Originally published here.

WHO defines sexual violence as any sexual act, attempt to obtain a sexual act, or an act directed against a person’s sexuality using coercion, including rape, attempted rape, or sexual harassment.

Workplace sexual harassment includes requests for sexual favours, and other verbal or physical harassment of a sexual nature that creates an intimidating, hostile, or offensive work environment, interferes with work performance, or affects an individual’s employment.

Women who are subjected to sexual harassment or sexual violence (sexual harassment or violence hereafter) at work seldom file complaints or report their experiences to their supervisors.

However, they are more likely than other women to quit their job owing to the harassment.

Being subjected to workplace sexual harassment has been associated with decreased self-confidence and increased stress, fatigue, sleeping problems, anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation.

Despite these reported negative effects, workplace sexual harassment and violence has been understudied worldwide.

The reported global prevalence of workplace sexual harassment and violence among women varies greatly between studies, ranging from 11–72%,3,7, and accu-mulated evidence suggests that rates might differ by work sector. High prevalence has been documented among female social and health-care workers (51–69%), journalists (57%), and women working in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) sector (46%).

Sexual harassment and violence in the academic environment is also common; 22–47% of female graduate students report that they were sexually harassed by a faculty member and 34–58% by another student.18–21 The great variability in prevalence across studies is largely owing to varying methods used to assess sexual harassment or violence.10,14Few studies have assessed what factors might place women at increased risk of workplace sexual harassment and violence.

The few existing studies on this topic indicate that workplace sexual harassment and violence is more commonly experienced by younger women (ie, 18–39 years old)22,23 and women with a university degree.24 An Australian report published in 2018 found that individuals belonging to sexual minorities (eg, gay, lesbian, bisexual, or pansexual) were more likely to report being exposed to such behaviour at work in the past 5 years than heterosexuals were (52% vs 31%).

Despite being informative, previous studies had limited generalisability because of small sample sizes and a focus on a narrow range of work sectors. To our best knowledge, no previous study has examined the rates of sexual harassment and violence across work sectors at the population level. The present study aimed to expand on the existing literature by using a nationally representative cohort of 15 799 women to assess the prevalence of workplace sexual harassment and violence by demographic factors (eg, age, sexual orientation, and education), factors relating to the workplace (eg, work schedule), and across 18 works sectors.

To our knowledge, this large-scale cohort study is the first to assess the prevalence of workplace sexual harassment and violence among women across multiple work sectors at the population-level. Our findings indicate that approxi mately a third of women report exposure to sexual harassment or violence during their lifetime, and 8% report exposure in their current workplace. Building and expanding on previous findings, we identified several factors associated with increased risk of workplace sexual harassment and violence among women.

Specifically, sexual harassment and violence within the current workplace was most frequently reported by women who were young, highly educated, working shifts or irregular hours, or working within tourism, the legal system and security, or as public figures. Furthermore, lifetime exposure to workplace harassment and violence was more common among women in sexual minorities than among heterosexual women.

In conclusion, our findings support that there is a high prevalence of sexual harassment and violence aimed at women in the workplace, with approximately a third of women in Iceland reporting such exposure over their lifetime. Expanding upon previous work, our results identified several potential areas in which to target prevention and intervention eorts. Namely, we found that sexual harassment and violence within the workplace was most common for women who were  young, single, highly educated, who belonged to a sexual minority, had high incomes, and who worked long or irregular hours, in shifts, or in the sectors of tourist services, legal system and security, manufacturing and repair, health care, or as a public figure.

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