexuality and diverse gender. Additionally, whilst participants experienced marginalisation, their responses also worked to actively reinscribe systems of power and oppression in their perceptions of street harassment. They often drew on problematic and stereotypical understandings of race, age and class—constructing men who are older, working class and from other cultures engaging in street harassment because they are in some way ‘deficient’—whether that be in education, cultural literacy, communication, or biology. As such, participants’ perspectives often reflected hierarchies of masculinity, situating men who engaged in this behaviour as occupying a subordinate masculinity. Participants’ construction of perpetrators can also be understood as a process of ‘othering’, with some participants saying they felt unsafe or perceived behaviour as threatening because the person was ‘not like them’ (as illustrated through the language of deficiency discussed above; Fileborn 2016 ). Whether this was through constructing them as the ‘ethnic other’ or ‘other’ due to being from a lower socioeconomic group, the fear of difference was a key factor in many participants’ perceptions of street harassment perpetrators. As we have argued throughout, participants’ discussions cannot be understood as neutral or objective accounts, but rather function to actively ‘other’ some groups, occluding recognition of the full range of (predominantly) men who engage in harassment.

Therefore, our findings highlight the need for a nuanced understanding of power that extends beyond simplistic claims that street harassment is only a function of men’s oppression of women. Instead, an intersectional and post-structuralist understanding of power posits that we are all differentially located on axis of oppression and privilege, with these forces (at least to some extent) relational and context dependent. As hooks (1984: 188) argued, it is the ‘Western philosophical notion of hierarchical rule and coercive authority that is the root cause of … all violence between those who dominate and those who are dominated’, and we are all inculcated to accept and utilize coercion and (where necessary) violent force to maintain control and power (though this is not to suggest that we all have equal capacity to utilize coercion and violence). This lens can help us to make sense of the diversity in experiences of street harassment and to understand that people can be implicated in furthering certain forms of oppression, while simultaneously experiencing marginalisation themselves. Whilst it is essential to situate street harassment firmly within the spectrum of men’s violence against women, this research also indicates that a holistic approach is required in working towards the prevention of street-based harassment.

There are, of course, attendant limitations to the work presented here. As a qualitative project, these findings are not generalizable or transferable to other contexts. Many participants in the project were politically engaged, and were well versed in concepts relating to gender, intersectionality and structural oppression, so it is unclear to what extent these findings reflect the perspectives of recipients of street harassment more broadly. While this work provides deep insights into an understudied phenomenon, there is clearly more to be done, notably research that engages with those who enact street harassment. Nonetheless, this contribution further builds on the small body of work on the perpetration of street harassment and can begin to inform efforts working towards preventing this under-recognized form of harm.

This project received funding from the Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award scheme (DP190100404).

We would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their generous and constructive feedback on an earlier version of this manuscript. Thank you to Dr Tully O’Neill and Jess Hardley for their research assistance on this project.

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We use ‘street harassment, ‘public harassment’ and ‘intrusions’ interchangeably throughout.

We use terms such as ‘engage’, ‘enact’ and ‘perpetrate’ interchangeably throughout this article. We recognize that ‘perpetration’ is problematic, as it privileges criminal legal framings of harm. Moreover, many forms of street harassment are not illegal, so a criminal framing does not always reflect the reality of this behaviour. For want of a more direct expression, we continue to use perpetration.

It is worth noting that participants were not explicitly asked to comment on the race/culture of perpetrators during the interviews.

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If you saw a woman getting harassed on the streets would you intervene? Because one campaign, shot in Toronto, proves it’s easier said than done.

L’Oréal Paris Canada teamed up with Right To Be , a nonprofit that started out as a blog to collect stories of street harassment and soon became part of an international movement.

Together, they shot a harassment campaign to better understand why bystanders don’t stand up.

@spencer.barbosa this video brings tears to my eyes. I am so proud to be apart of this @L’Oréal Paris and Stand Up social experiment. Sign up for your free training now🩷 #girls #lorealparispartner #standup ♬ original sound – spencer barbosa🧚🏻

Canadian TikTok influencer Spencer Barbosa played the woman in the experiment who was being berated by a man at a bus shelter in Toronto.

@spencer.barbosa Street harassment is a conversation that is so important & I am so proud to be apart of the new @L’Oréal Paris and stand up social experiment. Video coming soon❤️ #StandUp #lorealparis #imworthit #grwm #partner ♬ original sound – spencer barbosa🧚🏻

The results showed that many people did not intervene, regardless of the obvious signs of her being uncomfortable by the advancements of a stranger. 

“We discovered they do want to help, they just don’t know how,” the video read.

READ MORE: ‘Nobody will help you,’ TTC rider warns about bystander effect after receiving no help when she was attacked in a subway station

Those that didn’t step in shared what went through their heads during the social experiment.

“I would have loved to help her, I just wasn’t sure how,” one woman said.

“I didn’t know exactly what to do,” a man also shared.

According to L’Oréal Paris’ statistics , 80 per cent of women have experienced street harassment. 

Additionally, 76 per cent of people have already witnessed it. Meanwhile, 86 per cent of people who have seen something didn’t know how to step up for victims.

“L’Oréal Paris will continue their efforts through the Stand Up Against Street Harassment Program, a partnership with Right To Be, an NGO expert in the fight against harassment of all forms. Stand Up is a training program designed to help prevent street harassment and build safe, inclusive spaces for all,” the beauty company said in a press release earlier this month.

“The program introduces the 5D’s methodology, a proven set of tools to help people safely intervene when they are a victim or witness to harassment in public spaces. To date, L’Oréal Paris and Right to have trained 1.5 million people across 42 countries. In 2023, L’Oréal Paris Canada plans to train 150,000 Canadians, helping L’Oréal Paris globally hit their objective of 2 million people trained by the end of 2023,” it continued.

So, what are the five D’s? That would be to delegate, delay, document, distract and direct. 

“I’m shocked at how few people stopped to help her. I grew up in Toronto where they shot this video and it’s a constant stream in your mind when you’re walking around,” TikTok user Josie Balka said in a stitched video.

@josiebalka #stitch with @spencer barbosa🧚🏻 I honestly don’t think I’ve ever walked around by myself and felt completely safe. @L’Oréal Paris #ad #westandup #internationalwomensday #imworthit #standup ♬ original sound – Josie Balka

“Especially if you’re like me and you’ve always lived in big cities. What will I do if I get harrassed in the streets today? It’s actually kinda scary how often that thought crosses your mind,” she continued.

Balka also shared how nerve-wracking it is to walk around alone at night in the city and that no matter how much you plan for it, it’s difficult to truly know what to do in that type of situation. 

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The role of social norms on the willingness to act and donate against sexual harassment

• Research Article
• Published: 06 December 2023
• Volume 71 , pages 257–271, ( 2024 )

Cite this article

• Lauren A. Rhodes   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-6639-5354 1 ,
• Gonzalo E. Sánchez   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-2523-5407 2 ,
• Nereyda E. Espinoza   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-9838-0686 3 &
• Viviana Borja   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-4475-7406 3  

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Sexual harassment has both social and economic consequences for the harassed and others witnessing the behavior, so eliminating sexual harassment is key in creating safe social contexts in which all members of society can contribute. This paper uses an experimental setting to examine the effectiveness of injunctive social norms in nudging potential bystanders to be willing to act against situations of sexual harassment or donate toward related campaigns and examines gender differences in these effects. This was accomplished by exclusively providing the treatment group with previously determined social norms related to the appropriateness of a set of sexual harassment scenarios. We find evidence that providing social norm information in a sexual harassment setting has mixed effects on the willingness to act as a bystander and generally has positive effects on donations. Further, there is evidence that the treatment effects vary by gender.

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Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon request.

More information about the campaign, #EseTipoNo, can be found at https://ecuador.unfpa.org/es and https://www.cepam.org.ec/ .

