Impact of Sexual Harassment on Women in STEM Fields Studies

1. Sexual Harassment of Women: Climate, Culture, and Consequences in Academic Sciences, Engineering, and Medicinehttp://sites.nationalacademies.org/shstudy/index.htm

2. Statement of task To undertake a study of the influence of sexual harassment in academia on the career advancement of women in the scientific, technical, and medical work- force. The study will include the following: • Review of the research on the extent to which women in the fields of science, engineering, and medicine are victimized by sexual harassment on college and university campuses, in research labs and field sites, at hospitals/medical centers, and in other academic environments. • Examination of existing information on the extent to which sexual ha- rassment in academia negatively impacts the recruitment, retention, and advancement of women pursuing scientific, engineering, technical, and medical careers, with comparative evidence drawn from other sectors, such as the military, government, and the private sector. • Identification and analysis of policies, strategies, and practices that have been the most successful in preventing and addressing sexual harassment in these settings.

3. Statement of task In reviewing the Statement of Task, we determined that research on the most appropriate and fair practices and processes for investigating and adjudicating reports of sexual harassment was beyond our Statement of Task. We acknowledge that this is an important and complex area and one in which institutions have expressed a desire for guidance; however, it was beyond the scope of their work and expertise to examine it in the detail it deserves.

4. Sponsors • The National Science Foundation was the major funder of the study. The Henry Luce Foundation funded the initial project workshop and also pro- vided funding for the study. The National Institutes of Health, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Burroughs Wellcome Fund, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and National Institute of Standards and Technology also sponsored the study.

5. Committee members and staff PAULA A. JOHNSON (NAM) (Co-Chair), President, Wellesley College SHEILA E. WIDNALL (NAE) (Co-Chair), Institute Professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology ALICE M. AGOGINO (NAE), Roscoe and Elizabeth Hughes Professor of Mechanical Engineering, University of California, Berkeley NICHOLAS ARNOLD, Professor of Engineering, Santa Barbara City College GILDA A. BARABINO, Daniel and Frances Berg Professor, Dean of the Grove School of Engineering, the City College of New York KATHRYN B. H. CLANCY, Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign LILIA CORTINA, Professor of Psychology, Women’s Studies, and Management and Organizations, University of Michigan AMY DODRILL, Vice President and General Manager, Trumpf Medical USA LISA GARCIA BEDOLLA, Professor, Graduate School of Education, and Director, Institute of Governmental Studies, University of California,Berkeley LIZA H. GOLD, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Georgetown University School of Medicine MELVIN GREER, Chief Data Scientist, Americas, Intel Corporation LINDA GUNDERSEN, Scientist Emeritus, U.S. Geological Survey ELIZABETH L. HILLMAN, President, Mills College TIMOTHY R.B. JOHNSON, (NAM), Arthur F. Thurnau Professor, Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology and Professor of Women’s Studies, University of Michigan ANNA KIRKLAND, Arthur F. Thurnau Professor, Professor of Women’s Studies and Director, Institute for Research on Women and Gender, University of Michigan EDWARD LAZOWSKA (NAE), Bill & Melinda Gates Chair, Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering, University of Washington VICKI MAGLEY, Professor of Psychology, University of Connecticut ROBERTA MARINELLI, Dean, College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences, Oregon State University CONSTANCE A. MORELLA, Former Congresswoman JOHN B. PRYOR, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Psychology, Illinois State University BILLY M. WILLIAMS, Vice President for Ethics, Diversity, and Inclusion, American Geophysical Union Study Staff FRAZIER BENYA, Study DirectorAUSTEN APPLEGATE, Senior Program Assistant (from May 2017) ASHLEY BEAR, Program OfficerALLISON BERGER, Senior Program Assistant (from September 2017) JAIME COLEMAN, Senior Program Assistant (November 2016 to December 2017)ADRIANA COUREMBIS, Financial OfficerFRED LESTINA, Senior Program Assistant (from December 2017)MARIA LUND DAHLBERG, Program OfficerIRENE NGUN, Research AssociateTHOMAS RUDIN, Director, Committee on Women in Science, Engineering, and Medicine Fellows ALEX HELMAN, Christine Mirzayan Science and Technology Policy Graduate Fellow (January 2018 to April 2018) KELLYANN JONES-JAMTGAARD, Christine Mirzayan Science and Technology Policy Graduate Fellow (January 2017 to April 2017)

6. Terminology • Sexual coercion • Employment or education contingent on cooperation • Unwanted sexual attention • Not directly tied to employment but unwelcome and offensive • Gender harassment • “‘‘a broad range of verbal and nonverbal behaviors not aimed at sexual cooperation but that convey insulting, hostile, and degrading attitudes” • Psychology/social science based rather than legal definitions

