A new study from the Worker Institute at Cornell University has found that workplace sexual harassment impacts about 1 in 10 New York state residents.
The study found that 10.9 percent of all New York residents have experienced some form of sexual harassment at some point during their working careers. While sexual misconduct tends to be predominantly a women’s issue, men are not immune. The results found that 12.2 percent of New York women experienced workplace sexual harassment compared to 9.5 percent of New York men. Additionally, 13.9 percent of minorities reported experience sexual misconduct at work at least once compared to 8.5 percent of their White peers.
Recently, Linda Barrington, associate dean of outreach and sponsored research and executive director of the Institute for Compensation Studies at Cornell, submitted preliminary report numbers for the New York State Senate and Assembly hearing in Albany on sexual harassment in the workplace. “Because workplace sexual harassment is both prevalent and complex, efforts to respond will need to be broad-based, enlisting the support and engagement of a range of constituencies including employers, unions and worker centers, lawyers, educators, policymakers and anti-violence advocates,” said Dr. Barrington.
Dr. Barrington is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison where she majored in economics. She holds a master’s degree and Ph.D. both in economics from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
The full report, “Findings on Workplace Sexual Harassment from the 2018 Empire State Poll,” will be released this spring.