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Facultad de Ciencias Sociales y Humanísticas, Escuela Superior Politécnica del Litoral. The sponsor had no role in the collection, analysis and interpretation of data; in the writing of the report; nor in the decision to submit the article for publication.

This research received no external funding. Internal funding was provided by the Facultad de Ciencias Sociales y Humanísticas at Escuela Superior Politécnica del Litoral.

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Lauren A. Rhodes

Facultad de Ciencias Sociales y Humanísticas, Centro de Investigaciones Económicas, Escuela Superior Politécnica del Litoral, ESPOL, Km. 30.5 Vía Perimetral, Guayaquil, Ecuador

Gonzalo E. Sánchez

Facultad de Ciencias Sociales y Humanísticas, Escuela Superior Politécnica del Litoral, ESPOL, Km. 30.5 Vía Perimetral, Guayaquil, Ecuador

Nereyda E. Espinoza & Viviana Borja

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L.A.R, G.E.S, N.E.E., and V.B. contributed to conceptualization; L.A.R. and G.E.S. provided methodology; N.E.E. performed validation; L.A.R. and G.E.S. carried out formal analysis; L.A.R., G.E.S, N.E.E., and V.B. performed investigation; L.A.R., G.E.S, N.E.E., and V.B. provided resources; G.E.S. performed data curation and visualization; L.A.R. performed writing—original draft preparation; G.E.S., N.E.E., and L.A.R. performed writing—review and editing; L.A.R. and G.E.S. contributed to project administration; G.E.S, N.E.E., and V.B.

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Rhodes, L.A., Sánchez, G.E., Espinoza, N.E. et al. The role of social norms on the willingness to act and donate against sexual harassment. Int Rev Econ 71 , 257–271 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12232-023-00442-7

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• The State of Online Harassment

Roughly four-in-ten Americans have experienced online harassment, with half of this group citing politics as the reason they think they were targeted. Growing shares face more severe online abuse such as sexual harassment or stalking

Table of contents.

• 1. Personal experiences with online harassment
• 2. Characterizing people’s most recent online harassment experience
• 3. Americans’ views on how online harassment should be addressed
• Acknowledgments
• Methodology

Pew Research Center has a history of studying online harassment. This report focuses on American adults’ experiences and attitudes related to online harassment. For this analysis, we surveyed 10,093 U.S. adults from Sept. 8 to 13, 2020. Everyone who took part is a member of the Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP), an online survey panel that is recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses. This way nearly all U.S. adults have a chance of selection. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other categories. Read more about the  ATP’s methodology . Here are the  questions used for this report , along with responses, and its methodology .

Stories about online harassment have captured headlines for years. Beyond the more severe cases of sustained , aggressive abuse that make the news, name-calling and belittling, derisive comments have come to characterize how many view discourse online – especially in the political realm.

A Pew Research Center survey of U.S. adults in September finds that 41% of Americans have personally experienced some form of online harassment in at least one of the six key ways that were measured. And while the overall prevalence of this type of abuse is the same as it was in 2017, there is evidence that online harassment has intensified since then.

To begin with, growing shares of Americans report experiencing more severe forms of harassment, which encompasses physical threats, stalking, sexual harassment and sustained harassment. Some 15% experienced such problems in 2014 and a slightly larger share (18%) said the same in 2017. 1 That group has risen to 25% today. Additionally, those who have been the target of online abuse are more likely today than in 2017 to report that their most recent experience involved more varied types and more severe forms of online abuse.

In a political environment where Americans are stressed and frustrated and antipathy has grown , online venues often serve as platforms for highly contentious or even extremely offensive political debate. And for those who have experienced online abuse, politics is cited as the top reason for why they think they were targeted.

Defining online harassment

This report measures online harassment using six distinct behaviors:

• Offensive name-calling
• Purposeful embarrassment
• Physical threats
• Harassment over a sustained period of time
• Sexual harassment

Respondents who indicate they have personally experienced any of these behaviors online are considered targets of online harassment in this report. Further, this report distinguishes between “more severe” and “less severe” forms of online harassment. Those who have only experienced name-calling or efforts to embarrass them are categorized in the “less severe” group, while those who have experienced any stalking, physical threats, sustained harassment or sexual harassment are categorized in the “more severe” group.

Indeed, 20% of Americans overall – representing half of those who have been harassed online – say they have experienced online harassment because of their political views. This is a notable increase from three years ago, when 14% of all Americans said they had been targeted for this reason. Beyond politics, more also cite their gender or their racial and ethnic background as reasons why they believe they were harassed online.

While these kinds of negative encounters may occur anywhere online, social media is by far the most common venue cited for harassment – a pattern consistent across the Center’s work over the years on this topic. The latest survey finds that 75% of targets of online abuse – equaling 31% of Americans overall – say their most recent experience was on social media.

As online harassment permeates social media, the public is highly critical of the way these companies are tackling the issue. Fully 79% say social media companies are doing an only fair or poor job at addressing online harassment or bullying on their platforms.

But even as social media companies receive low ratings for handling abuse on their sites, a minority of Americans back the idea of holding these platforms legally responsible for harassment that happens on their sites. Just 33% of Americans say that people who have experienced harassment or bullying on social media sites should be able to sue the platforms on which it occurred.

These are some of the key findings from a nationally representative survey of 10,093 U.S. adults conducted online Sept. 8 to 13, 2020, using Pew Research Center’s American Trends Panel . The following are among the major findings.

41% of U.S. adults have personally experienced online harassment, and 25% have experienced more severe harassment

On a broad level, Americans agree that online harassment is a problem plaguing digital spaces. Roughly nine-in-ten Americans say people being harassed or bullied online is a problem, including 55% who consider it a major problem.

Many Americans have also had their own experience with being targeted online. While about four-in-ten Americans (41%) have experienced some form of online harassment, growing shares have faced more severe and multiple forms of harassment. For example, in 2014, 15% of Americans said they had been subjected to more severe forms of online harassment. That share is now 25%. There has also been a double-digit increase in those experiencing multiple types of online abuse – rising from 16% to 28% since 2014. This number is also up since 2017, when 19% of Americans had experienced multiple forms of harassing behaviors online.

Many individual types of behaviors are on the rise as well. The shares of Americans who say they have been called an offensive name, purposefully embarrassed or physically threatened while online have all risen since 2014. However, the share who have experienced any of the less severe behaviors is largely on par with that of 2017 (37% in 2020 vs. 36% in 2017).

A majority of younger adults have encountered harassment online

Online harassment is a particularly common feature of online life for younger adults, and they are especially prone to facing harassing behaviors that are more serious. Roughly two-thirds of adults under 30 (64%) have experienced any form of the online harassment activities measured in this survey – making this the only age group in which a majority have been subjected to these behaviors. Still, about half of 30- to 49-year-olds have been the target of online harassment, while smaller shares of those ages 50 and older (26%) have encountered at least one of these harassing activities.

A similar pattern is present when looking at those who have faced more severe forms of online abuse: 48% of 18- to 29-year-olds have been targeted online with more severe behaviors, compared with 32% of those ages 30 to 49 and just 12% of those 50 and older.

Gender also plays a role in the types of harassment people are likely to encounter online. Overall, men are somewhat more likely than women to say they have experienced any form of harassment online (43% vs. 38%), but similar shares of men and women have faced more severe forms of this kind of abuse. There are also differences across individual types of online harassment in the types of negative incidents they have personally encountered online. Some 35% of men say they have been called an offensive name versus 26% of women, and being physically threatened online is more common occurrence for men rather than women (16% vs. 11%).

Women, on the other hand, are more likely than men to report having been sexually harassed online (16% vs. 5%) or stalked (13% vs. 9%). Young women are particularly likely to have experienced sexual harassment online. Fully 33% of women under 35 say they have been sexually harassed online, while 11% of men under 35 say the same.

