Crouch, Margaret A. “Sexual Harassment in Public Places.

” In Social Philosophy Today,

vol. 25, edited by John Rowan. Philosophy Documentation Center, 2009.

Introduction
Most current writing on sexual harassment in the United States is solely about sexual
harassment in the workplace and/or in academe. This is because sexual harassment has been
found illegal in these locations, and the law tends to narrow our focus. However, in spite of the
fact that even definitions proffered by international organizations such as the United Nations and
the European Union define sexual harassment in terms of the workplace, sexual harassment
should be understood much more broadly—as something that can occur anywhere, at any time.
In countries other than the United States, more attention has been paid to sexual harassment in
public places--on public transportation, and in the street.
In my view, the separation of workplace/academic harassment from the broader scope of
sexual harassment tends to obscure the function and effect of all harassment—to keep women in
their place. Sexual harassment is a means of maintaining women’s status as subordinate in
society; it is also a means of keeping women in certain physical spaces and out others, or, at
least, of controlling women’s behavior in those spaces. In this way, sexual harassment
constrains women’s freedom of movement both in terms of status and place. Here, I will focus
on the latter, but lack of freedom in movement in space causes lack of freedom of movement in
status.
In this paper, I will argue that workplace and academic harassment must be placed in the
context of this broader understanding of sexual harassment to see its true nature. Women’s full
participation in public and private life requires that all forms of harassment be eliminated,
through law, public awareness, and moral suasion. However, as in the case of workplace sexual
harassment, there are always at least two competing discourses in talk about sexual harassment—
a feminist and a traditionalist. None of the means of eliminating sexual harassment guarantees
that either the offending behavior or the reasons for its elimination will be understood from a
feminist perspective; however, this is necessary for the elimination of the subordination of
women.
I
I recently had the opportunity to review the material written on sexual harassment in the
U.S. since the publication of my book in 2001.1 What I found was that nearly everything is
narrowly focused on workplace or academic harassment, and that much of the scholarly material
is focused on employer liability and other legal technicalities. In my research on the development
of sexual harassment law internationally, I find that the U.S. has set the standard, and that
international bodies concerned with gender equality —such as the United Nations2 and the
European Union3-- have developed definitions of sexual harassment that apply only to
workplaces and academe. 4
The conceptualization of sexual harassment by the EEOC in the U.S., by the EU, and by
the UN--are limited to the workplace. The EU and UN require that member states enact
legislation to address workplace harassment, but not harassment in other venues. The UN does
require member states to work toward the eradication of gendered-violence, and defines sexual
harassment in the workplace as a form of gendered violence, so there is room for the UN to
demand that something be done about forms of sexual harassment other than workplace
harassment. But, thus far, the UN has not done so.
 2

