Sexual discrimination and harassment have been illegal since the 1960s, as was addressed in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. More attention came to the idea of sexual harassment in the 1970s, and courts began making key rulings in the 1980s, such as a Supreme Court ruling defining harassment of a sexual nature as discrimination and therefore illegal.
In the 1990s, sexual harassment was often in the news and companies began creating policies against it. And in recent years, the MeToo movement has given women who were harassed on the job a voice to speak out, helping to shed some light on workplace harassment.
In other words, this movement has been happening for decades, and that suggests that instances of sexual harassment should be trending down. But are they?
They appear stagnant
Unfortunately, some reports note that the percentage of women who claim they’ve faced sexual harassment on the job is stagnant and relatively unchanged. About 40% of women make this claim. That’s the same amount of women who said they were harassed in the 1980s when the Supreme Court was ruling on sexual harassment nearly 40 years ago.
The law is very clear that sexual harassment is prohibited. Employers know this, and the public knows it. Even so, it continues to happen, and employees need to know that the risk remains. They also need to know that this type of harassment is definitely illegal and that there are steps they can take. All employees who have been harassed on the job need to know about their legal options at this time.