#MeToo in India: YouGov survey shows across large and small cities, around 75% agree on gravity of sexual harassment

The issue of women’s safety in the workplace has come to the fore following the outpouring of complaints against sexual harassment as part of the MeToo campaign. Women from across various professions have taken to social media to name and shame their abusers and it appears there’s many more names yet to surface. YouGov India conducted a pan-India survey of men and women — interviewing over 1,000 respondents — from urban centres asking them a series of questions spanning the areas of sexual harassment and the #MeToo movement. The exercise was conducted between 16 and 22 October and employed a 21-question-long survey. Firstpost will serialise the findings as a five-part series of infographics. The fourth  set of five infographics  depicts how respondents from different types of cities perceive sexual harassment and their own experiences. Respondents were divided into three categories: ‘Tier 1’, ‘Tier 2’ and ‘Tier 3’. According to the findings, the variation in approaches to sexual harassment and MeToo is minimal among different tiers of cities, but there are a handful of areas on which there is disagreement. First, ‘whistling and lewd remarks’ are viewed as sexual harassment by nearly three-quarters of people in Tier 1 cities, while only 62 and 61 percent find that to be the case in Tier 2 and 3 cities respectively. Second, while nearly 30 percent of people from Tier 1 cities say MeToo has made them more cautious about hiring members of the opposite sex, this figure is down to under a quarter in Tier 2 cities and as low as 20 percent in Tier 3 cities. Third, over half the respondents from Tier 1 cities believe the corporate sector is prone to sexual harassment, compared to 42 and 40 percent respectively in Tier 2 and 3 cities.