Lesbian, gay or bisexual adults are particularly likely to face harassment online. Roughly seven-in-ten have encountered any harassment online and fully 51% have been targeted for more severe forms of online abuse. By comparison, about four-in-ten straight adults have endured any form of harassment online, and only 23% have undergone any of the more severe behaviors.

While men are somewhat more likely than women to experience harassment online, women are more likely to be upset about it and think it is a major problem. Some 61% of women say online harassment is a major problem, while 48% of men agree. In addition, women who have been harassed online are more than twice as likely as men to say they were extremely or very upset by their most recent encounter (34% vs. 14%). Conversely, 61% of men who have been harassed online say they were not at all or a little upset by their most recent incident, while 36% of women said the same. Overall, 24% of those who have experienced online harassment say that their most recent incident was extremely (10%) or very (14%) upsetting.

One-in-five adults report being harassed online for their political views

Those who have been harassed were then asked whether they believed certain personal characteristics – political views, gender, race or ethnicity, religion or sexual orientation – played a role in the attacks. Fully 20% of all adults – or 50% of online harassment targets – say they have been harassed online because of their political views. At the same time, 14% of U.S. adults (33% of people who have been harassed online) say they have been harassed based on their gender, while 12% say this occurred because of their race or ethnicity (29% of online harassment targets). Smaller shares point to their religion or their sexual orientation as a reason for their harassment.

Each of these reasons has risen since the Center last asked these questions in 2017. There have been 6 percentage point increases in the shares of Americans attributing their harassment to their political views as well as gender. Race or ethnicity, sexual orientation and religion each saw a modest rise since 2017.

There are several demographic differences regarding who has been harassed online for their gender or their race or ethnicity. Among adults who have been harassed online, roughly half of women (47%) say they think they have encountered harassment online because of their gender, whereas 18% of men who have been harassed online say the same. Similarly, about half or more Black (54%) or Hispanic online harassment targets (47%) say they were harassed due to their race or ethnicity, compared with 17% of White targets.

While small shares overall say their harassment was due to their sexual orientation, 50% of lesbian, gay or bisexual adults who have been harassed online say they think it occurred because of their sexual orientation. 2 By comparison, only 12% of straight online harassment targets say the same. Lesbian, gay or bisexual online harassment targets are also more likely to report having encountered harassment online because of their gender (54%) compared with their straight counterparts (31%).

Men and White adults who have been harassed online are particularly likely to say this harassment was a result of their political views. Harassed men are a full 15 percentage points more likely than their female counterparts to cite political views as the reason they were harassed online (57% vs. 42%). Similarly, White online harassment targets are 18 points more likely than Black or Hispanic targets to point to their political views as the reason they were targeted for abuse online.

And while there are some partisan differences in citing political views as the perceived catalyst for facing harassment, these differences do not hold when accounting for race and ethnicity. For example, White Democrats and Republicans, including independents who lean toward each respective party, who have been harassed are about equally likely to say their political views were the reason they were harassed (55% vs. 57%).

Most online harassment targets say their most recent experience occurred on social media

As was true in previous Center surveys about online harassment, social media continue to be the most commonly cited online venues where harassment takes place. When asked where their most recent experience with online harassment occurred, 75% of targets of this type of abuse say it happened on social media.

By comparison, much smaller shares of this group mention online forums or discussion sites (25%) or texting or messaging apps (24%) as the location where their most recent experience occurred, while about one-in-ten or more cite online gaming, their personal email account or a dating site or app. In total, 41% of targets of online harassment say their most recent experience of harassment spanned more than one venue.

While social media are the most commonly cited online spaces for both men and women to say they have been harassed, women who have been harassed online are more likely than men to say their most recent experience was on social media (a 13 percentage point gap). On the other hand, men are more likely than women to report their most recent experience occurred while they were using an online forum or discussion site or while online gaming (both with a 13-point gap).

Most Americans are critical of how social media companies address online harassment; only a minority say users should be able to hold sites legally responsible

While most Americans feel that harassment and bullying are a problem online, the way to address this issue remains up for debate. The policies used to combat harassment and the transparency in reporting how content is being moderated vary drastically across online platforms. Social media companies have been highly criticized for their current tactics in addressing harassment, with advocates saying these companies should be doing more.

The public is similarly critical of social media companies. When asked to rate how well these companies are addressing online harassment or bullying on their platforms, just 18% say social media companies are doing an excellent or good job. Much larger shares – roughly eight-in-ten – say these companies are doing an only fair or poor job.

Despite most Americans being critical of the job social media companies are doing to address harassment, some are optimistic about a variety of possible solutions asked about in the survey that could be enacted to combat online harassment.

About half of Americans say permanently suspending users if they bully or harass others (51%) or requiring users of these platforms to disclose their real identities (48%) would be very effective in helping to reduce harassment or bullying on social media.

Around four-in-ten say criminal charges for users who bully or harass (43%) or social media companies proactively deleting bullying or harassing posts (40%) would be very effective.

Temporary bans are deemed the least effective solution about which respondents were asked. A third (32%) of Americans say users getting temporarily suspended if they bully or harass others would be a very effective measure against harassment. When it comes to holding social media companies accountable for the harassment on their platforms, few think personal lawsuits should be the solution. A third of adults say people who have been bullied or harassed by others on social media should be able to sue the platforms where the harassment occurred, whereas a much larger share – 63% – believe targets of online abuse should not be able to bring legal action against social media sites.

• The 2014 data was reweighted to be comparable to the data collected in 2017. See the 2017 report’s methodology for more information about how this was done. ↩
• Because of the relatively small sample size and a reduction in precision due to weighting, we are not able to analyze lesbian, gay or bisexual respondents by demographic categories such as gender, age or education. ↩

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Stop Street Harassment

A social experiment

May 13, 2011 By HKearl

Today I received a powerful email from a regular Stop Street Harassment reader and she agreed to let me post it:

“I loved today’s posting on the website detailing exactly how and why street harassment limits women’s peace of mind and restricts their freedom.

I am CONSTANTLY trying to explain to people (admittedly, mostly males) exactly why it’s not just a matter of passing, inappropriate comments that we should just ignore or let roll off our backs.  So many people don’t seem to understand that the effects of street harassment are multiple, permeate many layers of a woman’s psyche, make her uncomfortable enough (for a variety of reasons) to change her lifestyle and live in a constant state of mild discomfort.

But:  Today’s posting captured it so perfectly!!  So much better than I’ve ever been able to articulate it.

After being harassed 3 times within the past 24 hours (yep, Spring is definitely here!), I decided to take today’s posting, put it into a Word document and alter it a bit, and turn it into a 5×7 leaflet , copies of which I’m going to keep in my purse to hand out to men who find it necessary to communicate their sexual thoughts to me.  It’s going to be a social experiment, but I’m very curious to see the effect it has.

In fact I think I’ll go back to the construction site corner where I was harassed an hour ago and hand one out to the 2 men who were leering and making sounds at me.

Anyway, as always, thanks for what you do.  It gives me an outlet and a sense of solidarity which I desperately needed prior to finding your website.

I’m interested to hear how the men respond to the leaflets!

One of the most important messages we can share  is that street harassment isn’t trivial, a minor annoyance, a compliment or women’s fault. It’s an equality issue, a human rights issue, and a matter of dignity.

Please share the link or the leaflet about why street harassment matters with your networks, friends, and family, so everyone can understand the bigger picture. Sometimes it takes knowing that information before people – including me – are spurred to take action .

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China cracks down on ‘fan culture’ during the Olympics, arresting a woman for social media posts

Gold medalist China’s Chen Meng, center, silver medalist China’s Sun Yingsha, left, and bronze medalist Japan’s Hina Hayata stand for the Chinese national anthem during the medal ceremony of the women’s singles table tennis at the 2024 Summer Olympics, Saturday, Aug. 3, 2024, in Paris, France. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)

China’s Sun Yingsha plays against Egypt’s Dina Meshref during a women’s teams round of 16 table tennis match at the 2024 Summer Olympics, Monday, Aug. 5, 2024, in Paris, France. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)

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BEIJING (AP) — A Chinese woman has been detained for allegedly slandering others on social media in a crackdown on what Chinese authorities see as harmful negativity during the Olympics from super-zealous fans and online fan clubs.

