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posted by janrinok on Monday September 22 2014, @04:28AM   Printer-friendly
from the ashamed dept.

Margaret C. Hardy reports that the life sciences have recently come under fire with a study that investigated the level of sexual harassment and sexual assault of trainees in academic fieldwork environments and found that 71% of women and 41% of men respondents experienced sexual harassment, while 26% of women and 6% of men reported experiencing sexual assault. The research team also found that within the hierarchy of academic field sites surveyed, the majority of incidents were perpetrated by peers and supervisors. "More often it is the men of one’s own field team, one’s co-workers, who violate their female colleagues," writes A. Hope Jahren:

There is a fundamental and culturally learned power imbalance between men and women, and it follows us into the workplace. The violence born of this imbalance follows us also. We would like to believe that it stops short of following us into the laboratory and into the field — but it does not. I listen to my colleagues talk endlessly about recruiting more women into STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) disciplines, and postulate what the barriers might be. Sexual assault is a pernicious and formidable barrier to women in science, partly because we have consistently gifted to it our silence. I have given it 18 years of my silence and I will not give it one day more.

Many of us work in fields related to this study - what are your experiences?

 
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  • (Score: 2) by VLM on Monday September 22 2014, @12:56PM

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Monday September 22 2014, @12:56PM (#96719)

    "That makes it rather ugly indeed"

    which again circularizes the issue, because anecdotally the people I met when in .mil claimed it was better than civilian life.

    Unfortunately the two best places I'd guess for a single woman are probably in .mil or academentia. Sales and marketing or modeling industry are obviously not good choices for a woman desiring not to be objectified. Those stats would be much more interesting than .mil

    If the only criteria is being far away from men, then there are probably safer fields like school lunch lady (although I heard of a guy working at a lunch counter, once) or maybe a convent, or a female prison (as an inmate or guard, I suppose inmates are slightly safer?).

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  • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Monday September 22 2014, @03:47PM

    by tangomargarine (667) on Monday September 22 2014, @03:47PM (#96799)

    Unfortunately the two best places I'd guess for a single woman are probably in .mil or academentia.

    I thought there was a whole thing lately about how the military has a culture of raping female subordinates and then all the male superiors covering it up?

    --
    "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
    • (Score: 2) by VLM on Monday September 22 2014, @04:21PM

      by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Monday September 22 2014, @04:21PM (#96822)

      The PR thing was the latter. The former has always been seen as somewhat less likely in .mil. The latter is hardly a solely .mil thing.

      There are also substantial regulations against mere fraternization in the chain of command, so thats why it gets more attention that at a bar or just plain old .com facility.

      The inspectors who used to get interested in fraternization violations were ordered off the topic WRT don't ask don't tell, resulting in increased misbehavior in general. Or rephrased given that they're reassigned it may be slightly more risky to steal ammo for deer hunting or use a .gov vehicle to pick your kids up from school, while slightly less risky to have a relationship (consensual or not) with your subordinates.