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Sexual Harassment Needs More Attention in China
While domestic violence is now getting due attention in China, one woman expert says that similar concern should be directed toward sexual harassment against women.
According to a recent survey on violence and harassment experienced by Chinese women, sexual harassment victims, as well as women who have been raped, don't always get enough support from society, said Sun Xiaomei, a professor with the Chinese Women's College who had the idea for the poll.
Many female respondents named six types of harassment as the worst: inappropriate sexual advances by male superiors in offices, ex-husbands' harassment of ex-wives, groping on buses, cat-calls on the street, and sexual misconduct by doctors to women patients and teachers to students, China Women's News reported.
The survey, sampling 4,000 urbanites, covered Beijing, the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, and Zhejiang and Hebei provinces.
Many surveyed said that they often saw situations of sexual harassment in public and overheard obscene comments from men to women at the office, but they didn't realize this type of behavior constituted a violation of women's rights, the newspaper said.
In addition, those surveyed listed murder, kidnapping, rape, spousal abuse and marital rape as the cruelest forms of violence against women.
According to experts, it is imperative that existing laws on violence done to women should be amended with more specific articles as soon as possible so that women's rights can be fully safeguarded.
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