Conclusion

Despite decades of attention, legal action, and advocacy, this analysis of data, research, and
experience shows that sexual harassment remains a serious and pervasive problem across
virtually all industry sectors and workplaces. We found that no sector remains untouched by
sexual harassment, nor unaffected by its impacts: Sexual harassment damages the lives, health,
financial independence, and opportunities of countless victims, and costs businesses not only in
legal fees, but in lost productivity, morale, effectiveness, and talent.

Sexual harassment is about the interplay of power and gender present in every sector of the
economy at virtually every level. While the data clearly 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, sexual harassment 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, are often targets and women can be
harassers. A sexually harassing culture can become so normalized that no one recognizes it, or
doesn’t object to it for fear of being labeled a troublemaker and losing employment or status in
the workplace. And harassment can come sideways, from co-workers, or from third parties like
clients, customers, or patients.

Factors that Drive Sexual Harassment

We found that workers across industries experience many forms of harassment: some experience
sexual harassment that would rise to the legal standard of either quid pro quo harassment, or
harassment that is so severe and pervasive that it constitutes a hostile work environment that
negatively impacts one’s work. Many also commonly experience gender harassment, which is
generally not about sexual attraction or sexuality at all, and may not rise to the standard required
to file a legal complaint. Nevertheless, gender harassment can powerfully shape individual
experience, workplace cultures and block women’s and other targets’ access to opportunity and
advancement, perpetuating traditionally masculine power structures. Gender-harassing physical,
verbal, and symbolic behaviors insult and degrade a target’s gender in an effort to assert power,
control behavior, or force those who don’t conform out of a particular job or out of the
profession entirely.

The analysis clearly shows that sexual harassment is driven across all sectors by power and
gender imbalances, as well as the often unconscious assumptions that are deeply rooted in
stereotypes about gender roles. These stereotypes often shape our beliefs around who belongs
where and who should do what in our society. We found that some factors that drive sexual
harassment are present in various forms across all industries, including gendered power
imbalances and vertical segregation, racial inequality, legal status, isolation,
retaliation, and reporting systems that don’t work well.
We found that no sector remains untouched by sexual harassment, nor unaffected by its
impacts.

Other factors are unique to or more prevalent in particular sectors. For instance, in female-
dominated, low-wage sectors, tipped work and the need to “curry favor” with customers and
clients in order to make ends meet can embolden sexually harassing behavior and mute the
response, if any, to it. In male-dominated low- and middle-wage sectors, and in traditionally
masculine blue-collar sectors men can experience masculine identity threat—based on the
perception that only men can and should do certain jobs. This can trigger sexually harassing
behaviors as a strategy to make women and others who don’t conform feel unwelcome and unfit
and force them out. Even in high-wage sectors, the tenure system and economic insecurity can
protect powerful harassers and drive sexual harassment in female-dominated settings such as
education.

In male-dominated high-wage professions, powerful myths can create environments where

Where Do We Go From Here?

We found that organizations typically have three primary responses to combat sexual
harassment: ignoring complaints or harassment, firing a harasser, or offering sexual
harassment training. Clearly, these approaches aren’t working. Firing a harasser may solve a
specific problem in the short term. Offering a canned, digital sexual harassment training, as is the
norm, may protect an organization from legal liability, but do little to change work culture.
Ignoring complaints and failing to recognize sexual harassment only provides fertile ground for
it to thrive. None of these strategies are enough to respond to, prevent, and end sexual
harassment.

There is no quick fix, one-size-fits all solution to sexual harassment. Instead, real and lasting
change will require targeted responses, informed by research. Different workplace and industry
policies, legal structures, cultures, and norms across industry sectors powerfully shape the
experience of sexual harassment and need to guide the response to it. Ultimately, preventing and
ending sexual harassment will require creating work cultures of civility and respect that no
longer tolerate or normalize sexual harassment, legal structures that protect all workers, and
workplaces of fairness and opportunity that value the contributions and talents of all workers.
But how that’s done will be very different in cultures organized to protect the “rainmakers” and
“creative geniuses” who have harassed with impunity in high-wage, male-dominated sectors,
than in low-wage, male-dominated agricultural work environments where workers have little say
or power, and a precarious legal status. These workers often face language barriers and are
financially dependent on the job to survive.
Preventing and ending sexual harassment will require creating work cultures of civility and
respect that no longer tolerate or normalize sexual harassment.

