Nearly two out of three people say they have experienced street harassment in Montreal during the year 2020-2021, according to a survey of more than 3,300 people by researchers from several Quebec universities, including The duty got a copy.
“It’s very high,” says Isabelle Courcy. And since there were confinements during this period, these figures “underestimate what we would have found pre-pandemic or post-pandemic”, suggests the professor in the Department of Sociology at the Université́ de Montréal and associate professor at the Department of Sociology of the University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM).
Street harassment consists of “any intrusive, insistent and unsolicited words, attitudes or behaviors perpetrated by strangers in public places”, explains the report. “It’s really part of a continuum of violence that can be trivialized, which can be perceived as ordinary, going to violence that is criminalized,” says Ms.me Courcy.
“There is no very rigid or legal definition of street harassment”, continues Isabelle Courcy. If we often think of harassment of a sexual nature, it also concerns racial, gender, ageist discrimination or discrimination affecting people with disabilities.
Nearly 69% of cisgender women (female assigned at birth) who responded to the survey say they have experienced street harassment in the past year (2020-2021). The proportion is 61.2% among cisgender men.
For people from gender diversity, this proportion rises to nearly 84%. And among racialized or Indigenous people, it’s 76.7%. Nearly 7 in 10 people said they had been stalked mostly by adult men.
Isabelle Courcy conducted this research with Mélissa Blais, associate professor in the Department of Social Sciences at the Université́ du Québec en Outaouais and at the Institute for Research and Feminist Studies at UQAM, and Catherine Lavoie Mongrain, doctoral candidate in sociology at UQAM.
In 66% of the cases, the harassment took place in the street, on a sidewalk, in a parking lot or in a park. It happened at all hours of the day, contrary to what one might think.
No help was offered to people harassed by witnesses of the facts, relatives or strangers, in 53% of cases.
It is necessary to equip the witnesses so that they can react, argues Audrey Simard, community organizer of the Center for Education and Women’s Action, partner in the research. “Don’t waste your energy necessarily confronting the harasser. The idea is to go with what you feel, there is no right or wrong answer. The idea is to react, period. »
Difficult to denounce
According to the study, less than one in ten people have reported the facts or filed a complaint after having suffered street harassment in Montreal. Several respondents said they were afraid of not being believed or of not being taken seriously. Respondents said they thought “it wasn’t bad enough,” says Ms.me Courcy.
The system must also be able to receive denunciations from harassed people, deplores Audrey Simard. The message sent to women is to “expose, denounce, denounce. The eradication of the problem depends on you, because you do not denounce enough. But when you denounce, you are not taken seriously. »
The report also recommends that the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM) “keep a statistical register of complaints, including those closed without further action”.
It is also important to train “the people who are in the front row”, such as the employees of the Société de transport de Montréal (STM), according to Ms.me Simard.
“Often, women go to report to people who are at the metro ticket office. […] They are told: there is nothing to be done. Without being malicious, these employees are part of a society that trivializes street harassment, she notes.
For its part, the STM recognizes that street harassment is “a major social problem […] We are aware that we have work to do,” writes Katherine Roux Groleau, spokesperson for the STM.
“Collective Consciousness”
For the mayoress of Montreal, Valérie Plante, street harassment “is a reality that has been trivialized for too long”. This report is an “important tool for raising collective awareness”, she says to the To have tothrough its attaché.
Audrey Simard challenges politicians in the election campaign to find out what means they intend to take “to hear the voices of the people who had the courage to speak to us in this survey”.
She wants the leader of the Coalition avenir Québec, François Legault, to speak out on street harassment. “Me, I would like that, to hear it […] on the impacts that it can also have on young people in the long term. »
The survey was conducted by both telephone and web-based panels.