Over half of women have faced sexual harassment, misconduct

More than half of women have experienced sexual misconduct. They’ve been forced to perform sexual acts or were kissed or touched against their will. This has happened to about one in five men.

Rutgers Knowledge Center, the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM), and Statistics Netherlands (CBS) researched the experiences of over 15,000 men and women. According to the researchers, the results are representative of the Dutch population.

Nearly a quarter of women and 5 percent of men have been forced to have sex at some point in their lives. This typically happened between the ages of 18 and 21. About 44 percent of women and 9 percent of men have received annoying sexual comments.

The previous survey, conducted six years ago, contained comparable figures. The figures “remain the same, but it still occurs too often,” the researchers said.

Men are responsible for sexually inappropriate behavior in most cases. If a woman was the victim, the perpetrator was almost always a man. And when the behavior was directed against the man, the perpetrator was also a man in more than half of the cases.

The perpetrator and victim usually know each other. “For women, it’s usually their partner or ex. For men, it is someone they know from the neighborhood,” the researchers said.