Vertical segregation and power imbalances are among the biggest driving factors of sexual
harassment across all sectors. Equalizing power and roles will require shifting gender norms and
beliefs, promoting more women and historically marginalized groups into leadership roles,
valuing the paid and unpaid work that women have traditionally done, and opening opportunities
for men to be more active taking on caregiving responsibilities at home.

Although we have identified similar factors that drive sexual harassment across sectors, how they
operate and therefore need to be addressed can vary significantly by sector. For instance, workers
across a number of sectors experience third-party harassment, or harassment from someone
other than a coworker or boss. For restaurant workers, this might be from customers, for nurses
and health professionals, from their own patients, and for lawyers, from their clients. But each of
these relationships with a third party comes with different power dynamics, and therefore,
requires tailored solutions. To protect restaurant workers from their customers, reformers have
recently focused on abolishing tips, a major form of leverage clients have over workers. To
protect nurses or home health aides from the sexual advances of patients, some have suggested
not only clear anti-harassment policies, complaint reporting and investigation structures, but also
specialized training in how to handle harassment from patients, particularly those with declining
mental facilities. For retail workers, managers can not only keep a watchful eye, listen to and
investigate worker complaints, but also make public anti-sexual harassment policies, appropriate
behaviors and warn or ban abusive customers. Costco was made to pay $250,000 for failing to
protect a female worker from a male customer who stalked and harassed her for over a year. In
high-wage sectors, moving forward will require moving away from non-disclosure agreements,
creating civil work environments, and designing structures to deal with sexual harassment in a
straightforward, transparent way.

Isolation is also a common factor that can increase the likelihood of sexual harassment in all
sectors. But how it is experienced, and how organizations need to design solutions to respond to
it, can be very different. The isolation of housekeepers working alone on empty floors in the
hospitality industry has made it easier for hotel guests to sexually harass, expose themselves, or
abuse lone housekeepers. Thus, some companies are responding by having housekeepers work in
pairs and even including panic buttons in their equipment. A journalist working in isolation on a
story, in the office, or out in the field, a law enforcement officer out an investigation, a scientist
working late at a lab, a military specialist on a remote base or navy ship—all may be exposed to
a higher likelihood of experiencing sexual harassment because of their isolation.

Our #NowWhat Toolkit identifies a path forward to better prevent, respond to, and
ultimately, eradicate sexual harassment.

Each instance requires an understanding of and a response tailored to the norms and structures of
their respective jobs. For instance, a journalist may be able to bring along a photographer or
videographer so she doesn’t have to go alone to a meeting. If the interview is in a hotel room, she
could visit the hotel ahead of time and ask staff to regularly knock on the door with tea and
coffee in order to check in on the situation. Also, she can, in many circumstances, choose not to
do the story, or not to meet a source in a place that’s isolated and potentially insecure. These
solutions do not apply, however, to a housekeeper who often cannot quit going to a particular
house.

On the other hand, some of the factors we have examined are unique to one sector or industry.
These also require entirely unique approaches, from addressing tipped wage work, and
expanding legal protections, to confronting destructive myths around gender and performance,
promoting diversity in power structures and creating work environments that value all workers’
contributions.

Building off our analysis, we have constructed the #NowWhat Toolkit, which identifies a path
forward to better prevent, respond to, and ultimately, eradicate sexual harassment.

Courageous survivors of sexual harassment and assault have had their voices heard and stories
believed, thanks to the #MeToo movement. Now, there is renewed energy to make real and
lasting change. Our analysis suggests that change is not only possible, but that it is already taking
place in a handful of sectors and workplaces. In our accompanying toolkit, we highlight the
promising research and practice-informed solutions that are working now and will propel us
forward so that all people are able to have agency, respect, and opportunity at work, and to live
healthy, secure, and empowered lives.