79% of women in India have experienced some form of harassment: ActionAid UK report

NEW DELHI: Nearly four of five women (79%) in India have experienced some form of harassment or violence in public and a third groped or touched in public (39%), according to a

ActionAid UK

report released on Friday on occasion of the International Safe Cities for Women Day.

India is third among four countries surveyed which includes UK, Thailand and Brazil.

The

YouGov poll

surveyed 2,500 women aged 16 and over in major cities across India, Brazil, Thailand and the UK, found that in India 84% of the women who experienced harassment were in the age group of 25-35 years, 82% of them were full time workers and 68% students.

"Shockingly, the vast majority of women across the globe have experienced violence in a city with 89% of women in Brazil, 86% in Thailand and 75% in the UK subject to harassment or violence on the streets of their cities. The research highlighted that across the four countries, it was the poorest women who were most at risk with women in the lowest social economic groups most likely to experience violence or harassment in cities," the report said.

Over a third of women (39%) in India have been groped or touched in public, compared with two in five (41%) of women in Brazil,44% in Thailand and 23% in the UK.

The research asked women when they felt most at risk in their cities or towns and found more women in the UK (43%), Brazil (70%) and Thailand (62%) felt at risk on the streets of their cities, whereas in India women felt more at risk on public transport (65%).

ActionAid India director (programmes and policy) Sehjo Singh said, "Safety of women is directly related to patriarchal mind sets that manifests itself in streets, homes and workplaces. Beti Zindabad a campaign for gender equality supported by ActionAid and several networks and organisations seeks to challenge these mind sets. The fear of harassment and violence has a crippling effect on women’s abilities and potential, and in itself it is an attack on women’s rights."