More women say they're hearing "sexually inappropriate" comments at work, according to a 2007 phone survey released by Novations Group, a Boston consultant.
Some 38% of women said they heard sexual innuendo, wisecracks or taunts at the office last year, up from 22% in 2006. The percentage of men hearing such comments stayed steady at 45%. Indeed, men were more likely than women to hear all types of tasteless or questionable comments, with 44% saying they heard racial slurs, for instance, compared with 24% of women.
Novations CEO Michael Hyter says one theory is that women's impatience with such comments' frequency is rising. But Paul Secunda, professor of law at the University of Mississippi, says the responses could partly reflect a lowering of barriers between the sexes, with male employees making remarks more openly as a way of treating women like peers. The problem, he says, is that "what might be reasonable to a man may not be reasonable to a woman." That difference, he adds, "shows up in sexual-harassment case law."
A vice president in a New York real estate firm says, "As a woman in a male-dominated industry, I feel the men I work with often tone down their remarks in my presence. This puts me at a disadvantage, since it means they're sanitizing and often not fully representing their feelings/intentions/opinions. There are boundaries, however, even for guys speaking with guys. If they're using 'damn,' ignore it. If they are using the n-word or c-word, that's out of bounds, even for most men."
Regarding swearing in the workplace, David Friedman of New York says, "Someone just starting in the workplace should grin and bear it. Anyone who's so offended by a colleague's swearing won't last long in the corporate environment. It's better to focus on what you can control, such as your performance and behavior, than on what you can't, such as your boss's swearing."
Sources: BusinessWeek, March 17, 2008, and The Wall Street Journal, March 11, 2008