How Frequent is Sexual Objectification?

 
Research in social and clinical psychology makes it clear that sexual gazing towards women is not without consequences. Women talk less after
thinking about being sexually objectified, experience more shame, and perform worse on cognitive tasks. Such objectification from others also increases focus on one's own appearance, which has been found to do (or relate to) a whole host of negative things among women. These include reduced appearance self-esteem, increased risk of eating disorders, reduced performance on math tasks, and even the ability to throw a ball. (See this article for a longer list of the effects of self-objectification.) Sexual objectification from others even has been found to cause women to be perceived in more negative and dehumanizing ways, such as believing women have less interpersonal warmth (e.g., kindness), less competence (e.g., intelligence) and less morality (e.g., sincerity), and to even be implicitly likened to animals and objects. (See this article for a longer list of the interpersonal effects of objectification on how women are perceived.)

But how frequent is sexual objectification? Recent research from Elise Holland and colleagues at the University of Melbourne tested this question by asking students to report how frequently they experience unwanted sexual gazing from others, and how often they see it happening to others. They found that the average woman reported 1 instance of being sexually objectified every 2 days, and noticed another women being objectified nearly 1.5 times a day. Noticing sexual objectification was also associated with more focus on your own appearance

It is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to predict exactly how beneficial a serious reduction in unwanted sexual gazing would have on women's daily lives. But, it would surely be enormous given the negative consequences it has been found to have.
This is not to say that men are not sexually objectified. Clearly they are. But the consequences are often not as negative, and the rates (in advertisements + media; no study I know has looked at this by asking men how frequently this occurs in their daily lives to them) are not nearly as high.
It is also worth noting that this frequency of sexual objectification was just the experience of a group of university aged women at an Australian university. We don't really know how well this extrapolates to the experiences of women in other countries, or women of other ages, for instance, or even other women in Australia. They may be objectified more or less times in a day. We also don't know how many times they were sexually objectified and didn't notice, or when others were. It is also possible not all instances were reported.

Now, the lack of noticing may seem inconsequential in terms of how women view themselves, but it might not be. Sometimes we notice things on the fringes of consciousness that impact us even when we are not consciously aware of it. (for instance we might sing a song because we just heard it without realizing we have just heard it). And it certainly still impacts how other people perceive women's character, and hence, how they are treated.