Megan Bohn and Catherine Zander

The National Academies of Science Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) released a long-awaited report on sexual harassment in academia on June 12. The report begins with staggering numbers. Survey data of female academics show that 50 percent of faculty and staff as well as 20-50 percent of students have been sexually harassed. Women of color face more harassment than their white counterparts, and sexual or gender minority women faced more harassment than their cis and heterosexual counterparts. NASEM also points out that the actual percentage of women who have faced harassment is higher than reported because not all surveys followed standard practices that capture all forms of sexual harassment.

The Three Types Of Sexual Harassment

The report defines three types of sexual harassment: sexual coercion, unwanted sexual attention, and gender harassment. Sexual coercion is referred to in legal environments as quid pro quo sexual harassment. In this type of harassment, favorable professional or educational treatment is conditional upon sexual activity. For example, a higher grade, or a promotion or a special project is given in return for a date or sexual favors.

The second type of harassment the report defines is unwanted sexual attention. This is unwelcome sexual advances that can include sexual assault. In this category are unwelcomed expressions of romantic or sexual interest that are unreciprocated and offensive to the target. Examples of this include unwanted physical contact (hugging, touching) as well as persistent requests for dates or sexual behavior despite rejection and discouragement.

The third and most common form of sexual harassment is gender harassment. This is defined as “verbal and nonverbal behaviors that convey hostility, objectification, exclusion, or second-class status about members of one gender.” Gender harassment falls into two subdomains, sexist hostility and crude harassment. Crude harassment uses sexually crude and denigrating terms based upon gender. Sexist hostility includes demeaning comments, jokes, or behaviors. Examples include sabotaging a woman’s equipment, and comments like, “you should be at home with your kids,” “women aren’t good at math,” or “women are too emotional for leadership positions.”

Suffering and Retreat

All three types of harassment are harmful to their targets’ mental and physical well being, and to women’s career progress. The report found that sexual harassment is often ambient and harmful to all members of the work environment. Sexual harassment undermines women’s and bystanders’ productivity and well being. It damages their health, increasing the incidence of depression, stress, anxiety, exhaustion, headaches, major depressive disorder, and PTSD. The toll is so great that women who have been harassed have an increased risk of cardiac incident and weakened immune systems.

The report noted that sexual harassment is not an attempt to draw women into relationships. Sexual harassment is about driving women out of “male” spaces, and it often succeeds. For both the women being harassed and those who witness it, the common ways to cope with sexual harassment are the same: they disengage from work and withdraw in efforts to avoid the perpetrator. Often they will leave their position or academia altogether.

The Culture is the Problem

The report found no evidence that legal compliance has decreased workplace sexual harassment. Investing in methods to promote culture change will be more effective than relying solely on legal compliance to avoid liability, in preventing sexual harassment from occurring. Legal compliance alone does not recognize the most common forms of sexual harassment - sexist hostility - and most targets of sexual harassment never formally file a report.

Many women have well founded fears of retaliation. This keeps women silent, particularly in environments where there have been few repercussions against past offenders. In environments where sexual harassment is most prevalent (i.e. environments that are predominantly male with male leadership and cultures tolerant of harassment) nothing short of a cultural shift that includes diversity on all levels of leadership will adequately address the issues.

A Way Forward: Diversity, Inclusion, and Respect

The report provides 15 recommendations for promoting an academic culture with integrated values of diversity, inclusion, and respect to prevent sexual harassment. A few of the recommendations emphasize the need for more care and support for targets and bystanders. This suggestion for support specified providing alternative ways to report and record incidents without fear of retaliation. In addition, career, legal, health, and mental health care should be provided and accessible.

Prevention

Several recommendations place the preventative responsibility on the whole academic community. Similarly to the current requirements for training on research misconduct, training on ethical expectations and bystander training, to provide the skills to interrupt and intervene in harassment, should be standard practice. These trainings should be periodically reviewed and evaluated to ensure their effectiveness. Additionally, to foster diverse, inclusive, and respectful communities, all choices regarding society memberships and honors, awards, promotions, and hiring should take candidate diversity and history of ethical behavior into consideration.

Disproportionate power dynamics often occur in academia, with its inherent power differential between the mentor and the mentee. This contributes to sexual harassment. To reduce this, the report suggested that mentees have multiple mentors and funding through departmental or independent sources, removing the reliance on only one mentor for guidance and funding.

Transparency and Accountability

The final recommendations center around increased institutional transparency, both within the institution and in the greater academic community. When an incident report is filed, both the target of the harassment and the individual who files the report should be made aware of the final findings and decision. On a community wide scale, institutions should report their incidence of sexual harassment rates, providing the opportunity to individually address issues at specific centers. With attention from the whole academic community, institutions would be held accountable, and the prevention of sexual harassment made a high priority.

A Place at the Table

The focus of this report is on changing behaviors, not on changing opinions. Hearts and minds may follow, but in the meantime, academia can become a healthier and happier place, with enough room at the table for everyone.

Megan Sampley Bohn, PhD, is the co-chair of the NPA Advocacy Committee and the assistant director for the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine Office of Postdoctoral Affairs, where she works on policies and programming for postdoctoral training. Catherine B. Zander, PhD, is an American Society of Hematology/American Association for the Advancement of Science Science and Technology Congressional fellow. She is also the vice chair of the Outreach Committee for the NPA and the co-chair of the Advocacy Committee for the NPA.