To effectively prevent street harassment, we first need to change the culture that made it acceptable in the first place. Street harassment has been assimilated for too long with flirting or simply approaching someone in a "heavy-handed" manner. As a society, we need to stop denying and trivializing the prevalence and traumatic impact of this phenomenon, because it creates the very right environment for it to endure.
Cultural shifts usually start with people coming forward to bravely share their stories. For example, from 2012 to 2019, awareness of street harassment in France was raised thanks to the blog Paye Ta Schnek, launched on Tumblr by an feminist activist, to collect anonymous testimonies from women victims of street harassment. In seven years, thousands of testimonies have been published. Since then, other initiatives have taken over, notably on Instagram. Since the summer of 2020, @disbonjoursalepute and @toutenuedanslarue have been illustrating the omnipresence of street harassment thanks to testimonies from young women. Story by story, we can hope to change public opinion and personal behaviours.
Of course, street harassment prevention and societal change also needs to involve education, for example with the introduction of street harassment sensitization programmes in middle school and high school.
Finally, another powerful prevention tool would be to incite politicians to pass and enforce new, stricter laws against stress harassment. In France, street harassment has been criminalised in 2018 (article 621 of the Penal Code) and is now punishable by a 90€ fine. The fine amount can rise up to 3000€ for a repeated offence or in the event of aggravating circumstances, for example if the harassment is committed in group, on a vulnerable person or in public transport.
