As many as 1 million Canadians have been sexually harassed at work at some point in their careers, according to estimates from a report released Friday (December 5).
The Angus Reid Institute (ARI) surveyed 1,500 adults and found 28% of them have had to deal with either sexually charged talk, requests for sexual favours or sexual advances in the workplace.
“The results show that while both genders identified experiences of harassment, women are — unsurprisingly — almost four times as likely to have been harassed as men,” the report said.
Based on those figures as well as employment statistics, ARI estimated as many as 1 million people have experienced some sort of sexual harassment in the workplace.
Furthermore, the study found that of the 28% who acknowledged being sexually harassed, one-quarter of them said the experience has happened sometime within the last two years.
Just 22% of those who’d been sexually harassed eventually reported the incident to their employer.
Among the most common reasons for not reporting sexual harassment was feeling the issue was too minor (26%), thinking the employer would not respond well (21%), embarrassment over what happened (16%) and uncertainty over whether the incident qualified as harassment (16%).
The topic has been particularly heightened in Canada following the October firing of CBC personality Jian Ghomeshi.
After his dismissal, the Q host admitted in a Facebook post to engaging in “rough sex.” But media reports quickly followed, alleging he did not receive consent from women to perform those acts and that he had sexually harassed a co-worker.
Toronto police charged Ghomeshi with sex crimes in November.
According to the ARI findings, 75% of Canadians said sexual harassment in the workplace is an important issue that should get more attention, while 76% said it was a widespread or common occurrence.
