Socio-psychological Implications of Public Harassment for Women in the Capital City of Islamabad

Abstract

The study explores the phenomenon of street harassment and its socio-psychological implications on women living in the capital city of Islamabad, Pakistan. Street harassment represents a form of gender violence that violates human dignity by making the female victims feel vulnerable and insecure in public spaces. The findings have been compiled on the basis of empirical analyses of the views of 200 female students from eight different universities of Islamabad, Pakistan. The study reveals that objectification, street harassment and abuse are incontrovertible parts of women’s lives in Pakistan. Despite constituting more than half of the population in the Pakistan, women continue to live in a patriarchal milieu that thrives on harassment, discrimination and oppression against them in both public and private spheres. The study concludes that the menace of street harassment entails devastating emotional, physical and psychological impacts and recommends that policy interventions be undertaken to curb this heinous act perpetrated against women.

Mapping Activist Responses and Policy Advocacy for Street Harassment: Current Practice and Future Directions

“…Typologically, street harassment has been approached in diverse ways in research to date. Most commonly, street harassment refers to actions such as catcalling, wolf-whistling, car horn honking, following someone, staring/leering, prolonged unwanted conversation and sexual innuendo (Ahmad et al 2020;Bowman 1993;Johnson and Bennett 2015;Logan 2015). However, some studies include behaviours reflecting legal definitions of sexual assault or rape (see Logan 2015).…”

“…Frequency of harassment also varies according to the type of behaviour at hand, with seemingly less serious iterations of harassment-such as staring, wolf-whistling and verbal comments-the most commonly encountered (Ahmad et al 2020;Davidson et al 2016;Johnson and Bennett 2015;Stop Street Harassment 2014). This is noteworthy, given that these mundane manifestations of harassment are the least likely, and most difficult, to be captured through criminal legislation and other responses.…”

Relationship between sexual harassment at workplace and subjective well-being among working women in South Punjab, Pakistan

“…The phenomenon of SHW is associated with certain socio psychological consequences of longterm nature such as losing one's self esteem (Ahmad et al, 2020;Muazzam et al, 2016). The SHW results in decreased job satisfaction and is positively associated with psychological distress which further leads to decreased psychological well-being (Hashmi et al, 2013) and decreased overall happiness in working women (Quick & McFadyen, 2017).…”

“…On the other hand, those working women who take up some courage and discuss the issue of SH receive negative responses from their family members and unsatisfactory response from higher legal authorities. (Yasmin, 2018) even the police suppress and harass the woman who reports such matters (Abbas, 2011;Mustafa, 2017), though the "Me too" movement has penetrated little in Pakistani society (Ahmad et al, 2020), yet, the culture of Pakistani society is traditionally indoctrinated to remain silent about issue of SH against women (Muazzam et al, 2016).…”

Development of Street Harassment Scale for Women in Universities

“…It is not wrong to say that street harassment is part of gender-based violence, as it targets the women population by making them feel unsafe in public spaces. These harassing behaviours negatively impact women in psychological, emotional, and behavioural ways (Ahmad, Ahmad, & Masood, 2020). It is commonly seen that we tend to assume that since literature is not available on street harassment, thus, occurrence is also low which is not true (Ali & Naz, 2016).…”