Young Australian Women Feel Less Safe On The Street Than Before The Pandemic

One in five young women feel less safe on the streets and in public spaces since the pandemic started, according to a new survey on Thursday.

— Content Warning: This article discusses sexual assault and harassment. — 

Gender equality charity Plan International sampled nearly 500 Australian women aged 18-24 across cities and regional areas, releasing their findings during International Anti-Street Harassment week.

Those surveyed said that the threat of sexual harassment, as well as hearing bad stories from friends and others, played a large role in their responses. The data also found that one in three young women with a disability reported feeling less safe in the last two years as well.

Essential Workers At Risk

“From leering, flashing, catcalls, and sexist slurs, to groping, stalking, assault, and rape — the reality is that the overwhelming majority of women and gender diverse people will face gender-based street harassment in their lives,” said Plan International Australia’s CEO Susanne Legena in a statement.

She said that the halting impact of COVID-19 and its subsequent lockdowns, should have given rise to safer outdoor engagement with the restrictions in place, but only led to fewer bystanders intervening in dangerous situations.

“The empty streets left the people who are some of the most at risk in our community to street harassment and abuse even more exposed and vulnerable — essential workers such as nurses and childcare workers, many of whom are women and migrants who had to continue to work day in, day out,” she said.

It’s corroborated with a similar study by advocacy group It’s Not A Compliment last year, that noted an overall decline in incidents of street harassment during lockdown — except towards Asian women, who copped more racial harassment in public instead.

Post-Lockdown World

Things haven’t gotten much better since COVID enforcements were lifted either. On October 11, 2021, Sydney eased out of a months-long lockdown, but just two days later, a 20-year-old woman was allegedly sexually assaulted at a pub in the Eastern Suburbs.

Plan International youth advocate Ruvimbo Togara said experiences of unsolicited comments, behaviours, and actions from strangers haven’t gotten any better of late. “I get the sense that all of this has emboldened perpetrators of violence — I feel like the street harassment I now experience is more aggressive, more brazen. It’s really chilling,” she said.

“As we began to ease out of pandemic life, I decided to take up my hobby of running again — I find it cathartic and it really frees my mind,” a 25-year-old from Melbourne who wishes to stay anonymous said to Junkee. “I still had some anxiety around being alone in public, so I made sure I only exercised alone when it was light, during the day.”

“Unfortunately, a few weeks ago I was jogging in a nearby park in the morning and was grabbed and assaulted from behind. I managed to escape and report the incident, but it has shaken me tremendously,” she said, having reported the incident, and the perpetrator being charged by police. “I’m still having a really tough time processing what happened to me.”

Criminologist and University of Melbourne researcher Dr Bianca Fileborn told the ABC the formal structures in place to prevent harassment don’t always protect young women because not all threats are illegal in the eyes of the law, and often happen too quickly to process in real time.

She said victim-survivors would like to see change enacted from the inside — by addressing power inequality, and gender-based violence. “They really wanted other men to be calling their mates out on their behaviour as well. And I think that was seen as being potentially more influential or powerful than having a random stranger intervene,” said Fileborn.