Catcalling negatively impacts how women think about themselves, finds study

For most women, being catcalled on the street has become an unfortunate part of every day life.

But, ask the ‘bros’ on social media and women are just imagining it, asking for it or should even feel lucky.

While critics and nescient lads alike could argue that these cases are rare, a new study is helping to prove otherwise.

Published in the British Journal of Social Psychology, research by the University of Melbourne in Australia is thought to be the first of its kind to capture just how common sexual harassment is in the lives of women and to show the possible impact this can have on how women think about themselves.

The study saw 81 women, with an average age of 22, first asked to complete a number of surveys, which measured their self-esteem and personality. They were also shown examples of different forms of objectification including gazes and comments.

Then, over the course of a week these women responded to questions via an app they had downloaded to their phone. In total, three questions were sent, 10 times a day, at random intervals between 10am and midnight.

The questions included whether they’d been thinking about how they look to other people, if they had been target by any sexually objectifying events, and if they had witnessed anyone else being targeted by these behaviors. This final questions also included an extra option of “media image/video,” so it could capture sexual objectification in the media.

Shockingly, the results found that women reported being the target of a sexually objectifying event once every two days.

55 per cent of these events consisted of a gaze, 11 per cent were cat calls or wolf whistles, ten per cent were sexual remarks and four per cent were touching or fondling.

The women also reported witnessing sexual objectification of another women on average 1.35 times a day. Unsurprisingly, two thirds of these instances had been portrayed in the media but there were many occasions of other women experiencing this in real life.

Perhaps the most startling discovery though was that both being personally targeted or witnessing others being objectified was associated with a “substantial increase” in “self-objectification”, proving that these instances of sexual harassment can have a negative impact on the way women think about themselves.

While the study accepts that there are some limitations in its research – people’s perceptions of what ‘objectifying’ means and the fact that they couldn’t distinguish if the person doing the objectifying was male or female – the findings are undisputable.

For women, not just in Melbourne but all over the world, this kind of sexual harassment is very real.