Essay on Statistics of Sexual Harassment

Sexual harassment is one of the major issues in our society, because it has enormous negative impact on the individual’s mental health, performance and productivity in the workplace. Sexual harassment is considered to be sex discrimination that violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. According to the statistical data, represented by the poll conducted by Louis Harris and Associates on 782 Americans, about 31% of women and 7% of men reported they were harassed at their working place, 100% of women reported that the harasser was a man, about 59% of men reported they were harassed by a female employee, 41% of men reported their harasser was a man (Sexual Harassment Statistics, 2010, para.1). Those women who had been harassed at work report that about 43% of them were harassed by the supervisors, 27% of women report they were harassed by a senior employee, 19% of women report were harassed by their coworkers, and 8% – by a junior employee (Sexual Harassment Statistics, 2010, para.2).

Sexual harassment also occurs in schools. According to the recent report from the American Association of University Women, the representatives of which surveyed 1,965 students in grades 7-12 in May and June 2011, half of the students reported that they were sexually harassed, but did not inform the police or teachers, and 9% of students told their teachers about sexual harassment. 27% of students reported their parents, and 23% told friends about harassment (Phi Delta Kappan, 2012, p.7).

According to the statistics represented by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, in fiscal year 2008, there were 13,867 charges of sexual harassment, and 15.9% of them were filed by men.  In 2008, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission resolved about 11,731 sexual harassment charges. It was recovered $47.4 million as the monetary benefits for the charging parties. (Sexual Harassment,2009,  para.4).

The study proves the fact that “96% of the victims of sexual harassment experience severe emotional stress, about half suffered work performance stress and over a third had physical stress problems” (Boland, 2005, p.45).



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