Both the U.N. and the E.U. categorize sexual harassment as a form of sex discrimination,
which comes directly from the U.S. legal argument that sexual harassment in the workplace is a
violation of Title VII. It may be because we don’t have a clear legal conception of sex
discrimination outside workplaces or academe that efforts to stop sexual harassment are focused
on the workplace, thought the Violence against Women Act does conceive of spousal battering,
date rape and marital rape as sex discrimination.5 However, sexual harassment in public places
has existed as long as workplace harassment, is a form of sex discrimination, and is being
addressed as such by women around the world.
II
There has been some discussion of public sexual harassment in the U.S., particularly that
part of it called ‘street harassment’.6 Sociological studies call attention to the differences,
generally, in women’s and men’s experiences of public space. Erving Goffman described these
differences in his sociological works in the 1960s and 1970s.7 He claimed that there is a sort of
default mode called “civic inattention” that characterizes relations between strangers in public
places. People tend not to stare at one another, or to talk to strangers in public. They are aware of
their surroundings, but don’t intrude on one another unless there is some particular reason to do
so. This “civic inattention” holds generally among men and among women, but not between men
and women. In sexist societies, men treat women as so-called “open persons,” that is, as persons
for whom there is so little regard that they may be approached and intruded upon at will.8
According to Cynthia Grant Bowman,
Breaches of civil inattention that include a spoken component typically occur only when
one encounters a person who is either very unusual (such as an individual carrying a
couch, hopping on one foot, or dressed in costume) or unusually similar to oneself in
some respect (for example, someone wearing the same college sweatshirt or driving the
same make of car), or who is accompanied by someone or something in an "open"
category, such as dogs or children. Men seem to regard women generally as such "open
persons."9
A good deal of the intrusion on women’s attention and space in public places comes in
the form of sexual harassment. It includes comments on their bodies or on their presence in the
public space, unwanted touching, and lewd gestures.10 This form of sexual harassment has some
characteristics that distinguish it from the type that is typical in workplaces and academe: it is
typically between strangers, and because of this, the harasser is usually anonymous. 11
Many think that the sort of behavior I am describing is insignificant, or even flattering.
However, that is not how the majority of women around the world experience it. It is
experienced as aggressive, as a violation of the “civil inattention” that is the norm in public
space. The woman is made to pay attention to the harasser and to see herself as he sees her. If she
does not respond appropriately, in the view of the harasser, she is often the target of abuse and
hostility. Frequently, a nice response leads to further harassment. A dismissal might escalate the
situation. Infrequently, such encounters lead to stalking, even rape. But the amount of wariness
with which a woman experiences harassment is due to the fact that she cannot predict whether
this instance is likely to end badly.
Even in Paris, where so-called “girl-watching” is supposed to be a national past time, women
organize their lives to avoid being alone in public where they know they will be harassed.12 And
avoidance is the most common response to harassment in public places. The avoidance is
motivated by fear, for, in the experience of many women, there is a direct connection between
public harassment that most people would regard as innocuous and truly threatening behavior.
 3

Even though there is evidence that women are more likely to be the victims of violence from
intimates than from strangers, the unpredictability of stranger violence makes every encounter
threatening.13
Public harassment of women by men asserts the male prerogative, what Marilyn Frye called
the “Patriarchal Imperative”: “males must have access to women.”14 Frye holds that this is true
in both the public and the private spheres. In an account of the so-called public/private split,
Killian claims that, “publicity and privacy are not characteristics of space. Rather, they are
expressions of power relationships in space and, hence, both exist in every space.” (Killian,
116)15 According to Killian, privacy is the power to exclude, and publicity the power of access.
In any social interaction, both are at play. While one group may experience a given space as
private, another may experience it as public. In so-called public spaces, men of the dominant
group are in a public space, but many other groups are not. Men of the dominant group have the
power of access to the space and to anything in the space; they also have the power to exclude
others from their personal or private space while in public. Women and other nondominant
groups do not share these same powers of exclusion and access.
Though we must be careful in investigations such at this one to preserve cultural
differences in talking about the experiences of women across the globe, my reading on the topic
of public harassment reinforces certain similarities. For example, in most cultures, women
experience public harassment as something to be feared and avoided. In their report on a survey
on public harassment in Egypt, the Egyptian Center for Women's Rights wrote that,
Sexual harassment may not always be intended as violence by harassers, but more often
than not women feel it as a violent and aggressive act that threatens their mental and
physical safety.16
Many women all over the world report that when they do not respond to even verbal
street harassment in the way desired by the harasser, especially if they show anger, the harasser
often becomes overtly hostile and abusive. This can be understood as the harasser’s attempt to
regain dominance. The original harassment came from a place of dominance and displayed
dominance. A woman’s rejection, especially an angry one, asserts her equality. Dominance is
once more achieved if the harasser threatens or abuses, causing fear in the target. Women’s fear
of sexual assault makes them especially sensitive to such threats.
Also, women all over the world tend to blame themselves for the harassment. I find this
particularly interesting, since this seems to be common across cultures considered modern and
traditional.
From the perspective of traditional views of gender, a woman is not harassed unless she
is doing something wrong. The very fact of her harassment is an indication that she has violated
some norm of gendered behavior. Traditional frameworks distinguish women into good women
and bad women. Good women are obedient wives and dutiful daughters. In India, for example,
good women are self-effacing, self-denying, and see their lives primarily in terms of service to
others.17 Women “carry the burden of ‘honor’ and ‘shame’ for their families and communities.”18
Bad women are those who disobey, or who have no male protection, or who go places where
women are not supposed to go. Both good and bad women are controlled by a variety of tactics.
Sometimes they are killed for their transgressions. Sometimes they are beaten by their male
relatives. Those women who by choice, or because of lack of choice, end up in spaces where
they are not meant to be are harassed. These spaces can be on the street, in the office, at school,
on public transportation—just about anywhere.
 4

