Nearly Half of Working American Women Face Harassment in the Workplace, and 75% of Workplace Harassment Victims Faced Retaliation When they Spoke Up

Patrick Hogan, Chicago, IL, USA, SSH Blog Correspondent

Street harassment is generally an interaction between strangers. The victims, trying to mind their own business; and the harassers, strangers intent on degrading and endangering people they may never see again. The harassers enjoy a sense of anonymity: they will not have to face their victims, nor any retaliation. Women may face harassment on the streets by strangers while walking to work, but at least they are safe in their work environments with people they hold professional relationships with, right?

Unfortunately, wrong.

A poll conducted by the Wall Street Journal and NBC News found that 48% of working women in the United States are victims of workplace sexual harassment. The poll found that 56 percent of working woman under the age of 35, 44 percent of working women between the ages of 35 to 44 years old, and 40 percent of working women over the age of 55 faced harassment in the workplace.

What happens if these women speak up against their harassers? Quite probably retaliation. According to a 2016 report by the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), 25% to 85% of working women experienced workplace harassment (the disparity in percentages a result of different responses to different surveys). The study goes on to state that only between 6 and 13 percent of workplace harassment victims file a formal complaint. Why wouldn’t victims file formal complaints? According to the EEOC’s report, 75 percent of women who made complaints about their workplace harassment were retaliated against in some form or another.

When women filed complaints they were met with retaliatory behaviors such as disbelief, humiliating remarks, social stagnation, and continued harassment by employers and coworkers alike.

I interviewed Dr. Amy Blackstone, Professor of Sociology at the University of Maine, on her research on workplace harassment. When I asked her about the effects of retaliation against working women, she explained: “Retaliation is not limited to targets of harassment. Even women who are not themselves harassed, but who spoke up when they saw it happening are sometimes targets of retaliation so they too could be bullied for speaking up against harassment.”

This harassment and retaliation directly affects potential for career progression. Dr. Blackstone described to me a 2017 research paper she and others published:

“We were looking at women in the early point in their careers, and what we found was that indeed experiencing harassment early in your career does have or can have a derailing effect. We found this one example that women who experienced harassment are six-and-a-half times more likely than those who are not harassed to change jobs after harassment– and often not even just change jobs, but change entire career paths. In addition to our survey data, we interviewed a number of women and we learned in the interviews that some sought out jobs that they thought they would be less likely to be harassed in. And oftentimes that meant choosing jobs…that are not on the fast track to getting promoted; jobs where they could kind of be alone and not have to risk interacting with too many people because of the fear that they might be harassed again.”

But what of women who are in leadership roles or positions of power in their workplaces? According to Dr. Blackstone, they may not be free from harassment either. She stated: “Women who try to move up in the workplace may be targeted [for harassment] simply because they’re trying to move up in the workplace.” She explained that, “Harassing women who are supervisors is a way of ‘putting them in their place.'”

Dr. Blackstone provided an example: “A woman I interviewed who is a manager in a manufacturing firm was the only woman in management at the firm. She attended a dinner with some clients and some colleagues of hers and, in this case, it was a client who was harassing her by groping her and making sexual comments about her and to her. This is a woman who had a position of power in her workplace, but she was experiencing the kinds of behaviors that we often hear about happening to women with less power in the workplace.”

It is clear that workplace harassment is not merely a terrible phenomenon—it is an all-too-common occurrence. It affects women trying to advance in their careers and even women in positions of power. We live in a world where many women face harassment on their way to or from work and also cannot be at work without worrying about their safety. Then they cannot even report harassment without fear of retaliation. Something needs to change.

Patrick is an undergraduate student majoring in anthropology and minoring in Islamic World Studies at Loyola University Chicago, preparing to continue onto law and graduate school. He is particularly interested in legal anthropology and the ways victims are viewed by legal systems.