Harassment headlines spotlight change and, more so, the lack of it

The accusations — of an Uber manager propositioning an engineer via instant message on her first day in his department, of the top-rated host at Fox News calling female co-workers to talk about sex — are so lurid they sound like outliers.

But years after companies and courts began insisting sexual harassment has no place on the job, it continues to fester — particularly when employers tolerate it, experts say.

While the allegations are unproven, reports that Fox, Uber and other organizations may have allowed such treatment to go unchecked, push back against assumptions that sexual harassment has diminished, even as it has been labeled unacceptable.

The effort to change workplace dynamics “feels like it’s been going on a long time, but 30 years in the history of male-female relationships is less than the blink of an eye,’’ said Louise Fitzgerald, a psychologist who in the 1980s developed a survey long used by the U.S. military and other employers to measure their workers’ specific experiences of sexual harassment.

“We keep having to rediscover this over and over again, and every time we’re shocked.’’

Last year, Fox News’ CEO Roger Ailes resigned amid allegations that he pressured female employees to have sex. Now, the company and top-rated host Bill O’Reilly are under fire for paying women to drop suits accusing him of much the same.

In February, a former Uber employee posted a detailed account accusing the company of ignoring complaints by her and other women of managers pressuring them for sex. CEO Travis Kalanick issued a statement declaring there was “no place for this kind of behaviour’’ in the company, then soon after came under scrutiny for a report he took employees to a Korean escort bar. But they are hardly alone. The parent company of the Kay and Jared jewelry chains is battling complaints filed by more than 200 former employees in private arbitration that executives fostered a workplace where managers groped female subordinates and push them to have sex in exchange for better job opportunities.