One in four women has been targeted by sexual harassment at work: Statcan
One in four Canadian women and one in six men has been the target of sexual harassment in the workplace, according to a Statistics Canada report — a finding that experts call disheartening, but unsurprising.
The agency, which surveyed Canadians just before the onset of the pandemic, said these workers had either experienced inappropriate verbal or non-verbal communication, witnessed sexually explicit materials, received unwanted physical contact or suggested sexual relations.
“I’m not surprised. We know that’s the reality for many workers, and particularly women in the workplace,” said Adriana Berlingieri, academic research associate at Western University’s Centre for Research and Education on Violence Against Women and Children. The centre is working in partnership with the University of Toronto and the Canadian Labour Congress to study the prevalence of workplace harassment and violence, work that commenced in October 2020.
Berlingieri said the agency’s findings are in line with what the centre and its partners are already starting to see from their surveys.
“It’s just really tragic, some of the stories that we hear,” she said. “I hope employers and governments really understand the extent and the severity of harassing behaviours.”
The report comes at a time of renewed national focus on workplace sexual harassment. Canada’s military has been roiled in scandal for months with a series of top officials, including former chief of defence staff Jonathan Vance, his replacement Art Mcdonald and the military’s head of human resources facing accusations of inappropriate sexual conduct. Maj.-gen. Dany Fortin, who was leading Canada’s vaccine rollout, was charged with sexual assault this week for an alleged incident in early 1988.
The nature of these scandals are represented in the agency’s findings. Women were more likely to experience sexual harassment in occupations where men have historically outnumbered women, Statcan noted. It highlighted trades, transportation, equipment operation and related occupations, where 47 per cent of women in those fields said they’d experienced sexual harassment in the year leading up to the pandemic, compared to just 19 per cent of men.
Many respondents who said they’d experienced workplace sexual harassment said someone in a position of authority was to blame.
One in three women who had been targeted with sexually explicit materials — and roughly the same percentage of men who’d experienced unwanted contact or been propositioned for sexual relations — said it was by an authority figure. Almost half of women and a third of men who’d experienced gender-based discrimination said it came from someone with authority.
“That’s a pattern I see play out, that individuals in position of authority take advantage of that authority,” said Gillian Hnatiw, a lawyer who specializes in sexual assault, harassment and violence cases, and is the principal at Gillian Hnatiw & Co.
“Whether it’s true or whether it’s simply perceived by the employee who’s experiencing it, it feels like their job’s on the line. And if your job’s on the line, your financial security is on the line, and from (that) flows a whole bunch of other things. You can feel extremely vulnerable and powerless.”
Those findings likely play a role in why many employees who’ve experienced workplace sexual harassment don’t report their experiences. Only about half of women who experienced inappropriate communication in the workplace discussed the incident with someone at work, and in less than half of these incidences the person was a supervisor or boss, Statcan said.
One in five women, and one in 10 men, said they didn’t speak to someone about inappropriate communication at work because they feared negative consequences for their careers.
According to Chelsie Smith, a PHD student at Carleton University, reporting harassment becomes an even more complicated calculation for workers who are experiencing some form of precarity, such as hourly wage workers, employees with unstable or unpredictable work environments, and people who are working under the table.
“If these individuals are already vulnerable to losing their jobs, they’re probably not going to be doing much to rock the boat,” she said.
Smith is currently researching harassment reporting practices in these environments with the goal to build programs that help precarious employees feel more empowered to report harassment. Her interest came from her own experience with “egregious” sexual harassment by a colleague over 18 months, which involved being asked out on dates and receiving inappropriate gifts to her home. When she went to her union, she was told they couldn’t help her because she hadn’t recorded details or explicitly asked her harasser to stop.