Beijing police said in statement issued late Tuesday that they had arrested the 29-year-old suspect after receiving tips from the public that some people had made defamatory posts about athletes and coaches after a closely watched women’s table tennis final on Saturday.

Both finalists were Chinese, and table tennis is the national sport. Heated comments on social media, echoed to a degree by a partisan crowd in Paris that favored one of the competitors, sparked a backlash in China. At least three major social media platforms deleted or otherwise restricted thousands of posts and comments and suspended the accounts of hundreds of users. Several state media criticized the outbursts in articles headlined, “Do not let fan culture erode China’s table tennis.”

China’s internet regulator has cracked down previously on similar “fan culture” built around entertainment stars. The phenomenon spread to athletes in China following the 2016 Rio Olympics, according to the state-owned Global Times newspaper, which said fan leaders start battles on social media, manipulate comment sections and attack athletes and others, leading to fierce conflicts between fan groups.

There is also money to be made, the Global Times said, with some fans offering autographs of the star or surreptitiously taken photos for sale on social media.

The women’s table tennis final was a rematch of the Tokyo Olympics in 2021. The most vocal supporters were for Tokyo silver medalist, Sun Yingsha, whose popularity soared after those Games and hit new heights after she won gold in mixed doubles in Paris.

2024 Paris Olympics:

• What to know about the closing ceremony : A skydiving Tom Cruise and performances from Billie Eilish, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Paris Olympics mainstay Snoop Dogg highlighted the French capital’s au revoir to the Olympics.
• Indelible images : AP photographers pick their favorite images from the Paris Olympics .
• Who won the 2024 Olympics?: See which countries tied for the most gold medals in Paris, and who exceeded expectations.
• When are the next Summer Games? The Olympics will always have Paris . But next up for the Summer Games: Los Angeles 2028 . See how the City of Angels is preparing to follow the City of Light.

Sun was ranked No. 1 in the women’s singles and didn’t lose a game in her journey to the finals. She dominated her opponent, Chen Meng, in the first game of the finals but then faltered. Chen won the match 4-2, capturing her second straight gold medal.

The outcome didn’t sit well with Sun’s fans, who flooded social media with comments hostile to Chen.

Sina Weibo, a top social media platform in China, said the day after the match that it had removed more than 12,000 posts and comments, and suspended more than 300 accounts. Two short-video platforms including Douyin, which operates TikTok overseas, later said they had dealt with thousands of videos and comments and suspended or banned hundreds of users since the Games started.

Police didn’t say what the arrested woman had posted but accused her of “maliciously fabricating information and blatantly slandered others, causing a negative social impact.”

Associated Press video producer Olivia Zhang contributed.

For more coverage of the Paris Olympics, visit https://apnews.com/hub/2024-paris-olympic-games .

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Johanna Rickne: Sexual Harassment and Gender Inequality in the Labor Market

9139ad655ab0b8804b8c3caae8e7fa8a, 00:00 | welcome, 00:21 | intro - ayushi narayan, 02:15 | johanna rickne, 45:56 | q&a.

(Joint with Olle Folke, Uppsala University)

We argue that sexual harassment is a discriminatory work condition that constitutes a tax on workplace gender minorities. This tax creates a disincentive for both men and women to become and remain such minorities. We make these points in three empirical sections.

The first section documents asymmetric harassment risks by gender across workplace sex-ratios in nationally representative survey data from Sweden. Women self-report more harassment than men in gender-mixed or male-dominated workplaces, and men self-report more harassment than women in female-dominated workplaces.

In the next section, we design a survey experiment for fictional job choices to quantify people’s preferences against harassment risks. We signal a high risk by a vignette of sexual harassment where the victim has the same sex as the survey respondent. Pooling all respondents, men and women have equally sized preferences against workplaces with harassment. But splitting the sample by risk-levels, the high-risk gender has a larger negative preference than the low-risk gender.

The final empirical section returns to the administrative data to study wages and turnover. We find that women face the highest harassment risks in high-paying workplaces and men in low-paying workplaces. For women, but not for men, we also find that harassment is conducive to turnover. We conclude that workplace sexual harassment reinforces sex-segregation and the gender pay gap in the labor market.    

About the speaker

She is widely published in both economics and political science, including the American Economic Review, American Economic Journal: Applied, Quarterly Journal of Economics, American Political Science Review, Comparative Political Studies, Journal of Theoretical Politics, and Quarterly Journal of Political Science. Learn more   sites.google.com/site/ricknejohanna/home

One Woman's Open Letter On "Social Experiments"

Nothing makes a bad day worse like having a stranger accost you on the street and refuse to leave you alone. Yesterday on Reddit, a woman called out a man for doing “social experiments” that really just involved harassing women in public. She made the point that men badgering women in public spaces is annoying at best and threatening at worst — and that adding the label “social experiment” to these actions doesn’t magically make them OK.

The woman, who goes by “qiba” on Reddit , started her r/London post with the title, “ To the Australian(?) guy doing a 'social experiment' in Islington by talking to random women in the park, who insulted me when I wanted to be left alone....” Qiba continued ,

Screw you. I told you repeatedly I'd had a shit day. I told you exactly why. I politely asked THREE TIMES to be left alone and I have no responsibility to be charming or friendly to you when you're being rude by ignoring my politely stated wishes. Thanks for making a bad week and a particularly bad day even worse by making me feel like crap for declining your ‘nice guy’ act that was actually only nice for yourself. Your parting line of “it's OK to be mean — after all, you're from the UK” was particularly obnoxious.

Commenters on the thread questioned whether the guy actually was doing a social experiment; qiba said that the man didn’t appear to have a camera or partner with him. Some commenters suggested that he might have been a pick up artist using the term “social experiment” as an excuse to hit on women. Whatever his situation may have been, it’s clear that a guy who repeatedly refuses to leave a woman alone and then leaves her with an insult is not someone who deserves attention or conversation from others.

In her post, qiba made two key points: First, that, gender dynamics aside, it’s not acceptable to harass strangers in public, whether there’s an “experiment” involved or not. “To anyone doing 'social experiments' in London or making an effort to talk to strangers — fine, but take a hint when someone's not interested, and don't be an arsehole,” she wrote . “No one's obligated to play along.”

Second, qiba pointed out that there is a gender issue at play here. She wrote ,

To men in general — just know that if you approach a woman who is alone in a park and has made no invitation toward you whatsoever, and then refuse her explicit requests to leave her alone, you are raising all kinds of red flags and actually being mildly threatening, however good your intentions.

She followed up in the comments to clarify that she thinks a lot of men are well intentioned, but simply unaware of the challenges women face when in public. “I believe it can be hard for men to appreciate the way in which women, when alone in public, can very easily feel threatened or can always be on alert for threats,” she wrote . “I think that men often accidentally make women feel that way when their intentions are actually very good (or they're just oblivious) because they've never really had to think about these things.”

This post demonstrates that when out in public, it’s crucial to exercise some social common sense. Being friendly to people is all well and good, but it’s important to pick up on and, above all, respect signals — or, in this case, explicit statements — that they want to be left alone.

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Social media experiment to reduce workplace harassment towards women

Anaya Dam and Diego Dabed of the Utrecht University School of Economics (U.S.E.) will conduct a targeted social media experiment to reduce workplace harassment towards women. Their proposed research project is called LinkinOut Harassment and will evaluate the effectiveness of anti- workplace harassment campaigns to raise awareness, change behaviours and norms, and eventually reduce harassment experiences and improve well-being of women in the workforce. The geographical focus of the project is in India. The researchers were awarded a grant for this investigation by UKAID and IZA Bonn under its Gender, Growth and Labour Markets in Low Income Countries Programme.