Now, interestingly, there is evidence that in the West, women who violate the traditional
view of women’s place are more likely to be harassed. According to Jennifer Berdahl, “women
who violate feminine ideals are most likely to be sexually harassed in their social and working
lives.” 19 This suggests that no matter how modern or traditional the culture, women are governed
by certain norms, and harassment is one of the methods for keeping them in line.
The effects of this unequal treatment vary among cultures, but, again, there are striking
similarities. In India, some women curtail their university experience in order to avoid
harassment. They do not participate in evening activities, because they cannot be assured of safe
transport home. The fact of public harassment literally prevents equal access to public goods. In
the U.S., women report altering their behavior dramatically to avoid public harassment—from
not taking public transportation to changing jobs.
The West may think that they have overcome the traditional framework of women’s
sexual virtue, but we can see evidence of it in what judges and lawmakers say, and in what
everyday people do. For example, in surveys of people about street harassment, some men
express their disapproval of such harassment, but they do it in terms suggestive of chivalry.
However, the logic of chivalry, like the logic of the traditional view of women, only protects
certain women, and only under certain conditions. It protects (some) women who behave as they
are supposed to. Precisely what this means differs from locale to locale, but the consequences for
women’s lives are depressingly similar.
III
Legal scholars who write on public harassment often review laws that might be used to
combat it. These may be criminal laws or torts. For example, Cynthia Grant Bowman mentions
criminal assault and civil assault as possibilities, and it seems that some cases could be litigated
using such laws.20 However, these remedies are not ideal, for they do not force the recognition
that public harassment discriminates against women and restricts their freedom of movement.
They are perfectly consistent with traditional views of women. As Bowman points out,
Some women have succeeded in fitting their experiences of harassment in to the mold of
assault, both criminal and civil. These successes, however, were grounded in an ideology
of gender inequality and protection for the ‘weaker’ and ‘more delicate’ sex—at least
when the woman accosted was either a virgin or married.21
The same thing is true in other countries. For example, Turkey’s reform of the Penal Code,
effective in 2005, included a statute against sexual harassment that is not limited to the
workplace or academe. However, the law makes no mention of gender, and so can be interpreted
consistently with traditional views of women as either deserving or not deserving of male
protection.22 Discussions of street harassment—called “eve-teasing”--in India often make
mention of several statutes that might be used, but, again, these are couched in traditional terms.
For example,
Indian Penal Code (IPC)

 Section 209: Obscene acts and songs, to the annoyance of others like:
a) does any obscene act in any public place or
b) sings, recites or utters any obscene song, ballad or words in or near any public
place.
Punishment: Imprisonment for a term up to 3 months or fine, or both. (Cognisable,
bailable and triable offense)
 5

 Section 354: Assault or use of criminal force on a woman with intent to outrage her
modesty.
Punishment: 2 years imprisonment or fine, or both
 Section 376: Rape
Punishment: Imprisonment for life or 10 years and fine
 Section 509: Uttering any word or making any gesture intended to insult the modesty
of a woman
Punishment: Imprisonment for 1 year, or fine, or both. (Cognisable and bailable
offense) 23

Egypt has similar laws in its Penal Code:

Section Four: Public Exposure & Corruption of Morals
Article 278: Anyone who commits a public obscenity offending the modesty of a woman
shall be punished either by imprisonment of up to one year or a fine not more than
300LE.
Section Seven: Slander & Divulging the Secrets
Article 306: Any person offending the modesty of a woman, whether verbally or
physically, shall be punished either by imprisonment of up to one year or a fine that not
less than 200LE and not more than 1000LE, or both.
In cases where the modesty of a woman is offended via telephone, the author shall be
punished either by imprisonment of up to one year or a fine not less than 200LE and not
more than 1000LE, or both.
If the author of the crime commits the same type of crime within one year of the sentence
date of the first crime, the offender will be punished with imprisonment or a fine at least
500LE and not much than 3000LE or both the punishment. 24
Using such laws does not empower women. It reinforces traditional views of women, and the
laws will only be enforced on behalf of women who abide by traditional norms. Such laws say,
in effect, “The state will protect you, but only if you obey the restrictions we put on your
movement.” Such conditional protection does not empower women.
IV
What to do? If women are to be equal to men in all spheres of society, the harassment of
which I have been speaking must be eliminated. But how should this be done?
Whatever is done must be accompanied by advocacy that keeps the focus on sex
discrimination rather than affronts to modesty, or chivalric protection. There are some grassroots
organizations that have sprung up using the internet to publicize the harms of public harassment,
such as Holla Back, which started in New York, but which now has chapters all over the world in
large urban centers. Women who are harassed take photographs of harassers and post them on
the internet for all to see.25 In India, the Blank Noise Project stages public protests to educate
people about public harassment. For example, a large group went to a market where men stood
around leaning on a railing looking at passersby and harassing women. The women reclaimed
the space, and silently surrounded a fellow who was harassing a woman. Blank Noise uses its
internet to publicize actions and to fight traditional interpretations of street harassment. For
example, in order to counter the view that women bring on harassment themselves by wearing
skimpy clothing, Blank Noise asked women to send in the clothes they were wearing when they
were harassed. They included chadors and traditional clothing, as well as western garb.26
 6

Some governments have instituted women-only transportation in order to protect women

from harassment on public transportation. India has had train cars reserved for women since
before independence. Tokyo began reserving train cars for women during rush hour recently, as
did Rio de Janeiro. Mexico City started women-only busses in February of this year.
Now women-only transportation does protect women from groping, which is one of the
primary forms of harassment on public transportation. However, of the pushes for women-only
transportation that I have read about, none was instituted by feminists. The motivation seemed to
come from within traditional perspectives on women’s sexual modesty and virtue. In fact, the
sex-segregated trains in Rio were protested by women’s groups because the department in the
government responsible for women’s issues was not consulted.27
While I don’t have a solution to the problem of what to do, I am thinking about the
extension of the concept of sex discrimination in U.S. law represented by the Violence against
Women Act. As Sally Goldfarb points out, MacKinnon argued successfully that sexual
harassment in the workplace and academe was sex discrimination under Title VII and Title IX,
and the Violence against Women Act extended the legal conception of sex discrimination to the
private sphere, in its recognition of date rape, spousal battery, and marital rape as sex
discrimination. Perhaps what we need now is to bring sex discrimination to public space, not just
the marketplace. We might be able to do that by arguing that street harassment falls under the
Violence against Women Act, which according to Goldfarb created a “civil right to be free from
gender-motivated violence—a right not limited to employment or education, and not limited to
state action.”28 However, the civil rights remedy of the Violence against Women Act was ruled
unconstitutional.29 The reasoning in that ruling would allow states to enact similar legislation, but
no state has done so.
Law, alone, is not enough, however. Furthermore, the nature of public harassment—that
it is between strangers and that the harasser is often anonymous—makes it difficult to prosecute.
And, unless police and the judiciary recognize public harassment as sex discrimination, they are
unlikely to treat instances of public harassment as anything more than what a woman who dares
show herself in public is due.
For now, I want to emphasize the importance of recognizing that harassment can take
place anywhere and is not confined to the workplace and academe. We need to remember this
larger context in order to see sexual harassment for what it really is: a means of maintaining
women’s status as subordinate in society; it is also a means of keeping women in certain
physical spaces and out others, or, at least, of controlling women’s behavior in those spaces.
1
Margaret A. Crouch, Thinking about Sexual Harassment: A Guide for the Perplexed (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2001).
2
United Nations, Convention on the Elimination of All Discrimination Against Women, General
Recommendation 19 (1992). Accessed June 27, 2008.
<http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw/recommendations/recomm.htm#recom19>

The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW)
General Recommendation No. 19 (1992) is entitled “Violence against Women.” CEDAW
conceptualized violence against women as a form of sex discrimination. Article 11 of this
Recommendation defines sexual harassment as:

17. Equality in employment can be seriously impaired when women are subjected to gender-
specific violence, such as sexual harassment in the workplace.