7. NAS Terminology and structure • FINDINGS are statements of fact that the committee highlights • Some reports have “Conclusions” instead • Recommendations are specific actionable items • Usually aimed at a government agency that sponsors the study but in this case are more community-wide

8. Major findings by chapter

9. Chapter 2 notes: Research methodologies • Surveys • Careful definitions and approaches needed • Very supportive of ARC3 survey approach • Experimental methods • Interviews and case studies • The committee commissioned their own study from a research firm (RTI) using qualitiative interviews • Also had a consultant analyzed data from a UT ARC3 campus climate survey

10. Chapter 2: SH research 3. There are reliable scientific methods for determining the prevalence of sexual harassment. 4. Some surveys underreport the incidence of sexual harassment be- cause they have not followed standard and valid practices for survey research and sexual harassment research. 6. Sexual harassment remains a persistent problem in the workplace at large. 7. Research that does not include the study of women of color and sexual- and gender-minority women presents an incomplete picture of women’s experiences of sexual harassment. 8. The two characteristics of environments most associated with higher rates of sexual harassment are (a) male-dominated gender ratios and leadership and (b) an organizational climate that communicates toler-anceof sexual harassment

11. Chapter 3: SH in academia

13. Chapter 3 findings 1. Academic science, engineering, and medicine exhibit at least four characteristics that create higher levels of risk for sexual harassment to occur: Male-dominated environment, Organizational tolerance for sexually harassing behavior, Hierarchical and dependent relationships, and Isolating environments 2. Sexual harassment is common in academic science, engineering, and medicine.

14. Chapter 4: Job and health outcomes

15. Chapter 4 findings 1. Sexual harassment undermines women’s professional and educational attainment and mental and physical health. 4. The more women are sexually harassed in an environment, the more they think about leaving, and end up leaving as a result of the sexual harassment 8. Women cope with sexual harassment in a variety of ways, most often by ignoring or appeasing the harasser and seeking social support. 9. The least common response for women is to formally report the sexually harassing experience 10. aspects of the science, engineering, and medicine academic work- place tend to silence targets as well as limit career opportunities for both targets and bystanders 11. The cumulative effect of sexual harassment is significant damage to re- search integrity and a costly loss of talent in academic science, engineer- ing, and medicine

16. Chapter 5: Legal and policy mechanisms • In academic settings, develoment began with Title IX banning discrimination in education on the basis of sex • Passed in 1972 before concept of SH was well developed but interpreted to apply • In workplace settings, judicial interpretation of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights act • Interpretation is interplay between executive branch and courts (currently governed by 2001 guidance document)

17. Chapter 5 findings 1. The legal system alone is not an adequate mechanism for reducing or preventing sexual harassment 2. Judicial interpretation of Title IX and Title VII has invencitized organizations to create policies, procedures, and training that focus on symbolic compliance with current law and avoiding liability, not on preventing sexual harassment 5. Holding individuals and institutions responsible for sexual harassment and demonstrating that sexual harassment is a serious issue requires U.S. federal funding agencies to be aware when principal investigators, co-principal investigators, and grant personnel have violated sexual harassment policies. 6. To address the effect sexual harassment is having on the integrity of research, parts of the federal government and several professional so- cieties are beginning to focus more broadly on policies about research integrity and on codes of ethics rather than on the narrow definition of research misconduct.

18. Chapter 6: changing the culture and climate in higher education • Overview of work by univerities and professional societies • Highlight the American Astronomical Society and (especially) American Geophysical Union • Discuss issues about non-campus worksites (observatories, accelerators, etc.) and field sites • Discussion about whether bans on consensual power-imbalance relationships are helpful (unclear but possible) • Discuss importance of civility • Leads into Recommendations

19. Chapter 6 Findings 1. A systemwide change to the culture and climate in higher education is required to prevent and effectively address all three forms of sexual harassment. 3. Environments with organizational systems and structures that value and support diversity, inclusion, and respect are environments where sexual harassment behaviors are less likely to occur 4. Reducing hierarchical power structures and diffusing power more broadly among faculty and trainees can reduce the risk of sexual harassment 7. Transparency and accountability are crucial elements of effective sexual harassment policies 8. While sexual harassment training can be useful in improving knowledge of policies and of behaviors that constitute sexual harassment, it has not been demonstrated to prevent sexual harassment or change people’s behaviors or beliefs, and some training shows a negative effect (or im- pact). 12. Sexual harassment in academic science, engineering, and medicine will be more effectively addressed in higher education if the standards of be- havior are also upheld in off-campus environments such as professional society meetings and collaborative research and field sites

20. Recommendations

21. RECOMMENDATION 1: Create diverse, inclusive, and respectful environments. • Achieve greater gender and racial equity in hiring and promotions • Foster greater cooperation and respectful work behavior and evaluate faculty on these criteria • Combine anti-harassment efforts with civility-promotion • Cater training to specific populations and focus methodology

22. Leaders in academic institutions and research and training sites should pay increased attention to and enact policies that cover gender harassment as a means of addressing the most common form of sexual harassment and of preventing other types of sexually harassing behavior.