LinkinOut Harassment

How can we use social media to create behavioural change? Social media, over the years, has been used by firms to market various products, but during Covid-19 it also became a useful tool for low cost and large-scale public service announcements, Anaya Dam says. And what raised awareness about the urgent topic of workplace harassment? The #MeToo movement that was kickstarted on social media.

Quantifying the impact social media platforms to generate change

Campaigns have been used by NGOs, e.g. UN Women’s 16 Days of activism against gender-based violence; for public service announcements, e.g., social-distancing measures and guidelines during the Covid-19 pandemic or social movements, e.g., 'Black lives matter' and '#metoo',  she goes on. But at the same time there is an overwhelming amount of information and disinformation on platforms, as well as limited attention spans. An open question remains on quantifying the impact these platforms can have to generate change. In particular, for whom and how can campaigns be designed, and how targeted ads be used to generate effective social impact.

Their research will conduct an A/B test of the effectiveness of an anti-harassment campaign on LinkedIn, and collect novel survey data on women’s harassment experiences, wellbeing and labour market outcomes.

LinkedIn is the biggest social media platform for corporate sector workers and the targeted demographic of this study: corporate women workers in India, working in the IT, banking and consultancy sector. Why will this project focus on this specific sample of the workforce? Dam explains: The work force in India has grown a lot in recent years, particularly with educated women that have been employed in the corporate sectors. However, harassment is still prevalent. So, this could be the group we could really have impact with, especially by using social media.

Workplace harassment towards women is still prevalent worldwide

It is a section of the labour force but nevertheless an important one , she adds. Workplace harassment towards women is still prevalent worldwide with one in two women reporting such experiences in their lifetime: including The Netherlands for instance. It will make the findings of our research generalizable and relevant.

The social media campaign on LinkedIn will be designed by a local NGO in India that works specifically on awareness about the Indian law around the prevention of (sexual) harassment in the workplace. This organisation is already creating awareness by offering trainings for the corporate sector, online posts and support to survivors.

Awareness: ‘Generating empathy’ or ‘the fear of being caught’

Based on the evidence, the likelihood of perpetrators being male is much higher than female and the likelihood of the victims being female is much higher than male. The campaign is therefore focused predominantly on changing the behaviour of men towards women.

Why do men perpetrate harassment towards women in the workplace? From the literature, we don’t know what types of content are more effective in changing behaviour, says Dam. We focus on two motivations of the perpetrators that are identified in the literature. In the first, with the generating empathy hypothesis, we design content aimed at generating awareness on the consequences faced by victims (psychological, monetary and/or physical) and in the second, the fear of being caught hypothesis, we design content aiming at raising awareness on the costs of sanctions to the perpetrator upon being reported.

Motivated researchers

The two awarded PhD researchers who came up with this idea are very excited and motivated to conduct this societally relevant topic that could have a real impact, also globally. What is also great for us personally is that we are one of the few PhD students who were awarded this competitive grant as Primary Investigators, Anaya Dam says. We are grateful to the funders for this opportunity to take our research idea from concept to reality. At the same time, we recognize the immense responsibility of researching a sensitive and socially-impactful issue.

A first policy report based on this research project is expected in fall 2024. The entire project will run from 2023-2026.

More information

You can find more information about this project in a blogpost on the funder’s website.

Or contact Anaya Dam ( [email protected]) or Diego Dabed ( [email protected])

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• Summer Sports

Olympic boxing champion reportedly names Elon Musk, J.K. Rowling in online harassment complaint

Imane khelif has faced false claims that she's transgender or a 'biological man'.

Social Sharing

The boxing champion at the centre of a worldwide clash over sex and gender identity in sports has reportedly named Elon Musk and author J.K. Rowling in an online harassment complaint being investigated by French prosecutors.

Algerian boxer Imane Khelif, who  won a gold medal  in the women's welterweight division in the 2024 Paris Olympics, filed a legal complaint in France for online harassment after false claims erupted online that Khelif was transgender or a "biological man." 

In a statement  posted Saturday to Instagram , Khelif's lawyer, Nabil Boudi, alleged "aggravated cyber-harassment" targeting Khelif. He described it as a "misogynist, racist and sexist campaign" against the boxer.

On Wednesday, the Paris prosecutor's office confirmed it had received the complaint and its Office for the Fight against Crimes against Humanity and Hate Crime had opened an investigation on charges of "cyber harassment based on gender, public insults based on gender, public incitement to discrimination and public insults on the basis of origin."

• She won boxing gold. Now Imane Khelif has filed a harassment complaint over claims she's a man or transgender
• Misinformation persists online after super-brief Olympic boxing bout

Khelif's legal complaint was filed against social media platforms, including X, instead of a specific perpetrator. This is a common formulation under French law that leaves it up to investigators to determine which person or organization may have been at fault, notes the Associated Press.

That "ensures that the prosecution has all the latitude to be able to investigate against all people," including those who may have used pseudonyms, Boudi told the news outlet Variety in an interview.

He reportedly told Variety that "J.K. Rowling and Elon Musk are named in the lawsuit, among others."

CBC News reached out to Boudi for further confirmation but has not heard back.

Algerian Imane Khelif wins Olympic women's boxing gold

Worldwide clash.

Khelif was thrust into a worldwide clash over gender identity and regulation in sports after her first fight of the Games, when Italian opponent Angela Carini pulled out just 46 seconds into the match after taking a hit to the face.

Online claims about Khelif's gender were amplified by celebrities including Elon Musk, author  J.K. Rowling , brothers Logan and Jake Paul — former YouTube stars who have become involved in wrestling and boxing, respectively — and Caitlyn Jenner, a retired Olympic gold-medallist and transgender woman.

• Algeria's Imane Khelif wins women's welterweight boxing gold amid gender misconceptions

"Could any picture sum up our new men's rights movement better? The smirk of a male who knows he's protected by a misogynist sporting establishment enjoying the distress of a woman he's just punched in the head, and whose life's ambition he's just shattered," Rowling  said on X, formerly known as Twitter.  

The  Harry Potter  author has become known for her  controversial comments  about the transgender community.

Absolutely <a href="https://t.co/twccUEOW9e">https://t.co/twccUEOW9e</a> &mdash; @elonmusk

Musk didn't make a direct comment online, but shared a post by U.S. swimmer Riley Gaines  that said "Men don't belong in women's sports." Above the post, Musk wrote, "Absolutely."

Whether or not Khelif's online harassment case has legal consequences for those named in it, the fact that a case has been brought forward at all makes an "absolutely vital" public statement about our acceptance of the harmful things people say online, said Shana MacDonald, the O'Donovan Chair in communication at the University of Waterloo.

"At the moment with Twitter, all the guard rails are off. And there's no way to have accountability," MacDonald, who studies digital media and disinformation, told CBC News.

'Transphobic witch hunt'

The International Olympic Committee has defended Khelif, saying in an  Aug. 1 statement  that "every person has the right to practise sport without discrimination." It also decried the "misleading information" circulating about Khelif.

Several of the false accusations on social media cited an incident in March 2023, when the International Boxing Association (IBA), the sport's governing body,  disqualified Khelif and fellow boxer Lin Yu-ting  of Taiwan from the world championships in New Delhi.

The IBA said they had failed eligibility tests for the women's competition, without specifying what those tests were. 

"The current aggression against these two athletes is based entirely on this arbitrary decision, which was taken without any proper procedure — especially considering that these athletes had been competing in top-level competition for many years," the IOC's Aug. 1 statement read.

The disinformation campaign against Khelif is especially troubling because it uses her as a vehicle to ramp up the "transphobic witch hunt" that's been happening within sports, said MacDonald. 

"It becomes a vector for spreading this really egregious, I would say, hateful, disinformation that's purposely intending to be harmful," she said.

