In a moment when high-profile cases of sexual harassment in the workplace have received enormous, and warranted, media attention, there’s another important story about workplace sexual harassment in America that needs to be told: How much it’s fallen, and for whom. In 1997, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the U.S. agency charged with enforcing federal workplace discrimination laws, received 16 thousand complaints about sexual harassment from Americans; in 2017, that figure had fallen to 9,600, a drop of more than 40% in 20 years.
Sexual Harassment Claims Have Fallen Among Young White Women, but Not Older Women or Black Women
An analysis of 20 years of data from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
February 21, 2018
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Summary.
An analysis of 20 years of data from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission reveals that, while harassment claims filed by young white women has dropped, claims filed by African-American women and women haven’t. In addition, larger companies have seen no drop in claims over this time period. These findings show that sexual harassment issues within companies are far from solved, and that improvements have been uneven depending on race and age. Managers and Human Resources departments should understand that while existing techniques may have reduced sexual harassment among some groups, they’re not working for everyone. New training and reporting mechanisms, ones that recognize the seeming disparity in the progress that we’ve made, are necessary.