Workplace sexual harassment isn’t about sex. It’s about power. Sexual harassment is a tool harassers use to assert and maintain power in the workplace by making people feel that they’re not taken seriously or that they’re unsafe. And it’s distressingly ordinary, especially for women. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission reported in 2016 that approximately one in four women has experienced sexual harassment at work. When women are asked about specific behaviors such as unwanted sexual attention at work, the number gets closer to two in four. That’s why this issue is so important to the NH Women’s Foundation.
Sexual harassment steals women’s success at work. Women who experience harassment may suffer decreased productivity and increased absenteeism. Some will leave a job altogether, or be forced out of it. With American mothers now the primary breadwinners in more than 40 percent of households, undermining women’s achievement at work has profound negative implications for families, children and our economy.
The recent spate of sexual harassment and misconduct allegations against high-profile men and the #MeToo social media campaign could be a watershed moment for this longstanding problem. That’s especially true because businesses have an unshakable case for stopping sexual harassment. Besides simply being the right thing to do, reducing sexual harassment saves litigation and settlement funds, improves productivity and retention, and prevents costly reputational damage.
What Businesses Can Do
So where to begin? Businesses should embrace strategies proven to reduce sexual harassment: workplace cultures that value and model diversity, inclusivity, and respectfulness; meaningful commitments of time and money to employee training, including bystander intervention training; and human resources policies that emphasize safe, reliable reporting procedures and ensure meaningful accountability.
But we must not lose sight of the conditions that allow sexual harassment to take root in the first place—the systematic power imbalance between men and women in the workplace. Empowering women at every level of the employment ladder is a crucial prevention strategy—perhaps the crucial prevention strategy.
Men’s disproportionate power at work manifests in many ways. Women earn less than men for the same work. Fields occupied primarily by female workers are often underpaid and undervalued. Women are far less likely than men to hold the reins of corporate authority, either as C-suite executives or as board members.
When it comes to balancing work and family, women face a double whammy: disproportionate responsibility for caregiving means they’re more likely to work part time or need flexible scheduling. Even women who aren’t primary caregivers are nevertheless perceived as having less to give at work because of family duties.
Public policy has not kept pace with the needs of a modern, gender-diverse workforce, perhaps because so few women hold elective office. Many low-wage workers, who are predominantly women, lack access to basic employment protections like paid sick days, paid family leave and predictable scheduling.
Even in the cultural context of #MeToo, there’s a devastating backlash. Some of the very men who can mentor women and champion their advancement are professing reluctance to be alone with women in perfectly ordinary business settings. That’s the opposite of what we need.
Creating a Level Field
We can level the playing field for working women. Legislatures can empower women by passing legislation like HB 628, which would set up a paid family leave program here in NH and keep more women in the workforce. Businesses can audit their payrolls for gender wage disparities and ensure that their policies don’t systematically favor people of one gender. Spouses can examine the ways in which they share (or don’t share) household and family responsibilities. We can all encourage more women to run for office, which is a top priority at the NH Women’s Foundation. Fairness and equality in the workplace is good for us all.
Sexual harassment is nothing new. Nor is it new for women to talk about it, whether in whispers among friends or in televised Congressional hearings. But for perhaps the first time, lots of us are listening. Difficult conversations about sexual harassment are taking place in break rooms and boardrooms, on social media and in state houses, around dinner tables and on college campuses. Let’s not miss this opportunity to build 21st century workplaces that value women and empower them to achieve their full potential.
Sarah Mattson Dustin is director of policy for NH Women’s Foundation. The Foundation invests in opportunity and equality for women and girls in the Granite State. For more information, visit nhwomensfoundation.org.
Current Issue - May 2024