Staring at women's breasts most tolerated in Germany - survey

A survey, attempting to gauge what people from seven European countries consider to be acts of sexual harassment in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal, has yielded some interesting results.

YouGov asked 8,490 men and women from Denmark, England, Finland, France, Germany, Norway and Sweden where they consider the boundaries of what constitutes sexual harassment begin, posing a number of questions to respondents.

These varied from whether people considered telling a woman a sexual joke to constitute harassment, to looking at her breasts, or asking her out on a date. Some answers were pretty standard across the board, whereas others greatly differed, German outlet Die Welt reports.  

People from all seven countries agreed, perhaps unsurprisingly, that taking pictures up womens’ skirts was an act of sexual harassment, as was grabbing their behind or exposing themselves to women.

However, one interesting aspect of the study related to staring at women's breasts. According to the survey, a relatively small proportion of German women, 36 percent, considered ogling their breasts to be an act of sexual harassment, the number was even lower for men, with 22 percent of Männer thinking it was out of line.

Correspondingly, 50 percent of stereotypically prudish Brits thought it was sexual harassment, roughly the same number of their French counterparts agreed.

When it came to humour, there were also rather different responses. Germans, somewhat unfairly, are not thought to be rated highly amongst Europe's comedians, the results of the survey show that perhaps their humorous status should be reevaluated.

Only 35 percent of Germans surveyed thought that telling a sex joke to a woman was a bridge too far. Nearly double this figure, 69 percent of Brits thought a sex joke was out of order.

One thing nearly all the Europeans polled agreed upon was that winking at a woman was fine, except for the French, 23 percent of whom disapproved.