But the associate professor says she's starting to see a shift in tone, with more harmful rhetoric being called out. She notes that the Kamala Harris presidential campaign in the U.S., for instance, is leading by example. 

"I'm feeling hopeful for public discourse that all of the sudden this nasty version of being in the world is kind of being called out."

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Senior Writer & Editor

Natalie Stechyson has been a writer and editor at CBC News since 2021. She covers stories on social trends, families, gender, human interest, as well as general news. She's worked as a journalist since 2009, with stints at the Globe and Mail and Postmedia News, among others. Before joining CBC News, she was the parents editor at HuffPost Canada, where she won a silver Canadian Online Publishing Award for her work on pregnancy loss. You can reach her at [email protected].

With files from the Associated Press

Related Stories

Advancing social justice, promoting decent work ILO is a specialized agency of the United Nations

The ILO-Magdalene’s social experiment reveals that women can spend more than 100 hours per week on unpaid care work. They even could double their earnings if care work was considered a paying, productive job.

5 August 2024

JAKARTA, Indonesia (ILO News) - To demonstrate the double burden shouldered by women and the amount of time they spend to do care work, the ILO in collaboration with Magdalene, a leading online female media, conducted a social experiment. Five women were selected to record their domestic and caregiving tasks for seven days, then noted the time spent on each.

“The experiment attempted to understand how many hours women spent on caregiving work, unpaid job deeply associated with women, and its value if it were paid,” said Early Dewi Nuriana, ILO’s Programme Coordinator for Care Work.

The social experiment revealed that four out five participants recorded caregiving hours exceeding 40 hours per week, beyond the standardized total working hours of a full-time worker as stipulated under the Job Creation Law No. 11/2020.

Natalia Kusumaningrum, 43 years old, a food delivery worker, for example, contributed 103.58 hours per week or 414.33 hours per month as a caregiver. Since hiring a babysitter or asking help from family members is not an option, Natalia as a mother of three had to bring her two-year-old child with her as she made her deliveries; while at the same time, she has to prepare meals for her family, clean the house, do laundry, take care of her children and more.  

Meanwhile Riris Suryowati, 53 years old, a retiree who takes care of her bed-bound father for 24/7, worked 103.50 hours per week or 414 hours per month. She receives no assistance in doing this work and her workload equated to 258.75 percent of her last salary.

Emmy, 39 years old, a single mother who works a researcher while raising a child and caring for aging father. She spends 99 hours per week or the equivalent of 396 hours per month as caregiver. Even though she delegates 63.42 hours of caregiving work to a domestic assistant, she still spends 35.58 hours per week, which would give her twice her salary as a social researcher.

Working mother of two Arniati Purnami, 35 years old, recorded her caregiving work hours at 59,92 hours per week or the equivalent of 203.67 hours per month. If she received a salary for the unpaid caregiving work, her salary would reach almost Rp 11 million per month, more than her current pay.

Ernawati’s situation is slightly better than the four participants. The 49-year-old travel agent, who has been working from home to care for her ailing father, spends 25.98 hours per week on caregiving work, including taking care of her father for a month. She would have earned 64.69 percent more than her current salary as a caregiver.

All the five participants agree that caregiving work is important. However, they also believed that caregiving work was women’s work, not men’s. Women do a better job at nursing others and women are naturally suited to caregiving and care works.

There is an urgent need to recognize unpaid care work as valuable and productive work through the social protection scheme, such as paid leave for workers with family responsibilities to provide family care, so that women can continue to work and earn an income. Early Dewi Nuriana, ILO’s Programme Coordinator for Care Work 

Early also stated that the results of the social experiment further confirmed the findings of the ILO survey on public perceptions of care work. In the 2023 survey, the survey finds that the majority of female respondents (67.3 percent) said they do not feel they have to work longer hours doing care work than men.

Even though the survey also shows that 61.6 percent of male respondents have a wife or sister who have to bear the double burden, 65.6 percent are not willing to pay someone else to help with care work. Meanwhile, female respondents who have a double burden reach 79.3 percent. However, ironically, 78.3 percent refuse to pay someone else to help with care work.

"Thus, by converting the hours of care work carried out per day, per week to per month in the form of income, it will bring awareness to how much this care work has economic value, which up to now has been considered unproductive work and does not need to be paid," she added.

One of the participants, Emmy believes that the recognition of care work is important. “As a researcher, I am often exposed to campaigns about gender equality and care work. At the end of the day, this work still cannot be ignored. The message is clear—This is not only the responsibility of women.”

The first step to addressing gender bias, according to Early, was by acknowledging that caregiving work was productive work. She also emphasized the need for actions from various parties to not only change people’s mindsets, but also provide favourable policies and infrastructure supports.

“There is an urgent need to recognize unpaid care work as valuable and productive work through the social protection scheme, such as paid leave for workers with family responsibilities to provide family care, so that women can continue to work and earn an income. Infrastructure support such as senior-friendly homes and affordable childcare services can alleviate burden carried by caregivers," she concluded.

The social experiment was conducted as part of the ILO campaign on care economy aimed to promote a greater investment in care economy for building a better and more gender equal world of work in Indonesia. The social media campaign on this social experiment has reached 211,113 views through Twitter, Instagram, TikTok and Youtube and has generated massive media publicity.

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Women still struggle to juggle paid work and unpaid care work

The Care Economy in Indonesia

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Algeria’s Imane Khelif files harassment case after gender row

Olympic boxing champion’s lawyer condemns ‘speculations fuelled by malicious individuals’ who posted grievances online.

Imane Khelif , the Algerian boxer at the centre of a gender dispute at the Paris Olympic Games, has filed a legal complaint against the social media platform X for harassment.

The gold medal winner’s lawyer said on Saturday that she filed the formal complaint in France. Khelif and another gold medallist, Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting, have been at the centre of a high-profile dispute over gender identity that has provoked heated debate on social media.

Keep reading

Taiwan’s lin yu-ting sails into olympic boxing final amid gender dispute, algeria’s khelif is first arab and african woman to win olympic boxing gold, who is imane khelif when is her olympics gold medal fight.

Citing court documents, the French newspaper Le Monde reported that the boxing champion “filed a complaint against X” with the Paris correctional court, the national centre for combating online harassment.

Khelif’s lawyer Nabil Boudi said the complaint was filed on Friday.

“The boxer Imane Khelif has decided to begin a new fight, a fight for justice, dignity and honour,” he said in a statement as he announced the complaint for “aggravated online harassment … [had been filed] to Paris prosecutors”.

“All that is being said about me on social media is immoral. I want to change the minds of people around the world,” Khelif said.

Individuals in the complaint were described as “important political figures” with wide followings on X, the social media company owned by Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. The posts targeting Khelif “exceeded 100 million views,” it added.

The speculation was “fuelled by malicious individuals,” Boudi said. “The investigation will determine who was behind this misogynist, racist and sexist campaign but will also have to concern itself with those who fed the online lynching.”

The furore over Khelif’s eligibility drew fire from the likes of former United States President Donald Trump, Harry Potter author JK Rowling and several right-wing French politicians.

After her gold medal victory on Friday night, Khelif said winning was the perfect response to “attacks” and “bullying” and declared: “I am a woman like any other.”

The questions regarding Khelif’s and Lin’s gender were sparked by the International Boxing Association (IBA).

At a news conference last week, the IBA’s Kremlin-linked president, Umar Kremlev, claimed the organisation had run “genetic testing that shows that these are men”.

The IBA threw both boxers out of the world championships in 2023. The International Olympic Committee, however, cleared them to box in Paris.

Asked if she would take measures similar to Khelif, Lin said: “This is something I will discuss with my team. We will decide later what the next step will be.”

Following an early round victory for Khelif in the ring, Rowling referred to the boxer as a “male” and accused her of “enjoying the distress of a woman he’s just punched in the head, and whose life’s ambition he’s just shattered”.