18. Sexual harassment includes such unwelcome sexually determined behaviour as physical
contact and advances, sexually coloured remarks, showing pornography and sexual demand,
whether by words or actions. Such conduct can be humiliating and may constitute a health and
safety problem; it is discriminatory when the woman has reasonable grounds to believe that her
objection would disadvantage her in connection with her employment, including recruitment or
promotion, or when it creates a hostile working environment.
3
Directive 2006/54/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 5 July 2006 on the
implementation of the principle of equal opportunities and equal treatment of men and women in
matters of employment and occupation (recast). Article 26 states:

Member States shall encourage, in accordance with national law, collective agreements or
practice, employers and those responsible for access to vocational training to take effective
measures to prevent all forms of discrimination on grounds of sex, in particular harassment and
sexual harassment in the workplace, in access to employment, vocational training and
promotion.

Article 2 of Directive 2006/54/EC includes these same definitions of harassment and sexual harassment
and emphasizes that sexual harassment and harassment are prohibited not only in the workplace, but
“in access to employment, vocational training and promotion.”
4
Directive 2002/73/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 September 2002 amending
Council Directive 76/207/EEC on the implementation of the principle of equal treatment for men and
women as regards access to employment, vocational training and promotion, and working conditions.
The European Union (EU) amended its 1976 Equal Treatment Directive in 2002 to include the
requirement that all member states enact legislation prohibiting sexual harassment by 2005. In 2006,
the EU enacted Directive 2006/54/EC, which recasts Directive 76/207/EEC and several other directives
concerning the equal treatment of men and women in employment. All member states are required to
include a definition of sexual harassment in their national legislation by 2008.

Directive 2002/73/EC distinguishes between harassment and sexual harassment in Article 2:

— harassment: where an unwanted conduct related to the sex of a person occurs with the
purpose or effect of violating the dignity of a person, and of creating an intimidating, hostile,
 degrading, humiliating or offensive environment,

— sexual harassment: where any form of unwanted verbal, non-verbal or physical conduct of a
sexual nature occurs, with the purpose or effect of violating the dignity of a person, in
particular when creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive
environment.

Article 3 explicitly categorizes both as forms of sex discrimination:

Harassment and sexual harassment within the meaning of this Directive shall be deemed to be
discrimination on the grounds of sex and therefore prohibited.
5
Sally F. Goldfarb, “Public Rights for ‘Private’ Wrongs: Sexual Harassment and the Violence against
Women Act,” in Directions in Sexual Harassment Law, eds. Catharine A. MacKinnon and Reva B.
Siegel (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 516-534.
6
Deborah M. Thompson, “’The Woman in the Street:’ Reclaiming the Public Space from Sexual
Harassment,” Yale Journal of Law and Feminism 6 (1994): 313-348; Cynthia Grant Bowman, “Street
Harassment and the Informal Ghettoization of Women,” Harvard Law Review 106 (1993): 517-580;
Deirdre E. Davis, “The Harm that Has No Name: Street Harassment, Embodiment, and African
American Women,”in Gender Struggles: Practical Approaches to Contemporary Feminism, eds.
Constance L. Mui and Julien S. Murphy (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002), 214-255; Robin
L. West, “The Difference in Women’s Hedonic Lives: A Phenomenological Critique of Feminist Legal
Theory,” Wisconsin Women’s Law Journal 3 (1987): 81-145; Deborah Tuerkheimer, “Street
Harassment as Sexual Subordination: The Phenomenology of Gender Specific Harm,” Wisconsin
Women’s Law Journal 12 (1997): 167-206; Carol Brooks Gardner, Passing By: Gender and Public
Harassment (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1995); Olatokunbo Olukemi Laniya,
“Street Smut: Gender, Media, and the Legal Power Dynamics of Street Harassment, or ‘Hey Sexy’ and
Other Verbal Ejaculations,” Columbia Journal of Gender and Law 14 (2005): 91-130; Elizabeth
Arveda Kissling, “Street Harassment: The Language of Sexual Terrorism,” Discourse Society 2 (1991):
451-460.
7
Erving Goffman, Behavior in Public Places (New York: Free Press, 1963); Erving Goffman,
Interaction Rituals (New York: Pantheon, 1967).
8
Goffman, 1963, 18.
9
Bowman, 526.

