How Many in Marketing Research Have Really Been Sexually Harassed?
This week on social media there’s a new meme related to sexual harassment in the work place. The meme goes something like this:
If all the women who have been sexually harassed or assaulted wrote “Me too” as a status, we might give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem.
Please copy/paste”
Sexual harassment is disgusting abuse of power. I think transparency of social media could have a real positive impact on issues like this. The one problem I have with the meme is that it seems to assume only women get harassed at work.
As it happens I personally know of 5 men in the marketing research industry who have been sexually harassed in the work place. These are men I’ve gotten to know at industry conferences who have confided their stories.
In some ways its even harder for men to come out with this. But the disregard for their experiences in the meme above has caused some to come out and say on facebook or Twitter, “Hey it’s not just women you know, #MeToo!”
I was curious what the real proportion was and so attempted to run a simple structured question in the general population of adults 21-64 on Google Surveys. The question I tried to field was “Q. Have you ever been sexually harassed in the work place? Answers, Yes, No, Not Sure”.
Unfortunately Google refused to field my question citing their terms of service. I asked what specifically and they said it was “adult content”.
Anyway, I’m posting this here now on NGMR blog so that those who want to discuss the topic in an anonymous but moderated place can do so. If you post your “#MeToo” here I would be curious whether you are male or female.
@TomHCAnderson
PS. Big thanks to Toluna and Alison Morgan for running the poll below and confirming some of my suspicions…
Sexual Harassment in Workplace
Just to clarify, I understand this is an extremely sensitive topic and it was not my intention to minimize or in any way invalidate the experience that so many women have. I was simply drawing attention to the fact that it is a problem that some men face as well, and it should never be tolerated and all of us have an obligation to stand up to it.
Thanks for posting. This happened to me a few years ago. Haven’t shared it with many and will need to think about sharing some of it here.
Thank you for commenting
Toluna can post this as a no cost “incidence check” https://us.toluna.com/polls/7211512/Have-you-ever-been-sexually-harassed-in-the-work-place?mode=results. You can view the data by age and gender!
So Toluna (Allison Morgan) ran this exact question we weren’t allowed to run on GCS, and while it’s still in field I believe, with over n=700 responses so far, amazingly it looks like the problem is just about as big among men as women.
1/3 of each gender! So definitely not just a one gender problem!
Results here:
https://us.toluna.com/polls/7211512/Have-you-ever-been-sexually-harassed-in-the-work-place?mode=results
Thanks Allison!
Allison, thanks, didn’t see your comment before posting the link 😉