One in four women in the Netherlands feels regularly unsafe in public spaces, rising to more than one in three among women under 35, according to new research by the Hague Centre for Strategic Studies (HCSS).

The study, commissioned by the national police and based on a survey of 3,568 Dutch adults, found that 91% of women take precautions when going out – choosing better-lit routes, texting on arrival home, dressing differently – compared with 64% of men.

Among women aged 18 to 34, more than four in five report feeling unsafe on the streets.

The report notes social attitudes underpinning perceptions of security: 52% of men say a sexist joke “must be allowed”, against 35% of women. A fifth of men say so-called “locker-room talk” about women is acceptable.

HCSS argues this normalisation isn’t confined to a conservative fringe: roughly half of self-described moderates also accept sexist jokes.

Online harassment
Online harassment is a bigger problem for younger women. Among women aged 18 to 34, a quarter are sent unsolicited sexual imagery, 11% have been doxed, and 8% have experienced sextortion or had intimate images shared without their consent.

The EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) – a 2024 law requiring online platforms to police illegal content and give users better reporting tools – was not effectively helping women in the data, lead author Gerben Bakker told Dutch News.

The DSA had improved how illegal hate speech and threats are removed, he said, but most sexist harassment “falls below the legal threshold, meaning the DSA often does not apply”. The law, he said “primarily functions as a way of leveraging the power of platforms rather than directly protecting users.”

Limits of policing

HCSS warns that institutional responses to women’s unsafety risk defaulting to enforcement and what it calls the risicoregelreflex – the impulse to regulate and police every risk.

Bakker said the report’s central message is that “many security issues are, at their core, also normative issues, and that normative problems require solutions beyond purely repressive measures.”