Obscene gestures or noises, graphically obscene comments – an everyday experience for many women around the world. In some European countries this kind of behavior can get you fined or even jailed.
But in Germany, verbal sexual harassment in public is not criminalized under a sexual offenses law passed in 2016, which criminalized non-consensual sexual acts of touching for the first time.
Nor do judges usually interpret it as falling under the provisions of the country’s libel laws. In German criminal law, insults are regulated in section 185 of the Criminal Code (StGB) and protect a person’s honor. It is a deliberate expression of contempt or disregard for respect, which can result in a fine or imprisonment of up to one year.
Serious cases of verbal sexual harassment can be declared a crime
The centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) believe there is a legal loophole that needs to be closed immediately. “Verbal and non-verbal sexual harassment that is clearly unwanted, substantial in nature and targeted deserves punishment by law,” senior SPD leader Sonja Eichwede told DW.
Echwede says it’s a widespread problem that particularly affects young women and has a huge impact. “This type of harassment causes widespread distress to victims and often drives them away from public spaces. The language and behavior here is a form of violence.”
Social Democrats say that the English term “catcalling”, widely used in German debate, trivialises the phenomenon. The term can be used to describe a range of behavior from wolf whistling to disgusted signals.
Justice Minister Stefanie Hubig (SPD) has said that her ministry is currently examining legal options.
Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s conservatives say they will scrutinize any concrete reform plan put forward. Susanne Hierl, legal spokeswoman for the conservative parliamentary group, told German news magazine Spiegel that it was shameful how often women are the victims of abusive and hurtful behaviour. But politicians from the CDU’s Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union, do not see the additional legislation as a way to prevent verbal sexual harassment.
Gen Z pushed this issue onto the national agenda
This is not the first time that Social Democrats have advocated for changes to the law. In 2023, the SPD’s coalition partners in the centre-left government, the Greens and the neoliberal Free Democrats (FDP), opposed the move, calling it impractical and “populist”. And the SPD’s initiative at the state level failed to win a majority in the Bundesrat, the country’s second legislative house, in early 2025.
Young women brought the issue to national attention in 2019. Inspired by a New York precedent, a platform called Berlin’s Catcalls encouraged women and minority groups to document instances of street harassment by painting phrases on the sidewalks where incidents occurred to raise awareness of the issue.
A year later, in 2020, Antonia Quayle, a 20-year-old student, presented a petition to Parliament with over 70,000 signatures demanding that verbal sexual harassment be decriminalized.
Female students also conducted an exploratory study to assess the severity of the problem and its impact. Nearly 40% of nearly 3,000 respondents said they avoid certain places because of catcalling, and 8% reported changing the way they dress in a 2021 online survey conducted by the Criminological Research Institute of Lower Saxony (KFN). But representative official surveys of verbal harassment of women in public places are still lacking.
Is law the right way to deal with the problem?
Mohammed al-Ghazi, a professor of German and European criminal law at the University of Trier, said he wanted no one “to have to endure such hateful comments.” But he added: “Criminal law should be a last resort, not the first.” He told DW that a better way to tackle the problem is to raise awareness about appropriate behavior at home and in schools.
The German Women’s Lawyers Association (DJB) believes that the problem can be partially addressed by changing the interpretation of existing German insult laws: “so that forms of verbal sexual harassment that degrade a person as a sexual object are deemed an expression of disregard or disrespect towards that person.”
El-Ghazi acknowledges that the country’s top judges have so far defined the crime of insult too narrowly when dealing with sexual comments. “The argument has been that sexually explicit statements do not express disrespect towards the individual.”
In 2017, Germany’s Supreme Court in Karlsruhe overturned a case against a 65-year-old man who had asked an 11-year-old to come with him because he wanted to “touch her pussy”, as it ruled that the comments did not violate German libel laws nor constitute a case of child sexual abuse.
And yet, for example, calling someone a “stupid ass,” “idiot,” or tapping your temple with a finger to indicate to someone that you think he or she is crazy can get you caught in Germany under those laws.
American law professor James Whitman says that for something to count as an insult in Germany its intent must be insulting. “Making contact with a woman has been interpreted – and surprisingly – as a sign of respect for her attractiveness,” the legal expert said. According to Whitman, it has been read as intended to praise rather than offend.
A professor of comparative and foreign law at Yale University told DW that German libel law evolved from a tradition concerned with the protection of personal honor, which had its roots in the law of dueling. That honoree was usually a man.
Road harassment laws in other European countries
Belgium was the first country in the European Union to ban sexism in public. The law was introduced in 2014. It defines sexism as comments or actions that suggest inferiority based on gender, “reduce someone to their sexual dimension”, or are intended to “express contempt”.
Portugal criminalized oral sexual abuse in 2016, with such offenses punishable by a fine or up to a year in prison. Two years later, a similar law was introduced in France. Recently, Spain and the Netherlands also followed suit.
An act to prevent gender-based public harassment in the UK was passed in 2023, but it is still not in force. The law criminalizes harassment because of a person’s sex, including intrusive or persistent staring or questioning, stalking, sexual or obscene comments, advances or gestures, and non-consensual physical contact.
Sonja Eichwede is confident that the SPD will succeed in passing a law against verbal sexual harassment this time. Germany’s Justice Ministry should draw on the rich experience of the country’s European neighbors when drafting any bill.
Edited by Reena Goldenberg
While you’re here: Every Tuesday, DW editors provide insight into what’s happening in German politics and society. You can sign up for the weekly email newsletter, Berlin Briefing, here.