Sexual harassment can threaten a victim's emotional and mental health. It can lead to the loss of self-esteem and the inability to trust others, and it can undermine not only workplace relationships but personal relationships outside of work as well. Since harassers choose their victims as the result of a desire to exploit weaknesses they perceive, the victim is forced to fend off the harasser while being picked apart methodically, and the effects of this can lead to stress and anxiety.
Experts like licensed clinical psychologist Dr. Colleen Cullen say that individuals who have been sexually harassed in the workplace more likely will exhibit signs of clinical depression and anxiety, and more likely will suffer from stress induced emotional issues, such as panic attacks. When the harassment is endured over a long period without respite or action to resolve the harassment, it can trigger symptoms of depression and anxiety that are new to the victim or it can exacerbate a previous condition that may have been controlled or resolved. Research has found that sexual harassment that happens early in a person's career can create the conditions for long-term depressive symptoms.
Research has shown that victims of sexual harassment often suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a mental health problem that some people develop after experiencing or witnessing a life-threatening event, and that the likelihood of a victim suffering from PTSD increases exponentially when the harassment involves violence and/or assault. Acute stress can interfere with the victim's work and personal life and exacerbate symptoms of depression. This creates a vicious cycle that is difficult to break without professional intervention and often requires pharmaceutical intervention in order to break the cycle.
What often can make the process of coping with sexual harassment in the workplace more difficult is the line of thinking that discounts non-violent harassment as "not as serious." What is deeply problematic about this assessment is that while psychological effects of harassment can be as damaging as a violent physical assault, the marks left on the psyche can be harder to heal.
For some victims of sexual harassment in the workplace, the psychological and emotional effects of the harassment have long-term effects that result in a diminished sense of self-worth, an increase in self-doubt, and an inability to see themselves as professionally competent. This psychological effect can lead to a downward spiral if the victim doesn't receive support or treatment, and even if they do, the effects can last for a decade or more and affect career decisions and opportunities.
Many people view sexual harassment in the workplace as a case of an individual being overly sensitive and as a result, discount the victim's trauma. The problem with this is that medical science supports the assertion that whether physical or psychological, the body reflects the damage in various internal and external ways.
Psychologists, such as Dr. Nekeshia Hammond, point out that "somatizing," the process of turning emotional trauma into physical illness, is a common form of coping. Symptoms can include things like muscle aches, headaches, and if left untreated, can result in chronic physical problems, such as high blood pressure or diabetes. If left untreated, the long term issues can affect the internal organs, such as the heart.
Physiologically, the stress of harassment affects the brain and because the part of the brain that processes emotions is right next to the brain stem, which deals with involuntary functions, such as breathing and heart rate, our emotions can have a profound effect on the rest of our systems. As clinical psychologists point out, the drain on our resources can create the necessary conditions for autoimmune, metabolic, and cardiovascular problems.
The stress of having to work in the situation day after day also can result in physical illness as victims describe suffering from the emotional stress that can cause things like hives, hair loss, weight gain or loss, sleeplessness, and intestinal problems. If the situation isn't actively dealt with, the consequences sometimes can be physically debilitating.
Research done on victims of workplace sexual harassment has shown harassment to have long-term effects on physical and mental health but since the field is fairly new, researchers caution that the true long-term impact of effects from workplace sexual harassment are yet to be discovered.
Physically and emotionally, the effects of sexual harassment in the workplace can be debilitating and when combined with the professional and economic costs, the problem becomes even more devastating.
Sociological studies done by Dr. Heather McLaughlin, a professor at Oklahoma State University, show that approximately 50% of women who are sexually harassed in the workplace end up quitting their jobs within two years of the harassment with the number rising to 80% for women who'd been severely sexually harassed. What she found was that women quit for two main reasons, from the sexual harassment itself or in the way the harassment was handled by the company.
Sometimes the connection between sexual harassment and the injuries it causes is quite direct, such as in the case of the women working at the Ford plants in Chicago. A boss makes sexual demands in exchange for the worker keeping their job and when they refuse, the worker is fired for refusing to acquiesce. The company or individual manager uses some other pretext for the firing, such as shoddy work quality or lateness and/or absenteeism. But the reasons are transparent to the worker and often, the rest of the team.
