{"id":16528,"date":"2019-05-21T02:15:47","date_gmt":"2019-05-21T02:15:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=16528"},"modified":"2019-05-22T05:12:35","modified_gmt":"2019-05-22T05:12:35","slug":"women-take-a-hit-for-reporting-sexual-harassment-but-metoo-may-be-changing-that","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/women-take-a-hit-for-reporting-sexual-harassment-but-metoo-may-be-changing-that\/","title":{"rendered":"Women take a hit for reporting sexual harassment, but #MeToo may be changing that"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chloe Grace Hart<\/a>, Stanford University<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

An unprecedented number of women have come forward<\/a> to share stories of workplace sexual harassment since the #MeToo movement gained momentum in late 2017. <\/p>\n

Yet their allegations are not always well received. Questions like \u201cWhat took her so long?\u201d and \u201cWhy didn\u2019t she report it when it happened?\u201d have become a refrain. They imply that women who initially chose not to report sexual harassment handled it incorrectly – even incompetently.<\/p>\n

But my research<\/a> shows that woman have rational reasons for staying quiet because reporting sexual harassment can come with career risks<\/a>. An experiment I ran five times in the early months of the #MeToo movement, though, suggest that things may be changing for the better.<\/p>\n

Self-reporting stymies promotion<\/h2>\n

In a national survey experiment, I asked Americans to read the fictitious employee file of a woman named Sarah, described as a satisfactory employee who was enthusiastic about her work. Everyone read the same information about her work performance. <\/p>\n

However, study participants saw different information about mistreatment Sarah had experienced. In one condition, Sarah reported to HR that a coworker had repeatedly made sexual comments about her body; in a second condition, she reported that a coworker had repeatedly shouted and sworn at her. In a third condition, no harassment was reported. Then I asked participants to rate how likely they would be to promote Sarah.<\/p>\n

Each group of participants should have been equally likely to promote Sarah in every case. After all, everyone in the study had identical information about her performance, the most relevant information for making decisions about advancement.<\/p>\n