A new study has found that the majority of women in Northern Ireland experienced sexist behavior or harassment from men when they were still children.
According to research led by Kim McFalone, a Ph.D. student at the University of Manchester, 80% of the women surveyed said their first experience of uncomfortable or inappropriate behavior from men happened before they turned 17.
Shockingly, one in four said it happened before they were even 11 years old, and over half said it occurred between the ages of 11 and 16.
McFalone surveyed 211 women who reported being subjected to behaviors such as staring, sexual comments, catcalling, unwanted touching, and flashing.
Her ongoing research is shedding light on the early age at which many women are first exposed to harassment.
She presented her findings at the British Sociological Association’s annual conference in Manchester on April 23.
Nearly half of the women surveyed—47%—reported having experienced flashing by a man, either as a child or as an adult. An overwhelming 93% said they had been harassed by wolf-whistling or cat-calling, both in public and private settings.
McFalone says she was especially disturbed by how early many of these experiences began. She noted that many women described being harassed while still in school uniforms—clearly marking them as children—by adult men, whether strangers on the street or men they already knew.
These situations often involved a power imbalance, as the girls were too young or unsure of themselves to feel comfortable challenging the behavior.
Another common setting for harassment was the workplace. Many women recalled their first part-time jobs as teens, where they were subjected to inappropriate comments from adult male customers. Because of their age and inexperience, they often felt unable to speak up or report the behavior.
McFalone also conducted interviews with some of the participants. One woman recalled being just 13 when she was catcalled by adult men while wearing her school uniform. Another said her first job, at a pizza place when she was 15, exposed her to the worst and most inappropriate male attention she had ever received.
Her research comes at a time when violence against women in Northern Ireland is rising. Since the end of the Troubles, sexual violence has increased every year, reaching a record high in 2024. Northern Ireland also now has the second-highest rate of femicide in Europe.
