Here's the Sunday Times article from above - for those unable to get past the paywall.
"IT IS the curse of busy cities and is now the latest battleground between the sexes: who has right of way on the pavement?
Beth Breslaw, 25, a trade union activist in New York, was tired of the habit of city residents who walk in a straight line without getting out of the way for other pedestrians. Convinced that it was mainly men who were guilty, she put her theory to the test by refusing to alter her route for anyone.
She spent most of the next two months colliding with dozens of men — and markedly fewer women.
“I can remember every single man who moved out of the way, because there were so few,” Breslaw told New York magazine, which has dubbed the practice “manslamming”.
As Breslaw saw it, “if they don’t make any indication that they’re cognizant of the fact that our bodies are impacting each other, if they don’t sway a little bit to the side or move their shoulder a little bit back”, then it counted as an instance of manslamming.
Breslaw’s experiment has gone viral and generated intense debate about whether pavement etiquette really does represent a difference in the way the sexes behave or if it is just old-fashioned rudeness.
The Sunday Times put it to the test by sending three women out in London, Bristol and Birmingham to discover whether manslamming is also prevalent in Britain.
In three busy areas of London — Liverpool Street station, Oxford Street and Westminster Bridge — a female reporter had “bumps” with 31 other pedestrians; 21 men and 10 women.
In Bristol, there were bumps with 28 men and 25 women while in Birmingham, six bumps were equally divided between the sexes: three men and three women.
Hardly damning evidence of a masculine conspiracy and many of the pedestrians did not see it as a gender issue.
Liz Rudd, 30, from the Cotswolds, who travels through Liverpool Street station, said: “I don’t think it’s just men. I find that women are becoming more focused and assertive, so we aren’t letting men get away with it. Women are definitely the worst when it comes to rushing to get a seat on the Tube.”
Anita Whettell, 53, a blood donor carer from Solihull, West Midlands, admitted that she had bumped into people herself, particularly while on the phone or listening to music.
But that did not stop her suggesting there was a gender difference: “I think that it’s mainly men who do it because they can’t do two things at the same time.”
Glen, 42, who was shopping in Oxford Street, blamed “bumping” on people gazing in shop windows or at their phones, and “looking at pretty girls in the street”.
Breslaw would have welcomed Ben Downs, 34, an IT worker, from Bedminster, Bristol, as proof of her assertion. “I quite often walk into women to prove a point, actually,” he said.
“Why should it be me that has to move? They are just as capable of stepping to the side. If they want equality, they can have it. Women are much worse than men when it comes to this.”
Laura Snook, 19, a law student, from Cardiff, said: “Old men are the worst and girls my own age — they just give a really bitchy look and carry on walking in a straight line.”
Kate Fox, a social anthropologist and author of Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour, rejects Breslaw’s assertion that manslamming is male sexism in action on the pavement.
“The conclusion that this is all about ‘male entitlement’ and ‘everyday patriarchy’ and so on simply does not follow,” she said.
“Yes, men probably do have a greater sense of entitlement to personal space, but this is not demonstrated by these ‘experiments’. Men could simply be less bothered about being bumped into.
“Breslaw seems to be particularly cross about the fact that the men she barged into [unlike the women] didn’t get cross — they just seemed oblivious.
“She chooses to interpret this as ‘male entitlement’ and the invisibility of women — one could equally interpret it as the men politely refraining from making a fuss about a little bump.”
In fact, said Fox, most of the time “we are all [male and female] remarkably adept at avoiding collisions in crowded public places”.
Perhaps it is not a gender issue. Maybe it is age. Mike Tomkins, 68, a retired financial analyst from Wall Heath, Birmingham, said: “I don’t think there’s a difference between men and women.
“It’s younger people who do it most when they are engrossed in technology as they go about their daily lives.”