Half of British women and a fifth of men have been sexually harassed at work or a place of study, a BBC survey says.<\/p>\n
Of the women who said they had been harassed, 63% said they didn’t report it to anyone, and 79% of the male victims kept it to themselves.<\/p>\n
The ComRes poll for BBC Radio 5 live spoke to more than 2,000 people.<\/p>\n
The survey was commissioned after\u00a0sexual assault claims against Harvey Weinstein\u00a0resulted in widespread sharing of sexual harassment stories.<\/p>\n
Women and men who have been sexually harassed have been\u00a0revealing their experiences on social media using the hashtag “me too”\u00a0to show the magnitude of the problem worldwide.<\/p>\n
That followed allegations, including rape and sexual assault, against Mr Weinstein from more than two dozen women – among them actresses Angelina Jolie, Gwyneth Paltrow and Rose McGowan.<\/p>\n
The Hollywood producer insists sexual relations he had were consensual.<\/p>\n
The Radio 5 live survey, of 2,031 British adults, found that 37% of all those asked – 53% of women and 20% of men – said they had experienced sexual harassment, ranging from inappropriate comments to actual sexual assaults, at work or a place of study.<\/p>\n
More than a quarter of people surveyed had suffered harassment in the form of inappropriate jokes or “banter” and nearly one in seven had suffered inappropriate touching.<\/p>\n
Of those who had been harassed, 5 live’s survey suggests one in 10 women had been sexually assaulted.<\/p>\n
More women than men were targeted by a boss or senior manager – 30% compared with 12% – and one in 10 women who had experienced harassment said it led to them leaving their job or place of study.<\/p>\n
‘Dirty and uncomfortable’<\/strong><\/p>\n One man, who did not want to be identified, said he had been harassed by his female boss.<\/p>\n He said: \u201cShe made constant comments about my appearance and how I dressed – comments asking about my hairy chest and what I liked in a woman.<\/p>\n “[It was] all laughed off by other mainly female office staff, but it left me feeling dirty and uncomfortable.<\/p>\n “I ended up with depression and confidence issues and had time off with anxiety as a result.\u201d<\/p>\n Sarah Killcoyne, from Cambridge, told BBC News she was sexually assaulted when she was still in education by two different men – a school teacher when she was a teenager and later by a college professor.<\/p>\n She said: “I would very much like to see the people around the predators – we know there’s only a few of them – to stop enabling them.”<\/p>\n Since the allegations about Mr Weinstein surfaced, many high profile names have used social media to highlight the problem of sexual assault, some also detailing the harassment they have endured.<\/p>\n ‘Paralysed by fear’<\/strong><\/p>\n Jess Phillips and Mary Creagh were among the MPs to reveal their accounts as they wanted to encourage victims of abuse to speak out.<\/p>\n Labour’s Ms Phillips told the London Evening Standard\u00a0how she had been left “paralysed by fear” when she woke up at a party to find her boss undoing her belt and trying to get into her trousers.<\/p>\n Fellow Labour MP Ms Creagh said she was just seven when she was sexually assaulted by about 12 boys during a school playground game of kiss-chase.<\/p>\n The results of the BBC survey follow\u00a0research published last year by the TUCwhich also suggested more than half of women say they have been sexually harassed at work – and most had not reported it.<\/p>\n Activist Tarana Burke is the founder of the original Me Too campaign – launched 10 years ago in the United States to provide “empowerment through empathy” to survivors of sexual abuse, assault, exploitation, and harassment in underprivileged communities.<\/p>\n She told 5 Live she feels there is now momentum behind a genuine change in the way sexual harassment is handled.<\/p>\n “From what I’m seeing and hearing, and from the groundswell of support for this, it doesn’t feel like it’s stopping,” she said.<\/p>\n “My ultimate goal is to make sure this is not just a moment, that this is a movement, and we will continue to raise our voices, we will continue to disrupt, we will continue to tell our stories until we are heard and until we move the needle.”<\/p>\n –<\/p>\n Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Half of British women and a fifth of men have been sexually harassed at work or a place of study, a BBC survey says. Of the women who said they had been harassed, 63% said they didn’t report it to anyone, and 79% of the male victims kept it to themselves. The ComRes poll for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":364919,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[107],"tags":[1549,661,798],"yoast_head":"\n