Women At Work

As the U.S. economy continues its slow climb back from last decades’ recession, workers are facing an uphill battle. Unfortunately, in the struggle to find their footing, women are having to face an additional systemic and ubiquitous challenge.

Although the U.S. ranks among the most equitable countries in the world when it comes to rights in the workplace, women still face an astounding amount of sexual harassment while on the job. The following graphs analyze data from sexual harassment charges filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in the U.S. in 2016.

In manual labor jobs, there are fewer women and higher sexual harassment claim rates. While one might expect the number of claims to rise with the number of women in a given field, actually we see the opposite in the data. For instance, in the heath care industry where women account for 80% of the workforce, the claim rate is just over 1%. Conversely, in construction where women make up only 12% of workers, the claim rate is five times that amount. Ultimately, the more women are around, the better environement a workplace is for women.

An intriguing outlier with agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting. With women making up just 22% of workers, the claim rates for those fields are nearly two and a half times the average for other manual labor jobs. One explanation for this could be the inherent seclusion of the jobs often coupled with a lack of supervision, which was documented in the recent PBS Frontline documentary Rape in the Fields.

Again, in the manual labor grouping, manufacturing stands out as a job field where the percentage of women is moderate but the number of claims being filed are far greater than other industries. A close second is the accommodation and food service fields, which we know to be a troubling sector as well from another PBS Frontline documentary Rape on the Night Shift.

Of note, government fiscal years begin Oct 1st of the previous year and end on the last day of September. The data used in these graphics includes claims from Jan 2016 to the end of Sept 2016, the last three quarters and therefore three-fourths of the total claims that would be filed for that year.

Since the election of Donald Trump and the subsequent MeToo movement, it would be interesting to gauge those impacts in the number of claims filed with the EEOC through the end of 2016 calendar year until now.