Women are experiencing sexual harassment in corporate America as much as they did five years ago, a new report reveals.
McKinsey & Company and LeanIn.Org released their joint Women in the Workplace report this week — the largest study analyzing the state of women working in corporate roles, they say — which examined a decade’s worth of data collected from 480,000 participants across the U.S. about their workplace experiences.
While women are increasingly landing high-ranking executive roles, jumping from occupying 11% of them in 2020 to 20% in 2024, women’s comfort in the workplace has not improved in tandem. Sexual harassment remains a prevalent issue, with nearly four in 10 women reporting some form of it in their office cultures. This remains basically the same as it was five years ago, when McKinsey last researched the matter — in fact, it’s gotten worse. When last surveyed, 35% of women cited sexual misconduct in their offices, as compared to 37% now.
The problem knows no age, with younger women (defined as those under 30) reporting the same level of harassment as women 50 and over – roughly 35% of each age group has experienced some form of sexual harassment in their career, researchers found.
Worse, women across the board remain less-than confident in the effectiveness of reporting misconduct to human resources or supervisors. “I’ve felt like I can’t voice myself because of my age,” one young, entry-level woman (who was not identified by name) said in the report. “It’s assumed that you won’t have a good idea, or they won’t take your idea seriously.”
In the news, we’ve seen several women with prominent harassers trying to show a bold way forward. For example, singer Cassie filed a lawsuit against former manager (and ex-boyfriend) Sean “Diddy Combs – who was, by the way, arrested in New York City this week on charges of racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking. Former NYP cop Roxanne Ludemann, meanwhile, filed her own suit earlier this year against Timothy Pearson, Mayor Eric Adam’s senior advisor, alleging repeated occurrences of harassment in the workplace.
But even as women battle for better treatment, there is room for improvements in other areas of their professional lives, too. To be sure, some things have improved – employers offer more work-life benefits for women, for example, with a record 92% of companies surveyed now offering paid maternal leave to employees. Still, disparities in pay remain a pain point. Researchers assert that it will take 22 years for white women — and twice as long for Black women — to reach pay parity.
Microaggressions, defined as everyday forms of disrespect, also plague workplaces for women of color and LGBTQ women, which one Black manager cited in the report calls, “a heavy burden.” The respondent, also unnamed, continued: “If you’re too strong, you’re an angry Black woman. “If you’re too soft, you can’t handle the role, or you’re unqualified.”
To address these myriad challenges, researchers suggest that companies invest more effort into encouraging women leaders, reconstructing their workplace practices, and engaging male employees in implementing strategies that help their female colleagues advance. One company leading by example is financial giant Mastercard, which connects “women entrepreneurs to the tools they need to grow their businesses,” its chief people officer, Michael Fraccaro, said to researchers in the study.
Yet, more work still needs to be done, researchers concluded. “The next phase of change will require even more tenacity, creativity, and optimism — and that starts with rekindling the commitment to diversity and fairness that got us to this point.”