Sometimes, the firing technically occurs because of some other event but it still is clearly related to sexual harassment. For example, at the Chicago Ford plants, it was common practice that harassers would give women who gave in to their demands better prime jobs while the women who resisted were assigned the more dangerous, less desirable jobs as punishment. Sometimes the pressure of the work would force the women to quit in which case it would be attributed to the fact that "women can't handle tough work" rather than the effects of being sexually harassed.
Many women at the Chicago plants spoke of becoming physically ill as a result of the constant harassment. This had an effect on their attendance records and resulted in negative marks on their annual evaluations. These absences also gave supervisors cause to fire women who spoke out about the harassment or filed charges against the harasser.
What is even more troubling is that women who quit their jobs tended to start over in an entirely new field and often chose fields where they felt they less likely would be sexually harassed. Dr. McLaughlin described one case in which a woman who worked in a bank was made aware of a co-worker who had been harassing her behind her back, making lewd gestures, leering at her, drawing pictures of her on his computer, and showing co-workers. Once she was made aware of the harassment, she reported the man to her employer, and the employer reprimanded the harasser but took no further action. The fact that her co-workers backed up her story and had known about what was happening without telling her took away her ability to trust them and after cutting back her hours at the bank, she finally quit and took a job with a computer hardware company. Her rationale was that the job was fairly solitary and it seemed safer than working with people who might, again, betray her trust.
While some people might consider quitting and moving to a new field a voluntary move, the reality is that it's about making a decision to get out of a terrible situation while putting one's economic standing at risk. One of the choices women make is to move into women-dominated fields, and often, this means that they'll make less money than they would have in male-dominated sectors.
The loss of wages and benefits is another consequence of sexual harassment in the workplace. An employee who resists sexual advances or objects to obscene humor in the office may suffer work-related consequences including being denied a promotion, being demoted, and/or finding themselves losing benefits. The loss of wages also can include a loss of other job benefits, such as pension contributions, medical benefits, overtime pay, bonuses, sick pay, shift differential pay, vacation pay, and participation in any company profit-sharing plan. In the long-term, these losses add up whether women are forced out of jobs or are pushed out by the stress created by the harassment.
Sometimes, a company responds to an employee's complaint of sexual harassment by transferring that person to another position and leaving the harasser where they are. This forced reassignment is another form of job-connected injury and it may be compounded if it results in a loss of pay or benefits or reduced opportunities for advancement.
The consequences of sexual harassment in the workplace for the victim can be compounded by the fact that even when the victim reports the harassment, the process of investigating the complaint will leave the victim in an increasingly vulnerable position while investigators determine whether there are grounds for disciplinary action.
The effect of this on co-workers can create an untenable atmosphere as the harasser may set up conditions that lead to tension and turmoil in the office. Fearing they may be next to be targeted, co-workers often remain silent even when they recognize what the harasser is doing is not only wrong but also damaging. If the harasser has supporters in their corner, lines may be drawn within the office making it difficult to be productive, and if the company is hesitant to take action, the entire workplace may suffer as employees function under the understanding that the company does not have their back.
In the Chicago Ford plants, the women not only were betrayed by the company leadership but also by their own union leaders who warned them that if they pursued sexual harassment charges, they might damage the company in a way that left no one with a job. The pressure to conform and let their co-workers get away with abusive behavior was buttressed by placing the responsibility of ensuring that the plants didn't suffer damage from bad press on the shoulders of the women being harassed. Even the men who were appalled by the behavior of their co-workers were threatened with violence and/or job loss if they spoke up and supported the women.
As stated in the previous lesson, the cost of sexual harassment in the workplace can end up being staggering for businesses once the price of lost time, attrition, and training new employees is added up. The price that companies may pay in terms of having their reputation sullied by sexual harassment claims also can be devastating for the bottom line.
In 2015, the EEOC received over 6,800 claims of sexual harassment resulting in 1,829 charges and $46 million in direct settlements. These figures don't reflect the associated legal costs of assembling a defense, so even when the judgment results in no settlement, the case can cost a business tens of thousands of dollars. A 2008 study found that replacing employees who leave as the result of sexual harassment can prove difficult because potential new hires less likely would consider working for companies they perceive to have a problem with sexual harassment, and when customers hold that perception, they less likely will engage with the company.
With the growth of social media and technology that allows for communication about experiences in the workplace and with businesses, the likelihood of incidents of sexual harassment reaching the public are more likely than ever.
