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According to a study by the Department of Psychology at the UCO in which 245 women participated, 98% of women suffer street harassment and 80% of them experience it on a monthly basis. The research is published in the journal Sex Roles.

Street harassment is one of the forms of Violence Against Women recognized by the UN since 2013. This type of violence involves a series of behaviors directed at women, by one or more unknown men, without communicative intent. These are behaviors featuring a sexual dimension and that seek to degrade women. Despite the adjective "street," they actually transcend streets, per se, extending to other locations like parks, shopping malls, cinemas and university halls, for example.

Given the scarcity of studies on the subject in Spain, and with the aim of ascertaining the prevalence and frequency of these behaviors, and their impact on the psychological well-being of women, researchers in the Department of Psychology Ana M. Contreras Merino, Naima Z. Farhane Medina and Rosario Castillo Mayén took an "X-ray" of the problem in the country, unifying different types of street harassment in public and semi-public places.

The study, which involved 245 women between the ages of 18 and 61, found high rates of street harassment in the country. "98% of the women surveyed had experienced some type of street harassment in their lives, 80% had experienced it on a monthly basis, and 25.7%, on a daily basis," explained researcher Naima Farhane.

Regarding the impact that these behaviors can have on women's lives, researcher Ana Contreras pointed to how "higher levels of anxiety and fear of rape are observed when these experiences of harassment are more frequent. Self-esteem also drops as a result of these experiences."

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