More people say strangers treat them with disrespect: CBS

A growing number of people in the Netherlands say they are treated disrespectfully in public, particularly young women, according to national statistics agency CBS.

Some 18% reported being disrespectful behaviour from strangers on the street often or sometimes in 2025, up from 15% in 2021, the agency’s biennial safety survey found.

Disrespect on public transport also rose, from 9% to 13%, while 11% reported it from shop or business staff, up from 9%. Rudeness from people they know edged up to 7%. Disrespect from government agency staff was the only category to fall, from 8% to 7%.

Women reported disrespect more often than men, particularly younger women. A quarter of women aged 15 to 24 said they had experienced it on the street in 2025, against 17% of young men in the same age group.

That figure has barely shifted for young women over the past four years, but it rose for women over 25 and for men in every age group.

City dwellers were also more affected. Nearly a quarter of people in the most urban municipalities reported disrespect on the street, up from 21% in 2021, more than double the rate in rural areas.

Street sexual harassment became a criminal offence across the Netherlands in July 2024, after earlier local bans in cities including Rotterdam were struck down by the courts.

Previous CBS research found two in three young women had been harassed on the street within a single year.

The figures are drawn from the Veiligheidsmonitor, a survey of people aged 15 and over in which respondents judge whether boundaries had been crossed.