Life
Workplace sexual harassment has hit the news repeatedly over the past few months, from the allegations that recently came out against Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein, to Taylor Swift's successful suit against a DJ who she said groped her at a work event. The phenomenon of people abusing their positions of power to sexually harass others in the workplace, whether subordinate or not, is hardly a new one, but new science from Denmark has shown just how damaging sexual harassment can be for your mental health — depending on who's doing the harassing.
A survey of American women in 2015 found that 1 in 3 women had experienced sexual harassment in the workplace, while in a study in the UK by the Everyday Sexism Project in 2015, 52 percent said they'd had it happen to them. And many of those incidents don't go anywhere near a court; a 2013 poll by YouGov and HuffPost found that 75 percent of the people who'd experienced workplace sexual harassment hadn't come forward about it. Victims often don't think they'll be believed, or fear the backlash attached to accusing somebody with more power or potential resources in a professional space. But those who experience it, whether they do or don't report, may be at risk of serious mental health consequences, and this new research has looked closely at why.
Why Harassment By Colleagues & Bosses Could Be So Damaging
Why might harassment in the workplace be linked to worse mental health outcomes if it comes from those who work alongside you? Part of it may be proximity and shared working space; while you may be able to avoid a client (by moving away from the service area, passing the account on to another person, or some similar action), the people who you see every day in your workplace environment are often out of your control. Another area of research suggests part of an answer: rudeness and incivility in a workplace, it turns out, seriously damage performance and work environment.
Two recent studies have shown that just being rude to your coworkers, subordinates or boss, creates toxicity. One, involving 24 Israeli medical teams, found that those exposed to rudeness were significantly less likely to perform life-saving procedures effectively or have good performance than those with a civil work environment. Another, published in the Journal of Organizational Behavior, found that people who encountered rudeness at work tended to be extremely embarrassed (particularly if the perpetrator was more powerful than them), get stressed and isolated, and feel much less secure in their position. And that's just somebody being a bit less civil than usual; even without the extreme discomfort of sexual harassment, people's ability to flourish in workplaces goes downhill rapidly when others don't treat them with respect.
The effects of sexual harassment in the workplace can go beyond psychological distress, particularly for women. In a study published in Gender & Society in 2017, researchers found that the experience of sexual harassment by women "increases financial stress, largely by precipitating job change, and can significantly alter women’s career attainment." Not only is harassment making us more prone to mental health issues, it's making us poorer and less successful.
If you believe you've experienced sexual harassment (including one-off comments, "banter," or even compliments), knowing what to do next is hard. Choosing what to do about the issue, whether it's talking to the perpetrator, involving management and HR or going higher up, can be challenging. If you don't know where to turn, the National Association of Working Women, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the U.S. Department of Labor Women's Bureau and other experts have sexual harassment helplines to give you advice on your legal standing and your best options. And it's important, particularly in light of this new evidence, not to dismiss what's happening to you as just "something that happens to everybody" or "not a big deal." It's a big psychological burden, and you do not deserve to carry it.
If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, call the National Sexual Assault Telephone Hotline at 800-656-HOPE (4673) or visit online.rainn.org.