Harassment survey has the power to change minds, says author
A survey shows 35% have received unwanted sexual attention or contact, including being groped, cat-called and wolf-whistled.
Tuesday 9 October 2018 01:56, UK
Following a survey showing a third of schoolgirls have been sexually harassed in public while wearing school uniform, author Nichi Hodgson, writer of The Curious History of Dating: From Jane Austen to Tinder, shares her thoughts.
If you're not yet persuaded that the sexual harassment of women is endemic, perhaps the latest survey will change your mind.
According to children's charity Plan International UK, more than one third of girls in Great Britain have been sexually harassed while wearing school uniform, with the harassment of some starting at the age of just eight years old.
It's a stark and shocking notion that harassment starts as soon as females are barely cognisant of being such - and what's more, when they are dressed for learning.
But for those of us that are female and have ever worn uniform, it stirs up unpleasant but familiar memories from our own youth.
At the smart and sensible girls' school I attended some 20 years ago I initially thought one of the silliest practises of the sixth form prefects was measuring the skirts of us younger girls with rulers every Friday morning.
But now I realise that it was the school's way of protecting us from prying male eyes.
Of course, it didn't work.
It was a great school which instilled true confidence in its pupils' non-physical attributes.
But even a great school couldn't protect us a small cohort of feckless individuals who would leer at us on a regular basis, including the tradesmen, businessmen, drivers and other professionals we came into contact with on the way to and from school, and as we meandered through town afterwards.
And that's not to mention the 'games field flasher', who had assuaged a coterie of 11 to 16-year-olds before he was taken seriously by local police.
Importantly, this is not a matter of the increasing 'sexualisation' of uniforms, whatever the statistics of 1 in 4 having being photographed or filmed wearing uniform might suggest.
After all, the image of the vibrant school girl ripe for the picking pre-dates Britney Spears or even St Trinian's - it's a trope embedded in a culture, shaped by a kind of tactless male desire that has gone unchallenged.
And while Plan International UK's survey does not specify the kind of uniform girls are wearing when they are being harassed, just as with adult victims of harassment, whether it's pleated skirts, practical trousers, or even Islamic dress, it surely doesn't matter.
What matters is an inappropriate approach of minors, which cannot constitute flattery.
No matter her age, a girl wearing school uniform sends a distinct message: that here is a student, not yet an adult, still malleable and requiring steer and protection before they make the transition to the adult world of work.
That some men think it okay to ogle, comment on or touch those wearing it isn't an unsavoury rite of passage all girls must tolerate; it's an anachronistic act of abuse that has gone on for too long.