More than half of the women in the Army have faced sexual harassment, according to a new study released on Monday.
Specifically, 53% of Army women surveyed by the Rand Corporation reported being “ignored, mistreated, [or] insulted because of [their] gender.” The Army conducted the survey as part of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s February 2021 order to address sexual assault.
Forty-five percent of the 1,582 female Army members surveyed said they had been told “women were not as good as men at your job,” while 35% reported “attempts to establish [an] unwanted relationship.”
ARMY 1ST LIEUTENANT SETS OLYMPIC RECORD TO WIN GOLD IN SKEET SHOOTING COMPETITION
Approximately a third reported that they were “repeatedly” told about others’ “sexual activities” or were asked about their own, subjected to “sexual jokes,” and “repeated sexual comments about appearance.”
Ninety percent of the Army women aid their most serious sexual harassment or gender discrimination moment occurred during “required military activity,” while 80% reported that it happened during “duty hours.”
The study’s findings demonstrate “gender discrimination and sexual harassment are more pervasive and insidious than originally thought and are oftentimes too easily dismissed as ‘just water cooler talk’ or ‘just locker room jokes,’” Army SHARP (Sexual Harassment/Assault Response Prevention) Director Jill Londagin said in a statement.
Men in the Army also face sexual harassment, the poll found, though, to a lesser extent.
Thirty-six percent of Army men reported they were “repeatedly” told that they “do not act like a man is supposed to,” the most commonly described form of harassment for Army men, while slightly fewer said they were “repeatedly told” about others’ sex life, asked questions about their own, and “repeated sexual jokes.”
“While both male and female Soldiers do experience inappropriate sexual jokes and regular discussions of sex in the workplace, we also see very common occurrences of more egregious behavior,” Londagin added. “All of this behavior is unprofessional and disrespectful.”
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
The Rand Corporation concluded “that both women’s and men’s most serious experiences of sexual harassment and gender discrimination in the Army are almost always committed by male members of the military, most often by enlisted soldiers, at military installations and during military activities (especially while at work during duty hours) rather than during soldiers’ free time.”
The survey specifically looked into the most at-risk installations, though the group recommended “there is no need to tailor the content of training material for each individual installation.”
