When Women Do Not Want It: Young Female Bargoers’ Experiences With and Responses to Sexual Harassment in Social Drinking Contexts

Abstract

Women frequently experience unwanted sexual touching and persistent advances at bars and parties. This study explored women's responses to these unwanted experiences through online surveys completed by 153 female bargoers (aged 19-29) randomly recruited from a bar district. More than 75% had experienced sexual touching or persistence (46% both). Most women used multiple deterrent strategies, including evasion, facial expressions, direct refusals, aggression, friends' help, and leaving the premises. Women experienced negative feelings (disrespected, violated, disgusted, angry, embarrassed), especially from incidents involving touching. Cultural change is needed to reduce substantial negative impacts of sexual harassment on women in drinking and other settings.

A Balancing Act: Agency and Constraints in University Students’ Understanding of and Responses to Sexual Violence in the Night-Time Economy

“…Hlavka (2014: 344-46) documents how women respond to aggressive sexual conduct whilst operating within a heteronormative discourse of gendered expectations of male sexual aggression. Women are required to self-protect, to avoid potentially dangerous situations by 'ignoring' behaviour or manoeuvering to evade attention without provoking retaliation, as documented elsewhere in scholarship on intoxication and sexual violence in the NTE (Ronen 2010;Brooks 2011;Graham et al 2017). In Katz's (2004) formulation of agency, such behaviour would be characterised as creative strategies-or even merely ephemeral tactics (Certeau 1984) -through which women can gain a sense of control over their personal space, though in ways that do little to challenge particular behaviour as problematic or disrupt the gendered hierarchies and constructions of femininities/masculinities within these spaces.…”

“…Based on women students' accounts of sexual violence in bars and nightclubs, Phipps and Young (2012) highlight how 'lad culture' within these spaces limits women's freedom and safety. Everyday forms of sexual violence, such as 'microaggressions' (Sue 2010) entailing nonconsensual sexual attention and sexual harassment, are particularly common experiences for women and girls in various contexts (Girlguiding 2017;Vera-Gray 2016), including the night-time economy (NTE hereafter) (Kavanaugh 2013;Ronen 2010;Graham et al 2017). While the gendered construction of women's intoxication, as well as the prevalence and impact of sexual violence in student communities has been the focus of a growing body of scholarship, there is much less exploration in the UK context of young people's experiences of such violence within the NTE (for exceptions, see Gunby et al 2019;Nicholls 2018).…”

Not without my mobile phone: alcohol binge drinking, gender violence and technology in the Spanish culture of intoxication

“…Studies on the relation between drinking and sexual victimisation, such as that by Graham, Bernards, Abbey, Dumas and Wells (2017), have shown how girls and women are subjected to groping and pressuring to have sex in bars and parties. In their sample, more than 75% of the girls and women who frequent bars had experienced sexual touching or persistence (46% both).…”

Acoso sexual juvenil en los espacios de ocio nocturno: Doble vulnerabilidad femenina.

“…o Canadá revelan una incidencia alta de victimización; el 83% de las estudiantes universitarias estadounidenses según la Asociación Americana de Mujeres Universitarias (AAUW, 2011; Hill y Kearl, 2011) y el 77% de las chicas suecas encuestadas habían sufrido acoso sexual (Witkowska y Kjellberg, 2005). Además, el 87% decían que habían padecido secuelas y efectos negativos estresantes tras ser acosadas (AAUW, 2011;Graham et al, 2017). La mayor parte de los incidentes de acoso son verbales -con comentarios sexuales, chistes y gestos-, el 30% de estas acciones son ciberacoso a través de correo electrónico, Facebook y otros medios electrónicos.…”

“…Ellas desarrollan desde la adolescencia una serie de estrategias de protección para evitar los riesgos de estos contextos y lugares. Kathryn Graham, en su estudio sobre jóvenes en entornos de ocio, constata que más del 75% de las chicas habían sufrido tocamientos y avances persistentes en bares y fiestas (Graham et al, 2017).…”