What Drives This Unwanted, Costly, and Damaging Behavior Across Industry Sectors by Wage and Gender
Sexual harassment is everywhere.
More than four decades after the term “sexual harassment” was first coined to describe unwanted, hostile harassing behavior based on one’s sex, the team at the Better Life Lab analyzed an extensive collection of data and research to draw a more complete picture of the incidence and experience of sexual harassment in the workplace. We have not only focused on professional settings, which have garnered the most media and public attention, but also extended our analysis across all sectors. By dividing industries by gender ratio and wage, we also sought to understand the factors that drive sexual harassment, finding that some are common across all sectors, and others unique to a particular sector. We found that sexual harassment in the workplace remains a severe, pervasive, and troublingly unresolved problem. Even as women comprise nearly half the workforce, sexual harassment persists in virtually every sector of the economy, from male-dominated to female-dominated industries and workplaces, and from low-wage and precarious jobs to high-wage professions.
Sexual harassment is systemic.
Sexual harassment isn’t something that just happens because of fleeting circumstance or desire. It is driven in all sectors by imbalances in power. Men hold far more positions of power in all sectors of the economy. Even in female-dominated fields, men are more likely to be supervisors, principals, and managers. In all fields, race and racism add another layer to systemic power imbalances.
Impacts of sexual harassment are felt beyond just the harassing interaction.
This analysis shows that no sector remains untouched by sexual harassment, nor unaffected by its impacts. Sexual harassment damages the lives, health, prospects, financial independence, and opportunities of its victims, and costs businesses not only legal fees, but lost productivity, morale, effectiveness, and talent. Tolerating or failing to adequately respond to sexual harassment can block women’s and other targets’ economic security, access to opportunity, and advancement, which serves to preserve the status quo and power imbalances that drive sexual harassment in the first place.
Women are the most common, but not the only, targets for sexual harassment.
There are basic patterns for sexual harassment, but those patterns do not capture the variations in experience by different groups of people and by workers in different sectors. The data shows that across all sectors, women of lower status are the most common targets of sexual harassment by perpetrators, who are typically men of higher status. But sexual harassment in the workplace is by no means limited to this dynamic. Men, particularly those who don’t conform to traditional masculine norms, and others seen as outsiders, like LGBTQ and gender nonconforming people, can be targets. Women can be harassers. People of color, especially women of color, are more likely to be subject to sexual harassment than their white counterparts.
It’s not just bosses and co-workers who are doing the harassing.
In nearly every sector, we found that it’s not just managers, supervisors, and those in power who sexually harass targets. Harassment can come from coworkers, as is the case for some hostile work environment claims. Sexual harassment is also common from third parties. That’s true for fast-food restaurant workers in the low-wage arena, who can be harassed by customers, and for nurses, doctors, and healthcare workers who can be harassed by patients. It’s also true for highly paid lawyers, who can be sexually harassed by opposing counsel, clients, and judges.
More than four decades after the term “sexual harassment” was first coined to describe unwanted, hostile harassing behavior based on one’s sex, the team at the Better Life Lab analyzed an extensive collection of data and research to draw a more complete picture of the incidence and experience of sexual harassment in the workplace. We have not only focused on professional settings, which have garnered the most media and public attention, but also extended our analysis across all sectors. By dividing industries by gender ratio and wage, we also sought to understand the factors that drive sexual harassment, finding that some are common across all sectors, and others unique to a particular sector. We found that sexual harassment in the workplace remains a severe, pervasive, and troublingly unresolved problem. Even as women comprise nearly half the workforce, sexual harassment persists in virtually every sector of the economy, from male-dominated to female-dominated industries and workplaces, and from low-wage and precarious jobs to high-wage professions.
Sexual harassment is systemic.
Sexual harassment isn’t something that just happens because of fleeting circumstance or desire. It is driven in all sectors by imbalances in power. Men hold far more positions of power in all sectors of the economy. Even in female-dominated fields, men are more likely to be supervisors, principals, and managers. In all fields, race and racism add another layer to systemic power imbalances.
Impacts of sexual harassment are felt beyond just the harassing interaction.
This analysis shows that no sector remains untouched by sexual harassment, nor unaffected by its impacts. Sexual harassment damages the lives, health, prospects, financial independence, and opportunities of its victims, and costs businesses not only legal fees, but lost productivity, morale, effectiveness, and talent. Tolerating or failing to adequately respond to sexual harassment can block women’s and other targets’ economic security, access to opportunity, and advancement, which serves to preserve the status quo and power imbalances that drive sexual harassment in the first place.
Women are the most common, but not the only, targets for sexual harassment.
There are basic patterns for sexual harassment, but those patterns do not capture the variations in experience by different groups of people and by workers in different sectors. The data shows that across all sectors, women of lower status are the most common targets of sexual harassment by perpetrators, who are typically men of higher status. But sexual harassment in the workplace is by no means limited to this dynamic. Men, particularly those who don’t conform to traditional masculine norms, and others seen as outsiders, like LGBTQ and gender nonconforming people, can be targets. Women can be harassers. People of color, especially women of color, are more likely to be subject to sexual harassment than their white counterparts.
It’s not just bosses and co-workers who are doing the harassing.
In nearly every sector, we found that it’s not just managers, supervisors, and those in power who sexually harass targets. Harassment can come from coworkers, as is the case for some hostile work environment claims. Sexual harassment is also common from third parties. That’s true for fast-food restaurant workers in the low-wage arena, who can be harassed by customers, and for nurses, doctors, and healthcare workers who can be harassed by patients. It’s also true for highly paid lawyers, who can be sexually harassed by opposing counsel, clients, and judges.
Read our comprehensive Better Life Lab report here