Sexual Harassment In The Workplace

More than three years after the #MeToo hashtag sparked conversations about sexual harassment in the workplace, more than 20% of tech employees say they’ve experienced harassment in the workplace. 

In a user poll with more than 2,600 tech employees, Blind found that 22% of tech employees today have experienced harassment at work. Of the responses, SAP, Walmart, Uber, Netflix, Capital One, and Indeed.com are the companies that report the most experiences of employees who have been sexually harassed.  Additionally, 1 in 4 Salesforce employees says they have witnessed sexual harassment in the workplace. 

Intel, Stripe, NVIDIA, Airbnb, and Cisco all have very low percentages of experienced harassment at work, (all below 8%). 

This user-generated post does not ask for any demographic information as a disclaimer. You can access the raw data here. 

An employee at Google shared, “I’ve lost count of how many times – inappropriate comments, inappropriate touches, unwarranted advances, borderline unacceptable complements (not the good kind). At one point, I stopped dressing up and resorted to lose fitting, super understated clothes, which did help a bit.

This is one aspect where Google has been just great – beyond a few subtle (and rather polite) advances for dates, I’ve had literally nothing to deal with, unlike at my previous jobs where predators were in plenty and acted without fear of consequences. Totally respectful culture a G (at least in my experience).” 

An employee at Oracle shared, “Not me, but my female colleague was harassed and stalked by someone from the HR team. She quit the job in disgust.” 

An employee at Pinterest shared “(F) yes. Previous company. Coworker always puts his hand on my waist when moving around me. I noticed he didn’t do it to any of the men on the team. It felt so gross. I didn’t report; I asked them to stop touching me.”

A different user shared, “Yes, and I am a guy. I didn’t know it was sexual harassment at that time.”

As users share their stories, it is clear that sexual harassment takes many forms in today’s workplace. According to a 2016 study by the EEOC, around 75% of people who experience workplace harassment fail to bring it up with a manager, supervisor, or union representative. One major reason is that employees fear that they will be retaliated against at work. 

This is where the power of anonymity opens up the dialogue. Back in 2018, Blind created a #MeToo channel in 2018 where 42,500 people have read at least one post about #MeToo. 

We were curious, had the #MeToo movement made a positive impact in the workplace? 

So, we set up a poll and asked the employees who use Blind if they’ve seen an improvement in the workplace since the MeToo movement began. 

The results differed by the employer but, overall, we found that about 70% of employees haven’t seen an improvement in their workplace since #MeToo began two years ago. So, it’s not shocking that over 20% of employees are still sharing their sexual harassment stories three years later.

In April of 2019, we asked users to answer “TRUE” or “FALSE” to this one simple statement: I have witnessed or experienced sexism at my current company.

The survey ran from April 11 through April 16, 2019, and was answered by 7,930 users on our app Blind. Overall, 36.8 percent responded with “TRUE,” they have either witnessed or experienced sexism at their current company, while 63.2 percent responded with “FALSE.”

We also broke down companies’ results with at least 100 unique responses from employees. Here’s what we found:

• 1,076 Microsoft employees responded to our survey, with 40.15 percent answering with TRUE, which is about three percent higher than the survey average.
• 59.38 percent of Intel employees answered with TRUE, which is the highest among any other companies with at least 100 employee responses.
• Rounding out the five companies with the highest percentage of employees indicating that they have witnessed or experienced sexism at their job are Adobe with 41.18 percent, Oracle with 40.51 percent, Microsoft with 40.15 percent, and Amazon 38.93 percent.
• Google had the lowest percentage of employees answering with TRUE, with 25.85 percent.
• Rounding out the five companies with the lowest percentage of employees indicating they witnessed or experienced sexism at their job are Facebook with 29.29 percent, Uber with 32.26 percent, eBay with 31.68 percent, and Apple with 36.54 percent.

A common misconception is that harassment must be sexual to be illegal. However, under Title VII, offensive conduct based on an employee’s gender and severe or pervasive enough to create an abusive work environment is also illegal. For example, a workplace might be hostile if women are told to be more “feminine” or live up to other gender stereotypes, are left out of important meetings, and have their work sabotaged by their male coworkers.

And even though most employees are now working from home, there is still sexual harassment in the virtual workplace, but the good news is that some reporting numbers suggest it’s relatively rare.

Companies need to make continuous efforts for all employees to feel safe, as sexual harassment has evolved. If you think you are currently experiencing sexual harassment at work, review your company’s internal workplace sexual harassment policies. You may want to look out for confidentiality clauses, who to approach, and how to file a report internally. Document everything you can. To the best of your memory, keep a detailed written record of any actions, comments, or incidents that occurred. And, when possible, try to identify sexual harassment in action and act as an ally to your coworkers. 

Join the conversation here.