23. Recommendation 2: Address the most common form of sexual harassment: gender harassment • Recommendation 3: Move beyond legal compliance to address culture and climate

24. Recommendation 4: Improve transparency and accountability • Academic institutions need to develop—and readily share—clear, ac- cessible, and consistent policies on sexual harassment and standards of behavior. They should include a range of clearly stated, appropriate, and escalating disciplinary consequences for perpetrators found to have violated sexual harassment policy and/or law. The disciplinary actions taken should correspond to the severity and frequency of the harassment. The disciplinary actions should not be something that is often considered a benefit for faculty, such as a reduction in teaching load or time away from campus service responsibilities. Decisions regarding disciplinary actions, if indicated or required, should be made in a fair and timely way following an investigative process that is fair to all sides

25. Recommendation 4: Improve transparency and accountability

26. RECOMMENDATION 5: Diffuse the hierarchical and dependent rela- tionship between trainees and faculty. • Academic institutions should consider power-diffusion mechanisms (i.e., mentoring networks or committee-based advising and departmental funding rather than funding only from a principal investigator) to reduce the risk of sexual harassment.

27. Recommendation 6: Provide support for the target • Recommendation 7: strive for strong and diverse leadership • Recommendation 10: encourage involvement of professional societies and other organizations

28. Recommendation 8: measure progress • Academic institutions should work with researchers to evaluate and assess their efforts to create a more diverse, inclusive, and respectful environment, and to create effective policies, procedures, and training programs. They should not rely on formal reports by targets for an understanding of sexual harassment on their campus. • Organizations studying sexual harassment in their environments should take into consideration the particular experiences of people of color and sexual- and gender-minority people, and they should utilize methods that allow them to disaggregate their data by race, ethnicity, sexual ori- entation, and gender identity to reveal the different experiences across populations. • Federal agencies and foundations should commit resources to develop a tool similar to ARC3, the Administrator-Researcher Campus Climate Collaborative, to understand and track the climate for faculty, staff, and postdoctoral fellows.

30. RECOMMENDATION 11: Initiate legislative action. State legislatures and Congress should consider new and additional legisla- tion with the following goals: a. Better protecting sexual harassment claimants from retaliation. b. Prohibiting confidentiality in settlement agreements that currently enable harassers to move to another institution and conceal past adjudications. c. Banning mandatory arbitration clauses for discrimination claims. d. Allowing lawsuits to be filed against alleged harassers directly (instead of or in addition to their academic employers). e. Requiring institutions receiving federal funds to publicly disclose results from campus climate surveys and/or the number of sexual harassment reports made to campuses. f. Requesting the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health devote research funds to doing a follow-up analysis on the topic of sexual harassment in science, engineering, and medicine in 3 to 5 years to determine (1) whether research has shown that the prevalence of sexual harassment has decreased, (2) whether progress has been made on implementing these recommendations, and (3) where to focus future efforts.

31. RECOMMENDATION 12: Address the failures to meaningfully enforce Title VII’s prohibition on sex discrimination. • a. Judges, academic institutions (including faculty, staff, and leaders in ac- ademia), and administrative agencies should rely on scientific evidence about the behavior of targets and perpetrators of sexual harassment when assessing both institutional compliance with the law and the merits of individual claims. • b. Federal judges should take into account demonstrated effectiveness of anti-harassment policies and practices such as trainings, and not just their existence, for use of an affirmative defense against a sexual harass- ment claim under Title VII.

32. RECOMMENDATION 13: Increase federal agency action and collaboration. • Increase support for research and evaluation of the effectiveness of policies, procedures, and training on sexual harassment. • Attend to sexual harassment with at least the same level of attention and resources as devoted to research misconduct. • Require institutions to report to federal agencies when individuals on grants have been found to have violated sexual harassment policies or have been put on administrative leave related to sexual harassment, as the National Science Foundation has proposed doing.

33. RECOMMENDATION 14: Conduct necessary research . • Research into experiences of women in underrepresented and/or vulnerable groups • Policies, procedures, trainings and invterventions • Mechanisms for target-led resolution and for protecting from retaltion • Approaches for mitigating negative impacts • Prevalance and nature of sexual harassment • Connections between consensual relationships and sexual harassment

34. RECOMMENDATION 15: Make the entire academic community re- sponsible for reducing and preventing sexual harassment All members of our nation’s college campuses—students, trainees, faculty, staff, and administrators—as well as members of research and training sites should assume responsibility for promoting civil and respectful education, train- ing, and work environments, and stepping up and confronting those whose be- haviors and actions create sexually harassing environments.