Sexual harassment prevalence appears to have reduced in Australia over the past 5 years, but is still unacceptably high. And if you pick absolutely any marginalised group in society, that group is significantly more likely to experience sexual harassment.
Men are far more likely to be responsible for incidents of sexual harassment – they were the harassers for the vast majority of sexual harassment of women, and the majority of sexual harassment of men.
Recent legislative changes have added a positive duty for organisations to eliminate, as far as possible, work based sexual harassment. These numbers should come down as organisations make efforts to eliminate incidents of sexual harassment.
How prevalent is sexual harassment?
In the latest survey (2021-22), 8.7% of Australians aged over 18 years experienced sexual harassment (1) in the 12 months before being surveyed. That’s a reduction from 13.3% in 2016, and from 10.7% of the population in 2012. Given this survey was done around Covid lockdowns, it’s not clear how much of the decline is due to Covid, rather than a long term trend.
Women who reported sexual harassment reported an average of 1.8 incidents during the previous 12 months, while men reported an average of 1.6 incidents.
What about marginalised groups?
Within the survey, women were far more likely to have been sexually harassed than men – 2.8 times more likely – 12.6% of all women over 18 were sexually harassed in the 12 months before the survey.
For women, many characteristics that might reduce a woman’s power in society tended to increase her chances of being sexually harassed:
Compared with all women,
- Age – 18-24 year old women were 2.8 times
- Sexual orientation – Non heterosexual women were 2.9 times
- Disability – Disabled women were 1.3 times
- Health Status – those in poor health were 1.5 times
- Poverty – those with household cashflow problems were 2.1 times
more likely to experience sexually harassment than all women. Workforce status, however, is a bit different from these other markers of status in society.
- Employment – Employed women were 1.2 times more likely to experience sexual harassment than all women. However, unemployed women were 2.3 times more likely to experience sexual harassment, with the balancing group being those not in the labour force with only 0.6 times as likely to be experience sexual harassment. One might expect employed women to have more power in society, and in general they probably have more power than women without employment. However, given the statistics below that in 26% of cases, the harasser of a woman was in a work/professional relationship with her, perhaps employed women are more likely to be in a situation where someone close by has power over them. There is also likely to be a cross over with age, where women over 65 were only 0.3 times as likely to experience sexual harassment as all women.
Note that the smaller number of men who experienced sexual harassment made it difficult to drill down into the different characteristics of men in as much detail as women, but where there were enough men, the experience of low status characteristics seemed to also lead to higher levels of sexual harassment.
Who is doing the harassing?
Some people experienced sexual harassment by both men and women (they are only counted once as people who have been harassed in this case). The overwhelming majority of sexual harassment of women came from men (120,000 women were sexually harassed by a man, and only 11,000 by another woman, with these numbers including 7,000 women who were unlucky enough to have been sexually harassed by both men and women during the previous 12 months).
And the majority of sexual harassment of men was also perpetrated by men – 31,000 men were sexually harassed by another man, and 25,000 were sexually harassed by a woman, with 14,000 men sexually harassed by both men and women during the previous 12 months. That’s at least 150,000 incidents of men sexually harassing other people, compared with at least 35,000 incidents of women doing the sexual harassing.
A known person was the harasser of 63% of women, including 26% where the harasser was in a work/professional relationship with the woman, and 16% where the harasser was an intimate partner or family member.
Where does the harassing occur?
A total of 70% of sexually harassed women were harassed face to face, with most (60%) of these incidents taking place outside the home, with many of these taking place at work, as shown in the graph above. And 57% of sexually harassed women were harassed electronically (these two numbers add to more than 100%, as women who reported incidents reported an average of 1.8 incidents each).
And what is being done?
Recent legislative changes in response to Respect@Work, the National Inquiry into sexual harassment, have introduced a positive duty for organisations. Under the Sex Discrimination Act, organisations have a positive duty to eliminate, as far as possible, the following unlawful behaviour from occurring:
- discrimination on the ground of sex in a work context
- sexual harassment in connection with work
- sex-based harassment in connection with work
- conduct creating a workplace environment that is hostile on the ground of sex
- related acts of victimisation.
Given how many incidents of sexual harassment happen in the workplace, I hope that this will mean that the next time a nationwide survey is done, there will be less sexual harassment than these unacceptably high statistics.
Support services
1800RESPECT is the national domestic, family and sexual violence counselling, information and support service. If you or someone you know is experiencing, or at risk of experiencing, domestic, family or sexual violence, call 1800RESPECT on 1800 737 732 or visit 1800RESPECT.org.au.
Definitions
(1) Sexual harassment is defined as any of:
- Indecent phone call
- Indecent text, email or post
- Indecent exposure
- Inappropriate comments about body or sex life
- Unwanted touching, grabbing, kissing or fondling
- Had pictures or videos of themselves, which were sexual in nature, distributed or posted without their consent
- Exposed to pictures, videos, or other materials which were sexual in nature and which they did not wish to see
My previous post on this general topic is here.
Bit of Beauty
As a respite from all these quite ugly statistics, a bit of beauty from my recent bushwalk in Northern Sydney. 