Trump declared in capital letters on his Truth Social outlet: “I will keep men out of women’s sports”. His vice-presidential nominee, JD Vance, argued that “Kamala Harris’s ideas about gender” have led “to a grown man pummelling a woman in a boxing match”.

More From Forbes

5 ways to make captivating short-form videos your customers will love.

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James Bryant – Co-founder of Venture Videos , the go-to video production agency for SaaS and technology brands.

As we enter the second half of 2024, I’ve been reflecting on how predicted video trends have influenced the marketing landscape. In February, WordStream shared its top video marketing trends to watch in 2024, including how we will see more use of AI, how we will see more real people on camera and how short-term video is here to stay.

In June, HubSpot reported that marketers are now rating short-form video as the top content marketing format. And here’s the clincher: 31% of marketers said that short-form video offers them the highest ROI. Unsurprisingly, most marketers (57%) who use short-form video are planning to increase their investment in it this year.

Short-form video reigns supreme on popular social media platforms such as TikTok, Instagram and YouTube. Seasoned video editor Danielle Warren shared some thoughts on the growth of short-form content in the WordStream report: “Between Instagram reels, YouTube Shorts, TikTok, and everything in between, the appetite for short-form videos is only going to increase after growing exponentially over the next few years. Given the ever-shortening of attention spans, the ability to narrate your brand’s visual stories in a succinct and engaging manner is essential for success.”

So, we know how important short-form videos are, but how can you make captivating content that your customers will want to watch? Here are five tips.

Apple iPhone 16 And iPhone 16 Pro Key Upgrades Revealed In Latest Dispatch

The blake lively backlash on tiktok, explained, today’s nyt mini crossword clues and answers for thursday, august 15, 1. get to know your customers.

Understanding your target audience and what makes them tick will help you figure out what your video should and shouldn’t say. The HubSpot report revealed that most marketers lack enough information about their audience to ensure a personalized experience, and that “just 65% of consumers say the content they see from brands feels relatable.” So make sure you invest in thorough market research to get to the nitty gritty of your customers’ preferences, interests and pain points. If you address these directly in your video shorts, you are more likely to successfully reel in customers.

2. Create Compelling Characters

A compelling story starts with a compelling character the audience likes, admires or maybe even despises—if you’re going for a villainous, dramatic angle. Most importantly, this character must be relatable. Aim to create a narrative that portrays your character’s story in a way that engages the viewer emotionally and keeps them captivated right to the end. Whether it’s a 30-second reel or a two-minute saga, the same principles apply.

3. Hook Your Audience In Seconds

On social media, you only have seconds to grab viewers’ attention before they keep scrolling. With video, every moment counts. Put your best hook forward in the first moment by asking a thought-provoking question, offering a surprising fact or opening with a show-stopping visual.

4. Add Real Value And Use Social Proof

The most valuable content is educational and informative as well as entertaining. Customers are looking for solutions that address their problems through easy-to-digest content such as practical tips, insights or how-to guides. Use social proof—such as expert interviews, case studies and customer testimonials—to build trust with viewers. Showing real people with real challenges is particularly effective.

5. Optimize For Each Platform, And Experiment With Formats

In a mobile-first digital age, it’s essential to ensure your videos are mobile-friendly and formatted for various social media platforms. Each platform has its own quirks and intricacies, and tailoring your video content to each platform is well worth the effort. Experiment with different formats (horizontal vs. vertical) and see what resonates with your audience. Set up key performance indicators and track metrics to ensure your video marketing efforts get your business the desired results.

Video has become a powerful tool for businesses to connect with their customers, and it will continue to play a pivotal role in marketing communications. Knowing how to capitalize on its power will greatly benefit your business and brand.

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Raygun becomes viral sensation during breaking performance at 2024 Paris Olympics: Social media reacts

Breaking , more commonly known as breakdancing, made its debut as an Olympic sport this week at the 2024 Paris Games , with 17 B-girls and 16 B-boys making their way to France with the hopes of securing a gold medal.

On the first day of competition, viewers from across the world were treated to a different kind of introduction — not to the sport itself, but one of its athletes.

Though she was a long way from winning a gold medal, likely no breaker Friday captured the imagination of the international audience more than Rachael Gunn, an Australian breaker who competes under the name “Raygun.”

REQUIRED READING: Follow USA TODAY's coverage of the 2024 Paris Olympics

Raygun went 0-3 in her head-to-head competitions Friday — falling to Logistx of the United States, Syssy of France and eventual silver medalist Nicka of Lithuania by a combined score of 54-0 — and failed to record a point across those three matches, but for what she lacked in smoothly executed moves, she made up for in the hearts she won over with her demeanor.

Raygun’s short-lived Olympic experience made her a celebrity, one who people became even more enamored with once they learned more about her.

The 36-year-old Gunn, who was one of the oldest qualifiers in the breaking competition, has a PhD in cultural studies and is a college professor at Macquarie University in Sydney. Her research focuses primarily on breaking, street dance and hip-hop culture while her work draws on “cultural theory, dance studies, popular music studies, media, and ethnography.”

“In 2023, many of my students didn’t believe me when I told them I was training to qualify for the Olympics, and were shocked when they checked Google and saw that I qualified,” Gunn said to CNBC earlier this month .

Unlike much of her competition in Paris, Gunn took up break dancing later in life. She didn’t enter her first battle until 2012.

On Friday, a person who began the day as a little-known academic ended it as a viral worldwide sensation.

Here’s a sampling of the reaction to Raygun and her performance:

2024 PARIS OLYMPICS: Meet the members of Team USA competing at the 2024 Paris Olympics

Social media reacts to Raygun’s breaking performance at 2024 Paris Olympics

I could live all my life and never come up with anything as funny as Raygun, the 36-year-old Australian Olympic breakdancer pic.twitter.com/1uPYBxIlh8 — mariah (@mariahkreutter) August 9, 2024

Give Raygun the gold right now #breakdancing pic.twitter.com/bMtAWEh3xo — n★ (@nichstarr) August 9, 2024

my five year old niece after she says “watch this!” : pic.twitter.com/KBAMSkgltj — alex (@alex_abads) August 9, 2024

I'd like to personally thank Raygun for making millions of people worldwide think "huh, maybe I can make the Olympics too" pic.twitter.com/p5QlUbkL2w — Bradford Pearson (@BradfordPearson) August 9, 2024

The Aussie B-Girl Raygun dressed as a school PE teach complete with cap while everyone else is dressed in funky breaking outfits has sent me. It looks like she’s giving her detention for inappropriate dress at school 🤣 #Olympics pic.twitter.com/lWVU3myu6C — Georgie Heath🎙️ (@GeorgieHeath27) August 9, 2024

There has not been an Olympic performance this dominant since Usain Bolt’s 100m sprint at Beijing in 2008. Honestly, the moment Raygun broke out her Kangaroo move this competition was over! Give her the #breakdancing gold 🥇 pic.twitter.com/6q8qAft1BX — Trapper Haskins (@TrapperHaskins) August 9, 2024

my dog on the lawn 30 seconds after i've finished bathing him pic.twitter.com/A5aqxIbV3H — David Mack (@davidmackau) August 9, 2024

My wife at 3AM: I think I heard one of the kids Me: No way, they are asleep *looks at baby monitor* pic.twitter.com/Ubhi6kY4w4 — Wes Blankenship (@Wes_nship) August 9, 2024

me tryna get the duvet off when i’m too hot at night #olympics pic.twitter.com/NM4Fb2MEmX — robyn (@robynjournalist) August 9, 2024

Raygun really hit them with the "Tyrannosaurus." pic.twitter.com/ZGCMjhzth9 — Mike Beauvais (@MikeBeauvais) August 9, 2024

Raygun (AUS) https://t.co/w2lxLRaW2x — Peter Nygaard (@RetepAdam) August 9, 2024

SEC Combats Scourge of Affinity Fraud With Proactive Experiment

By Matthew Bultman

Sanjay Singh pitched an investment in his Florida trucking company as a path for the middle class to achieve the American dream.

