New York - Americans differ widely in
their views of what constitutes sexual harassment, with age and
race as well as gender throwing up the dividing lines, posing a
challenge for those who police for such conduct in the
workplace.
The issue has been thrown into the national spotlight as a
string of prominent men in U.S. politics, entertainment and the
media have been felled by allegations of sexual misconduct in
recent months.
A Reuters/Ipsos national opinion poll, released on
Wednesday, asked more than 3,000 American adults to consider
eight different scenarios and then prompted them to decide if
they would personally label each to be an example of sexual
harassment. The variation in responses showed a need for
employers to spell out expected standards, employment experts
said.
While most adults in the December 13-18 poll agreed that acts
such as intentional groping or kissing “without your consent”
amounted to sexual harassment, they disagreed over a number of
other actions.
When asked about “unwanted compliments about your
appearance,” for example, 38 percent of adults said this
amounted to sexual harassment, while 47 percent said it did not.
Some 41 percent of adults said they thought it was sexual
harassment when someone told you “dirty jokes” but 44 percent
said it was not. And 44 percent of adults said that
nonconsensual hugging was sexual harassment, while 40 percent
said it was not.
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, a federal
agency that enforces workplace discrimination laws, says sexual
harassment can include unwelcome sexual advances as well as
other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature that affects
an individual's employment, interferes with their performance or
creates an intimidating or hostile work environment.
But courts have disagreed on when individual actions cross
the line into harassment. And many workplace sexual harassment
cases are settled by employers before they ever reach a court,
so there is not a constant judicial airing of standards.
TOUCHING AND HUGGING
Since people come to work with different ideas of what is
appropriate, managers should train their employees and develop
clear lines of conduct so that there are no misunderstandings,
said Suzanne Goldberg, director of the Center for Gender and
Sexuality Law at Columbia Law School.
“The onus is on employers” to set the tone, Goldberg said.
“Even if the co-workers don’t object or go to management to
complain.”
In the Reuters/Ipsos poll, for example, 19 percent of men
said that touching someone intentionally without their consent
was not sexual harassment, compared with 11 percent of women.
The poll did not specify exactly what was meant by
non-consensual touching.
Fifty-two percent of people from racial minorities said that
they considered non-consensual hugging to be sexual harassment,
compared with 39 percent of whites.
While most adults said they thought that it was sexual
harassment to send “pornographic pictures” to someone without
their consent, younger people appeared to be more permissive.
Eighty-three percent of millennials, or those adults born
after 1982, said it was sexual harassment, compared with 90
percent of gen-Xers (born 1965-1981) and 94 percent of baby
boomers (born 1946-1964.)
Experts in sexual harassment law said it is understandable
that women, especially women who are racial minorities, define
sexual harassment differently than men, given that many have
experienced it first-hand.
“Men do not cross the street to avoid people,” said Joanna
Grossman, a law professor at Southern Methodist University who
specializes in workplace equality. “Virtually all women do,
whether or not they’ve been attacked before. It’s part of
growing up in a group that’s been victimized for so long.”
Clear workplace standards would help everyone, including
those who are accused of sexual harassment, said Minna Kotkin,
director of the Brooklyn Law School Employment Law Clinic.
Kotkin, whose clinic provides legal help for people dealing
with sexual harassment in the workplace, said she recently
advised a man who said he was fired because he misunderstood
where the line had been set.
“He worked in retail, and this was a place where there was
sexual banter going around,” Kotkin said. “And one day he made a
comment about a co-worker’s breasts. And then later she claimed
that he grabbed her by the waist.”
“He got fired, and he was really surprised,” she said. “He
thought that conduct was part of their relationship ... But the
question is, maybe this woman tolerated this all along and then
finally had enough?”
The Reuters/Ipsos poll was conducted online in English
throughout the United States. It has a credibility interval, a
measure of accuracy, of 2 percentage points for the entire
sample. The credibility interval is higher for subsets based on
gender, age and race, as the sample size is reduced.