Sexual Harassment And Public Accounting: Anecdotal Evidence From The Profession

Abstract

This article reports on anecdotal evidence gathered from a recent survey of women public accounting professionals. Stanko and Schneider (1999) conducted the first national survey on sexual harassment in the public accounting profession and Stanko et al followed up with a more recent 2009 study. In this paper, the anecdotal evidence gathered from the Stanko et al study is reported on. Analysis of written comments is important in that many respondents spent a great deal of time providing comprehensive and concise professional comments on specific recent experiences involving sexual harassment, rather than simply checking a box. The findings of this study show sexual harassment remains a serious concern, and that sexual discrimination in the workplace is a concern as well. Although preventive measures have been put in place, these measures may not be working as well as intended, suggesting that public accounting firms need to revisit this issue to manage risk.

Coping with sexual harassment in the Egyptian context: a study on female academics

“…WSH was subsequently proscribed in legal jurisdictions and became the focus of worldwide empirical studies demonstrating the suffering of female workers (Cortina and Areguin, 2021; McDonald, 2012). In 1991, to enforce US federal discrimination laws, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission issued guidelines that classified two forms of WSH: (1) hostile environment, where “unwelcome sexual conduct of co-workers or supervisors interferes with an individual's ability to work” and (2) quid pro quo, when “workplace superior or co-worker demands some degree of sexual favour and threatens to or actually does retaliate in a way that has a tangible effect on the working conditions of the harassment victim if he or she refuses to acquiesce” (Cortina and Areguin, 2021; Miller et al. , 2010).…”

“…US law evolved further in the 1980s to recognize hostile environment sexual harassment as illegal. This refers to sexist, misogynistic, vulgar or sexually objectifying conduct that is “severe or pervasive” enough to create a hostile work environment (Cortina and Areguin, 2021; Miller et al. , 2010).…”

“…(1) hostile environment, where "unwelcome sexual conduct of co-workers or supervisors interferes with an individual's ability to work" and (2) quid pro quo, when "workplace superior or co-worker demands some degree of sexual favour and threatens to or actually does retaliate in a way that has a tangible effect on the working conditions of the harassment victim if he or she refuses to acquiesce" (Cortina and Areguin, 2021;Miller et al, 2010). Considering the categories of WSH identified earlier, gender harassment and unwanted sexual attention are constituents of a hostile working environment, whereas sexual coercion is exemplar of the legal term "quid pro quo" or "subtle or explicit efforts to make job rewards contingent on sexual cooperation" (Fitzgerald et al, 1997b, p. 580).…”

Using Expressive Arts Techniques in Group Work to Develop Female Students' Knowledge about Sexual Harassment

“…About 62 percent of Egyptian men admitted to perpetrating harassment. (J. Miller, Brian B. Stanko, and Ellen L. Landgraf, 2010).So there is a great need to offer solutions through enhancing knowledge and modification the behavior of youth antiharassment. Specially the female university students who missed the knowledge about sexual harassment, and the lack of their perception of how to deal in the situations when they are exposed to sexual harassment in the university or in public places.…”