Nearly half of the working women in the United States say they’ve been subjected to unwanted sexual advances or harassment on the job.
That’s the result from a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, following the slew of allegations against Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein and the subsequent #MeToo social media campaign.
Forty-eight percent of the women surveyed said they’d been verbally or physically harassed at work (or had advances made). Younger women, between the ages of 18-34 were most likely to report the incidents, with 56% of that demographic saying they’d been affected.
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Perhaps as a result of the #MeToo campaign, awareness of sexual harassment is especially high. A full 67% of the men surveyed, and 71% of the women, said they believe the practice is widespread. Forty-one percent of the men surveyed said they had witnessed harassment at their office.
It’s also letting women know they’re not alone. Some 44% said they chose to tell their own stories after seeing press coverage of recent stories about sexual harassment. (That number was higher with young women, coming in at 55%.) And a sizable 78% say they are now more likely to speak out in the future if they are subject to such treatment.