Statistics from the Australian Human Rights Commission’s emanating from a 2018 national survey of 10,000 Australians representative of the working population found:
43% of respondents reported having experienced sexual harassment at some point in their lifetime on the basis of the legal definition.
In the last five years one in three people have experienced sexual harassment of some kind in their workplace.
49% of workplace cases of sexual harassment are witnessed by at least one other person, 69% of which did not intervene.
19% of people who made a formal complaint were labelled as a “troublemaker”, 18% were ostracised, victimised or ignored by colleagues and 17% resigned from their jobs because of someone else’s predatory behaviour.
19% of formal complaints resulted in a formal warning and 45% of victims claim nothing changed as a result of them ‘putting their neck on the line’.
The most age common group to experience sexual harassment were those between 18-29.
Those aged between 15-17 were “the least likely to have been sexually harassed in their lifetime”, but most likely due to their young age.
Sexual harassment is most common in the media, telecommunications and information industries.
The AHRC report is unequivocal. Australian workplaces are rife with sexual harassment and which in a serious workplace issue.