Workplace sexual harassment is something that has been happening since there were jobs. Over the years, American labor laws have attempted to rectify the situation. Your boss is not allowed to harass you based on your gender, they can’t make unwanted advances, they can’t offer you promotions in exchange for sexual favors and much else. You’re supposed to be protected from this type of predatory behavior.
Unfortunately, the statistics show that this may not actually be working. Sexual harassment appears to be on the rise in recent years.
How much did it increase?
To see the increase, you just have to look at the reported sexual harassment charges. You can then compare these to all of the harassment allegations from the year. If you look at the period from 2014 to 2017, these claims made up 24.7% of the total. But if you look at 2018 through 2021, you will find that the claims account for 27.7% of the total.
This simply means that there’s been a 3% change in the makeup of the harassment allegations. Of course, more studies will need to be done to look at the totals running from 2022 to 2025 once we have those statistics. This will help to show if this one period was a fluke or if this increase is going to continue into the future and set the trend for the American workplace.
What is clear, however, is that harassment still happens with a lot of frequency. Those who have been harassed on the job need to make sure they know about all of their legal options.