Sexual Harassment Is Common In Scientific Fieldwork 362
sciencehabit writes: Universities and other workplaces have codes of conduct guarding against sexual harassment. But what about the more casual venue of scientific fieldwork—which is also a workplace? A new survey finds that sexual harassment and assaults occur frequently in the field, with little consequence for the perpetrators or explicit prohibitions against such conduct. The study reveals that the primary targets were young women who were harassed, assaulted, and even raped by men who were usually senior to them in rank, although men also reported harassment.
Re:Some people are jerks (Score:5, Interesting)
It doesn't even need to have both genders present. We all know that there are men hitting on younger men or boys and women sometimes abuse a position of authority to get a man (or boy) into the sack. For that matter, I'm sure that there are at least occasional cases where a lesbian tries to seduce another woman that isn't interested in experimenting, although these almost never get into the news.
Re:Some people are jerks (Score:2, Interesting)
It's also stupid for people to not understand what is and isn't illegal, but here we are. Sexual harassment is one of those things that is *still* being taught in the workplace with special seminars and courses to teach people about it because such a very small percentage of the populace actually even understands what is and isn't harassment and who to report the harassment to, particularly when it's their boss or someone even higher in the organization being harassing.
A lot of sexual harassment is downplayed as men being men, jokes that aren't hurting anyone, that the harasser and the harassed are the same gender, or that the person reporting the harassment shouldn't be reporting it because the victim isn't going to report it. And yet it's still harassment. Anyone can agree that telling a woman at work to go to the kitchen and make you a sandwich is harassment. What's more ambiguous is when a whole group is laughing it off because the person that made the comment calls it a joke and the rest suddenly see the comment as a joke as well (by the way, if you didn't get it this is still harassment).
However, all the teaching in the world won't stop a criminal from committing/trying to commit a crime. Groping and rape should be reported to police immediately even before talking to your HR department, but unless there are signs that it's going to happen (maybe all the sexual harassment that wasn't being reported before) there isn't going to be much ability to prevent the crime, only to report it afterward.
Re:Some people are jerks (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe they almost never get into the news, but there is a fairly high profile one going on right now: http://money.cnn.com/2014/07/1... [cnn.com]
Broad definitions of misbehavior (Score:3, Interesting)
Look, I hate to be the asshole who says this, but
Saying 'hello' to a woman is not harassment.
Touching a woman's hand once accidentally in the breakroom as you both reach for the same item simultaneously is not assault.
Women withdrawing consent hours or days after sexual activity is not rape.
Go calculate the numbers after you remove such incidents and then tell me what the actual occurence of male-on-female misbehavior is.
Re:Some people are jerks (Score:5, Interesting)
Not all "sexual harassment" is even sexual harassment. The original article referenced several "statistics" where several things were lumped together and they weren't really comparable at all. It was a clear attempt to create bogus inflated numbers.
The entire effort seemed like mindless yellow journalism intended to generate hysteria.
So I am inclined to think the article and the study is bullshit and weak ass science that should embarass any scientist.
Re:Let me see if I can explain. (Score:4, Interesting)
The lesson I learn from this is that men should file sexual harassment claims against women who dress less than professionally as a preemptive strike.
Re:Fieldwork in particular? (Score:4, Interesting)
I can't imagine why scientific fieldwork in particular could provide an environment that promotes inappropriate behavior.
You jest, but clearly you've never been on an archaeology dig. They often consist of the academic, a few students and a bunch of randoms. The randoms are generally slightly strange people (not necessarily in a bad way) who have no job responsibilities who can sit in a field for two months and dig. They come from -all- walks of life. "normal" people generally do not sit in a field for two months and dig.
Anyway you can only dig in daylight hours and the field is in the middle of nowhere. And there's the possibility of theives trying to steal artefacts (this does happen), so the archaeologists often camp out at the dig.
After hours it's all bonfires, booze, music and drugs.
Re:The sad part (Score:4, Interesting)
You seem to be confusing normal with paranoid. Normal men don't try to avoid the women they work with due to imagined dangers.
FIist, let us set the scene. This was the late 80's early 90's. Addressing sexual harassment was relatively new.
During our mandatory sexual harassment meeting, one of the men asked a question regarding a rule of thumb for sexual harassment. The answer was "Anything a woman says is seual harassment, is sexual harassment."
You could have heard a pin drop for the next 30 seconds.
In attempts to clarify that a little more, we found out we should not compliment a woman on her appearance or perfume, and that statements like "I like your earrings" were very dangerous. One of the machinists had photos of his family in the lid of his toolbox. One of the photos was of his teenage daughter in her high school cheerleader's outfit. They made him remove it.
This was obvious overreach, and in fact after roughly 5 years, they admitted as much, and overhauled the sexual harassment program.
One of the biggest complainants was women - Normal guys took the dictates to heart, and since we didn't know if telling a woman she was looking very happy this morning would cause us to lose our job, we clammed shut. Who wants to work with live hand grenades, and where you are always the one at fault by virtue of your gender? It was an exceptionally strained relationship between the genders for many years.
And at least the women that I worked around hated it with a passion. I'll let you in on a secret. Women think and talk about sex. Women don't mind talking to the men they work with. Two of the women I worked with had the dirtiest minds I've ever come across. Mostly, they were squelched because if they started talking about anything remotely sexual, the men would leave immediately. The saddest thing was that it did not make one change in the guys who were actually harassing women. They'd keep on doing what they do, and seldom be turned in. Because that's what they do until they are stopped. Because often the woman wonders if she did something to encourage the guy. And on and on
This wasn't paranoia, it was men being told exactly how they were supposed to act. And if any woman in the work force could cost you your job for any reason they deemed as a reason - you damn well will do anything to avoid something that will cost you your job. So you shut up. You avoid. You interact only to the extent you absolutely have to, then get away.
And despite your long distance judgement, the program was changed for exactly those reasons. The original program tried to scrub the workplace free of any interaction that could even be remotely connected to sex. It placed all responsibility for any problem upon the male. And worst, it completely poisoned the relationship between the genders while it was in force, and did not correct the problem it was designed to correct.
Fortunately, calmer heads eventually got involved, and the obvious element of misandry in the first system was ratcheted down, to the point where it was not 100 percent aimed at men. The genders get along fine now.
But I always have to caution when I see this sort of thing. There is a subset of females that do not like men at all. And unless we want to completely segregate the sexes, we have to know when to identify that subset.