According to a recent survey, the sexual harassment of women in China has been on rise.
New Delhi, Feb 27/Nationalturk- In what may be not the good news for women and Chinese government, a survey has revealed that sexual harassment of women in China has been on rise.
“About half of young women in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou have reported that they noticed a rise in unwanted sexual harassment over the past three years,” revealed the survey conducted by Canton Public Opinion Research Center in Guangzhou.
Chinese newspaper Global Times quoted Liu Rongxin, project manager of the survey as saying that at least one in 10 young women admitted to having been sexually harassed in the past three years.
According to the survey, Canton Public Opinion Research Center in Guangzhou interviewed about 1,500 women 16 years old and older, and found that 37 percent of the women said there has been an increase in frequency of sexual harassment over the past three years.
“For women younger than 25, 48 percent said the rate of sexual harassment is increasing. Some 13 percent admitted that they had been victims of sexual harassments themselves,” the survey said.
It found that 65 percent of women victims said their harassers physically touched them. “Some 48 percent of the victims said the touching was severe. About 35 percent reported they were sexually harassed with words, text messages and phone calls”.
Offenders usually received minor punishment, or were let off
Liu Rongxin said the offenders usually received minor punishment or were left unpunished because it is difficult for victims to provide evidence.
“We have seen a case where a man harassed a woman on a public transit system. He took pictures of the woman secretly, and when he was exposed and brought to the police, all the pictures he took had been already deleted,” he said.
Liu called on Chinese government to consider severe punishment to better protect women from sexual harassment. “Simply separating women from men on public trains won’t solve the problem”.
Meanwhile, the Global Times newspaper quoted Guangdong Province Women’s Federation as saying 90 cases of young girls being sexually assaulted were reported in 2012. “It is up from about 80 cases in 2011”.
“Many of those girls suffered repeated sexual molestation over a long period,” Wang Biaochen, a lawyer with the women’s right protection department under the federation, told the newspaper.
She said the offenders were usually neighbors and even school teachers. “Many of the young girls are severely violated. They are too little to protect themselves, or even to be aware that it is a crime,” she added.
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Faiz Ahmad / NationalTurk China News
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