Workplace sexual harassment can happen to anyone, but it most commonly happens to women. Many have had to deal with it for their whole career.
If you have faced unwelcome incidents, you might think getting a promotion could put a stop to them. That once you gain increased status in the company, people will not dare to target you. A group of researchers decided to see if this was true.
They used two methods to determine how much sexual harassment women faced. They interviewed some in supervisory roles and some in non-supervisory roles. First, they asked them directly if they had experienced it. Secondly, they gave them a list of experiences (which were all examples of sexual harassment) and asked them to note which had happened to them.
Rising up the ladder increases the likelihood of sexual harassment
Women in supervisory roles were 30% more likely to say they had suffered sexual harassment than those in non-supervisory roles. But they were 100% more likely to have experienced it when you go by the experiences they admitted to having undergone.
Bearing in mind that people use sexual harassment to keep others down is crucial to understand these results:
More people know who supervisors are: When there are a hundred workers and five bosses, most people will know who the bosses are. They need to know because bosses could affect their lives more than most of their same-level colleagues could.
More people feel challenged by them: Others may not have considered you a threat when you were just their colleague. Now you are above them, some might. Equally, those further up the management chain may have never heard of you until now, let alone felt threatened. Now that you are on an upward trajectory, they may do.
No matter what your status within a company, you have a right to a workplace free from sexual harassment. If your employer is failing to prevent it, there are legal options to explore.