Elizabeth Arveda Kissling and Cheris Kramarae, “Stranger Compliments: The Interpretation of Street
10

Remarks,” Women’s Studies in Communication 14, no. 1 (1991): 76.

11
Bowman holds the defining characteristics of street harassment to be the following:

1. the targets are female

2. the harassers are male

3. the harassers are unacquainted with their targets

 4. the encounter is face to face

5. the forum is a public one, such as a street, sidewalk, bus, bus station, taxi or other place to
which the public generally has access

the content of the speech, if any, is not intended as public discourse; aimed at individual and
objectively degrading, objectifying, humiliating, often threatening (Bowman, 523-4)

Stephanie Condon, Marylene Lieber, and Florence Maillochon, “Feeling Unsafe in Public Places:
12

Understanding Women’s Fears,” Revue francaise de sociologie 48, Supplement (2007): 101-128.
13
Rachel Pain, “Gender, Race, Age, and Fear in the City,” Urban Studies 38, nos. 5-6 (2001): 899-903.

Marilyn Frye, “Some Reflections on Separatism and Power,” in her The Politics of Reality: Essays in
14

Feminist Theory (Freedom, CA: The Crossing Press, 1983), 103.

15
Ted Kilian, “Public and Private, Power and Space,” in Philosophy and Geography II: The Production
of Public Space, eds. Andrew Light and Jonathan M. Smith (Lanham, MD: Rowman and LIttlefield,
Inc., 1998), 115-134.
16
Egyptian Center for Women's Rights, “Making Our Streets Safe for Everyone,” 2006.
17
Kanchan Mathur, “Body as Site, Body as Space: Bodily Integrity and Women’s Empowerment in
India,” IDSJ Working Paper, June 2007, 2.
18
Mathur, 3.
19
Jennifer L. Berdahl, “The Sexual Harassment of Uppity Women,” Journal of Applied Psychology 92,
no. 2 (2007): 425-437. “These studies provide the first systematic evidence that women who violate
feminine ideals are most likely to be sexually harassed in their social and working lives.” (434)
20
Cynthia Grant Bowman, criminal assault = “A person commits assault when, without lawful
authority, he engages in conduct which places another in reasonable apprehension of receiving a
battery.” (549)

sue for assault as a civil law tort =

An actor is subject to liability to another for assault if

(a) he acts intending to cause a harmful or offensive contact with the person of the other or a
third person, or an imminent apprehension of such contact, and

(b) the other is thereby put in such an imminent apprehension. (549)

21
Bowman, 550.
22
According to Article 105 of the Penal Code,

1. One who harass [sic] someone sexually, will be sentenced to prison terms of three months to
two years or fined, by the petition of aggrevied [sic] party.
 Article 102 of the Penal Code, entitled Sexual Assault, is also relevant. This law was used in
reference to the events in Taksim Square on New Year’s Eve.

ARTICLE 102– (1) The perpetrator who violates the physical integrity of another person by
means of sexual conduct shall be imprisoned for a term of two to seven years upon the
complaint of the victim.

Safe Delhi. Accessed December 27, 2007.

23

<http://safedelhi.jagori.org/deal-with-sexual-harassment/legal-information/>
24
Egyptian Center for Women's Rights, “Making Our Streets Safe for Everyone,” 2006.
25
Holla Back. Accessed September 11, 2008. < http://www.hollabacknyc.blogspot.com>
26
Blank Noise. Accessed September 11, 2008. < http://blog.blanknoise.org>
27
Suzy Khimm, “Warning: No-Groping Zone.” Alternet. May 3, 2006. Accessed September 11, 2008.
< http://www.alternet.org/story/35753/?page=2>
28
Goldfarb, 524-5.
29
United States v. Morrison, 529 U.S. 598 (2000). The court found that the civil rights remedy was “an
unconstitutional exercise of congressional power.” (Goldfarb, 527) The Supreme Court held that
“gender-motivated crimes of violence are not, in any sense of the phrase, economic activity…” and so
that Congress had no constitutional right under the Commerce Clause. With regard to the 14th
Amendment, the Supreme Court argued that “section 5 confers power on Congress to regulate only
state action, not private conduct.” (Goldfarb, 527)