Experimental “Smart Dress” Shows Women Are Groped 40 Times an Hour

Going clubbing can be such an ordeal, especially if it’s just a girl’s night out

January 02, 2019 - 11:11

Going clubbing can be such an ordeal, especially if it’s just a girl’s night out. For many women who go out for a night on the town, whether it’s a club and/or bar, it’s doesn’t typically end in a night of fun. More often than not, women are harassed, disrespected, and groped by men. Some may think that’s an exaggeration, but it truly isn’t. For further proof of this fact, consider this experiment conducted by Schweppes (Swiss beverage company) and Ogilvy (an ad agency) who created a “smart dress” or rather a “Dress for Respect” as they call it, which has sensors. They had one mission in mind: Let’s see how many times a woman is touched during one outing at a club.

Research shows that 86 percent of Brazilian women have been harassed, and to prove this point, creators put the “smart dress” on three different women and let them party it up at a club. The results were appalling but not surprising. The video shows the women mingling around the club and every second possible, a man was lurking nearby and somehow touching her. Within three hours and 47 minutes, they were touched approximately 157 times. That means within one hour, they were touched 40 times!

While the dress isn’t for sale — not yet anyway, the point was to prove the startling fact that women are harassed more than we can even fathom. Here’s what some commenters on Facebook had to say about the experiment:

“I really don’t like when strangers touch the small of my waist. I don’t even go to nightclubs and I experience this way too often. Honestly, if you are to touch a person you don’t know please only touch the shoulder area and down to the elbow and don’t touch too long, or just don’t touch.” Another said: “My only question is did they know which ones were by by accident or the touch like hey I’m behind you type touch or the tap on the shoulder excuse me touch or did it record all touches and did it record like if she accidentally bumped into herself as a touch not trying to put the study down just trying to wonder about how they measure certain things.”