Swedish girls suffer widespread harassment: report

There are large differences between how girls and boys are affected from violence in society.

“Girls are more exposed to sexual violence, while boys are more exposed to physical violence,” Helena Blom, one of the researchers in Sundsvall in northern Sweden told Sveriges Radio’s Ekot news programme.

Over 2,000 young girls and almost 1,000 young men who paid a visit to one of nine selected youth clinics in the spring of 2007 were included in the study.

The young people were given a series of questions to respond to describing their experiences of violence and grade the level of severity.

The survey showed that six percent of girls had experienced the most serious sexual offence – rape.

The research has been conducted in collaboration with Umeå University and the National Centre for Knowledge on Men’s Violence Against Women (NCK).