Legal News

Harassment Claims (By Men!) On the Rise

By Ashby Jones

A WSJ story out Wednesday offers up this eye-raising set of statistics:

Since the start of the recession, a growing number of sexual harassment complaints have come from men. Some 16.4% of all sexual harassment claims-or 2,094 claims-were filed by men in fiscal 2009, up from 15.4%, or 1,869 claims, in fiscal 2006, according to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

There’s lots of interesting stuff to tease out of here. For starters, despite the Demi Moore/Michael Douglas visions that might come flooding into your head, LBers, it hardly seems like that’s the typical harassment situation. To the contrary, a lot of the harassment appears to be toward men by men.

Furthermore, don’t be misled: the numbers don’t necessarily reflect the fact that there’s more sexual harassment of men these days. It could just mean that more cases are getting reported. Why would that be? One word, writes the Journal’s Dana Mattoli: Recession. The recession has hit men harder than women, and, writes Mattoli, “when jobs are harder to obtain, many forms of litigation, especially discrimination, increase.”

Another factor that could account for the uptick: the stigma associated with being harassed might also be on the wane. Still, says Stephen Anderson, president of Anderson-davis Inc., a workplace training company in Denver, filing a claim can often be a no-win situation for a man. “If a woman is harassing you, people might think ‘What is wrong with you? You should be flattered,’ ” he says. In cases where another man is the harasser, the victim might be afraid of being stigmatized as unmanly or unable to defend himself.

In any event, corporate America — or at least some elements of it — are sitting up and taking note. Companies have educated employees about sexual harassment for years, but some are making their messages more male-focused to safeguard themselves from potential litigation.

Photo: iStockPhoto

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on March 24, 2010 (boomark / email).