Money would be used to expand his fleet and build out the company’s operations, with investors guaranteed to make returns of 12.5% to 325%, the pitch went, according to authorities.

“We take the risk, we take the liability, you enjoy the investment,” he said in a 2023 promotional video , “Driving American Dream.” “That is our business model.”

Singh’s company, Royal Bengal Logistics, took in $112 million before the Securities and Exchange Commission shut it down, alleging Singh was running a Ponzi scheme targeting South Florida’s Haitian American community. Singh has denied the allegations.

The SEC’s investigation was part of an experiment from its regional office in Miami, home to one of the largest US immigrant populations, to more proactively root out fraud targeting people of particular religious, social, or ethnic groups.

The agency has brought more than 30 cases alleging affinity fraud since 2022, when the Miami program began, according to agency data. The Fraud Against Minority Groups Initiative has been credited in several of them, and is inspiring similar efforts in other parts of the country.

“The initiative strives to serve as a counter to some of the fraudsters’ most potent tools in their schemes,” said Eric Bustillo, the Miami office director.

Authorities face a number of challenges in preventing affinity fraud.

Alleged fraudsters often are part of the group they’re trying to defraud, or pretend that they are, and establish their credibility by appealing to the trust that members of the group share, University of Pennsylvania law professor Lisa Fairfax wrote in an academic paper . This group trust and sense of community can persuade otherwise cautious people to participate in fraudulent schemes.

The perpetrators also benefit from the mistrust of law enforcement that many immigrants brought with them.

“To paraphrase one prominent securities regulator, ‘You can trust me because I’m like you’ is a siren song that has been used in recent years to defraud many investors,” Fairfax wrote.

Countering Fraudsters’ Tools

The SEC is trying to combat that by going into targeted communities to educate people about the warning signs of fraud. It also looks to identify scams in time to freeze fraudsters’ ill-gotten gains and give investors a chance at recovery.

Cases brought by the SEC this year charge schemes targeting Latino, Nigerian American, and Indian American communities. But affinity fraud has hit the Haitian community particularly hard.

Singh ensnared hundreds of Haitian Americans among the estimated 1,500 victims, according to the SEC.

Separately, New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) in June sued crypto companies NovaTechFX and AWS Mining Pty Ltd., accusing the companies of defrauding investors, including Haitian immigrants, out of more than $1 billion in cryptocurrency. The SEC filed its own civil suit against NovaTech on Aug. 12.

And earlier this year, a judge in the US District Court for the Eastern District of New York sentenced a Brooklyn man to two years in prison for an investment fraud that targeted Haitian Americans living in Brooklyn and Queens.

The First Born Again Baptist Church in Miami, with a congregation of more than 350 predominately Haitian American members, has hosted SEC staff members twice in recent months.

Pastor Fritzner Jules said the SEC’s presentations included tips for protecting against credit card fraud. He said he’d “strongly” recommend the SEC’s presentation to other churches and community groups in the Haitian community.

Information the SEC presented “is what we need the most,” Jules said.

The SEC’s Los Angeles and San Francisco offices in May started an initiative, the “Western Alliance to Protect Targeted Communities,” to pursue at an early stage investment frauds that target identifiable communities. Similarly, the New York and New Jersey offices have teamed up for a “FraudWise” education program to target affinity fraud.

“We have seen tremendous success in the initiative that the Miami Regional Office has spearheaded, and we are working to replicate these efforts and achievements in other parts of the country where we see fraudsters targeting minority communities,” the SEC’s enforcement director, Gurbir Grewal, said.

Wanting Better Future

In the case against Singh’s Royal Bengal Logistics, the SEC won an emergency order freezing the company’s assets and appointing receivers to trace and recover investor funds.

The receivers’ efforts continue, according to an Aug. 12 court filing , which includes bringing lawsuits against two former RBL employees to recover “unusual payments” that exceeded $1 million. The receivers also sold several trucks and RBL equipment, including laptops and computer monitors.

The SEC brought another civil case last month against two other RBL executives involved in the alleged scheme.

Singh in court filings accused the SEC of making inaccurate statements in its complaint. He and RBL had assets “to support any emergency relief for the so-called investors” and the “Haitian American community made substantial amount of profit in partnering with the defendants,” Singh wrote.

“My position is that this is affinity enforcement against minorities in South Florida who collectively wanted to do business together and they labeled them as a Ponzi scheme,” Singh said in an interview.

Singh also faces criminal charges, including wire fraud. The criminal case is scheduled for trial in October in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. If convicted of all charges, he faces up to 150 years in prison.

Hundreds of RBL investors wrote a letter to the judge last summer, asking that their money be returned as soon as possible. The RBL scheme had plunged them into “a deep social, economic, and financial mess,” the letter said.

“We trusted RBL because it was presented as a secure investment opportunity,” the investors wrote. “We invested because we were seeking to contribute to our community while creating a better future for ourselves and our children.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Matthew Bultman in New York at [email protected]

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Michael Smallberg at [email protected] ; Bernie Kohn at [email protected]

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August 10, 2024

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White men who have been mistreated at work are more likely to notice and report harassment

by Erin A. Cech, The Conversation

White men who have personally experienced mistreatment at work, such as bullying, are more likely to realize that their organization does not always operate fairly. And that makes them more likely to recognize and report race and gender bias against their co-workers, I found in a recent study.

As a sociologist who researches workplace inequality , I wondered whether the way white men in the U.S. are treated at work might be related to whether they recognize sexist and racist incidents that harm their colleagues.

To find out, I analyzed data from over 11,000 federal employees , including 5,011 white men employed by 28 government agencies , collected for a survey that measures the government's progress toward eliminating personnel policy violations.

I found that although white men are mistreated less often than women and people of color, about 1 in 3 of them experienced some instance of bullying, intimidation or other form of harassment in the two years prior to the study. In comparison, 44% of white women, 49% of women of color and 35% of men of color experienced some form of harassment.

It turned out that white men who were targets of harassment were 70% more likely than other white men in their workplaces to recognize gender bias among their colleagues. They were 58% more likely to recognize bias against their racial or ethnic minority colleagues. They were also nearly twice as likely to have reported race and gender bias to their supervisors and colleagues when they witnessed it.

Why were white men who had been harassed more sensitive to bias in their workplace?

I found that they tended to be more skeptical that their organization worked fairly. For example, only one-third of white men who experienced harassment agreed with this statement: "Recognition and rewards are based on performance in my organization." In contrast, two-thirds of white men who had not experienced harassment agreed with it. The skepticism among those who had experienced mistreatment increased their tendency to recognize and report bias against their colleagues.

Importantly, these patterns existed whether white men thought they were the target of harassment because of a social characteristic—such as their age, religion or sexual identity —or because of more idiosyncratic personality conflicts.

Why it matters

Many white men believe that their workplace operates according to merit : that people who are better at their jobs get promoted, while those who aren't get demoted or fired. Yet race and gender bias are startlingly common in U.S. workplaces: More than 4 in 10 women have experienced gender discrimination , and 41% of Black workers have experienced racial discrimination at some point in their careers.

Rooting out gender and racial bias from the workplace requires the support of white men . Yet white men tend to stand up or speak out only to the extent that they recognize the existence of bias in their workplaces and are willing to do something about it.

In recent years, there have been many efforts to identify the best strategies for reducing prejudice in the workplace. My findings suggest that encouraging white men to reflect on their own negative experiences at work may make them more open to acknowledging the mistreatment of colleagues.

What still isn't known

I believe that it's important for scholars to look into why white men who experience harassment become better allies when their colleagues who are women or people of color are mistreated on the job. It's also worthwhile for researchers to explore whether patterns like the one I identified exist for other groups and in other contexts—including in other countries.

Provided by The Conversation

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