90% of women 'sexually harassed in the workplace' (or is it 1%?)



The "study" below is a bit of a laugh. As we read on in the article, we find that harassment "included offensive remarks about being female, their appearance, body or sexual activities" So "harassment" is very broadly defined.

We also read that the survey covered only "the US military and the legal profession". That is hardly a representative sample.

And as a very experienced survey researcher, I can tell you that the response rate to the survey would have been very low. Quite probably it was only or mainly disgruntled women who replied to it. The findings are in short entirely consistent with an actual overall rate of harassment that affected (say) 1% of all women -- not 90%. It's junk science. Or to put it in an academic way: Parameter estimation is the least promising application of survey research


Nine in ten women have suffered some form of sexual discrimination in the workplace, a study has found.

A vast majority of women workers have experienced ‘gender harassment’, which includes offensive sexist remarks or being told that they could not do their job properly due to their sex.

This more common, low-level sexist behaviour was just as damaging and distressing as overt advances, experts suggest.
Distress: A vast majority of women workers have experienced 'gender harassment', which includes offensive sexist remarks or being told that they could not do their job properly due to their sex

Distress: A vast majority of women workers have experienced 'gender harassment', which includes offensive sexist remarks or being told that they could not do their job properly due to their sex

The researchers at the University of Michigan found that 10 per cent of the women surveyed had experienced the most severe form of harassment, in which they were promised promotion or better treatment if they were ‘sexually cooperative’.

The study questioned women in two male-dominated environments – the US military and the legal profession. It found that although few were subjected to actual advances, such as being groped, 90 per cent had been subjected to gender harassment.

This included offensive remarks about being female, their appearance, body or sexual activities. The researchers argued that this ‘leads to negative personal and professional outcomes and as such is a serious form of sex discrimination’.

Gender harassment ‘creates a hostile environment that disadvantages women’, they said. Often dismissed as a misguided attempt to draw women into romantic relationships, such behaviour actually rejects women and drives them out of jobs, they said.

The findings, in Springer’s journal of Law and Human Behaviour, concluded that harassment victims fared poorly at work. They were far more likely to develop health problems that affected their performance.

SOURCE

2 comments:

  1. I wonder if just the one of my many experiences in a supremely male dominated industry might qualify as 'gender harassment'.
    I was an executive officer in the industry's male-dominated association.
    As I was speaking with a board member after the black tie annual dinner which I had developed and organised over five years, one of my male staff joined us. The board member (due to be the next president) turned to my staffer and effusively congratrulated him on the best industry function he had attended in years. My staffer was clearly red-faced with embarrassment and tried to explain that he had had nothing to do with it, that it was all down to me. Undeterred, our intrepid president-in-waiting shook his hand, congratulated him again and walked away, leaving both me and my staff member stunned.
    As I said, this was but one of many such experiences over the years that I was employed there.
    In that time, I set unprecedented records in membership growth, conference and function attendance and much more but, according to some, this was really due to the big boss giving me the credit for what must have been actually his achievements because, wait for it, we must have been... well... you know the rest.
    Don't scoff. It does happen.

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  2. It is actually women bosses who are the bigger problem

    Even women think so

    See:

    http://www.couriermail.com.au/business/jobs/women-reveal-why-men-make-the-best-bosses-says-survey-by-wwwukjobsnet/story-e6freqo6-1225904601078

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