Catcalling – ‘It is not illegal’: a survey-based content analysis study regarding experiences of catcalling in Sweden

Abstract: An article written by the Swedish Government in 2018 outlines that they are working towards a more equal society and describes how they are conducting prevention work regarding men’s violence towards women. Although recently media has portrayed street harassment and catcalling as something that has become an increasing problem for young women in Sweden. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to explore the degree to which people express that they have experienced catcalling, and the way in which catcalling is affecting those who have been exposed to it, i.e. the consequences of catcalling. Furthermore, the purpose of this study was to explore how people believe that the legal system is able to manage the type of problems that catcalling may bring about; and how they do view the need for a new or changed legislation in the area. With the help of a national survey study and interviews, this paper has been able to explore these matters further. The participants were a total of 1043 with a rather even division between men and women (N = 500/537). Besides the main subjects mentioned above, focus will also be on discussing the Swedish penal code and how the media portrays the issue of catcalling in Sweden. This paper furthermore discusses the complexity of what behaviors catcalling cover. The theoretical standpoint includes both system justification theory and feminist legal theory, which has helped with the analytical part of the result. The result discloses that a total of 67,7 percent of N = 1043 had been exposed to catcalling in Sweden and 78,4 percent of them were women. The result also shows that more women than men find catcalling very unpleasant or threatening (82,8 percent vs 17,2 percent). The study concludes that there is a wish for a new law or a change in an already existing law in the Swedish penal code concerning catcalling, although there are issues about how it would operate in a more practical issue such as evidence demonstration and how it instead could create word-against-word cases that would not get solved.