“Hey baby!” a voice calls out from across the street.

On the El, the man sitting across from you stares at your body lewdly.

On the sidewalk, a hand reaches out to graze its fingers across your back.

If you are a young woman living in the world today, chances are you’ve been subject to street harassment.

In a survey conducted by Laura Beth Nielsen, currently a professor of sociology in Weinberg, 100 percent of the 54 women she surveyed in the San Francisco area claimed they had been subject to offensive or sexually suggestive remarks. Nineteen percent said the harassment occurred on a daily basis.

Studies like this one have been conducted in places from Yemen to Tokyo and the results are alarmingly similar. Women all over the world experience street harassment and accept it as a part of their lives. It’s disrespectful and degrading, and yet a part of the world’s daily routine.

In a seemingly hopeless battle to prevent such harassment, the blogosphere is helping women fight back. A popular New York City site, HollabackNYC, has become a place where women can report street harassment of any kind by posting mobile photos of their tormenters along with detailed descriptions of where and when the pestering, grabbing or catcalling took place.

The website’s popularity is now transferring to a globalized presence and the development of a new mobile application intended to allow more women to use Hollaback on the go. Instead of just wincing and moving on when we experience sexual harassment, the founder of the site, Emily May, would have us whip out our phones and take a picture before the perpetrator has a chance to snarl at another woman. May said in an interview: “It’s about documenting them so we can have a map, and we can really look at this as a society and say that this is not just a problem. This is of epidemic proportions.”

How will this website change things? I know I don’t have enough time to scan it every day for new creepers that I may encounter on my way the gym. However, the real purpose of the website isn’t about a specific skeeze, it’s about the epidemic. The site will help turn our attention to ways that disrespect toward women at the hands and voices of strange men can be put to an end. Unfortunately, street harassment is nearly impossible to prosecute, as it often becomes a case of he said-she said and any charges filed disappear.

Awareness is an important first step toward implementing change. Even if the men in the photos and posts are never prosecuted, Hollaback gives the victims of harassment a sense of power in a seemingly hopeless situation. A small, but important victory.

Weinberg junior Alana Buckbee can be reached at [email protected].