Research: 64 Percent of Women in Science Experience Harassment

As government initiatives push women to enter careers in science, a new study reveals that young female scientists are getting sexually harassed and even assaulted while conducting field work crucial to their success — mostly by those senior to them in their research teams.

The study, published Wednesday in the journal PLOS ONE, is based on an online survey of 142 men and 516 women with experience working in anthropology, archaeology, geology and other scientific disciplines.

Of those surveyed, 64 percent said they had experienced sexual harassment, and 20 percent said they had been victims of sexual assault. Researchers found evidence that younger women were particularly at risk while working in the field.

Researchers recruited respondents through social media, email and links on the websites of major organizations in anthropology and other scientific disciplines that require fieldwork. The study’s authors noted several limitations to their findings, including the possibility that knowledge of the survey topic could have made the sample unrepresentative, attracting people because they had negative or positive experiences.

“Our main findings — that women trainees were disproportionately targeted for abuse and felt they had few avenues to report or resolve these problems — suggest that at least some field sites are not safe, nor inclusive,” Kate Clancy, an anthropology professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and lead author of the study, said in a news release. “We worry this is at least one mechanism driving women from science.” Study co-authors were Robin Nelson of Skidmore College, Julienne Rutherford of the University of Illinois at Chicago and Katie Hinde of Harvard University.

Two years ago, a young woman identified as “Hazed” spoke out about her experience of sexual harassment in the field and about a professor who joked that only “pretty women” were allowed to work for him. She confided in Clancy, who made the story public in a blog post on Scientific American in 2012.

“There were jokes about selling me as a prostitute on the local market,” the young woman wrote. The size of her breasts and her sexual history were openly discussed by her professor and her male peers, and pornographic photos appeared daily in her private workspace.

“What started out as seemingly harmless joking spiraled out of control, I felt marginalized and under attack, and my work performance suffered as a result,” she wrote.

Nearly half of those surveyed in Clancy’s study identified themselves as anthropologists. For them and others in similar disciplines, the desire to conduct research in the field is what draws them and is also the key to success, Clancy said.

Many university science programs require fieldwork to complete both undergraduate and graduate degrees. Research shows that those who do more fieldwork are more productive in writing papers and are able to secure more grants, the study said.

According to the report, more than 90 percent of women and 70 percent of men were “trainees” — undergraduates, post-graduates or post-doctoral students — at the time they were targets of sexual harassment or assault and that women were significantly more likely to have experienced sexual assault.

Clancy’s survey showed little awareness among respondents of how to report sexual harassment or assault. Fewer than half recalled ever encountering a code of conduct at field sites where they worked, and fewer than one-fourth recalled a field site having a sexual harassment policy.