Sexual harassment is a threat to engineering: A national academies report finds that it's not just individuals who suffer when gender-based abuse goes unaddressed - [Spectral Lines]

THE ENGINEERING COMMUNITY HAS BEEN WORKING FOR decades to increase the representation of women in universities and in the profession, but progress has been slow. In the United States, just 21 percent of engineering bachelor's degrees go to women, and only 11 percent of practicing engineers are women. While the problem is complex, we must recognize that one significant factor is sexual harassment, which creates hostile education and work environments and pushes women out of the field. • Authoritative studies have documented that from 20 to 50 percent of women students experience sexual harassment in higher education. Sexual harassment encompasses more than the shocking physical assaults that have made headlines in recent years; it also includes a wide range of offensive, crude, and sexist behaviors that demean women. Through these behaviors, harassers communicate that women do not belong and do not merit respect. This "gender harassment" is by far the most common type of sexual harassment. · Some people may think that words never hurt, as the old "sticks and stones" children's rhyme suggests, but research demonstrates that frequent or severe gender harassment can have the same level of negative outcomes as an instance of sexual coercion. What's more, gender harassment telegraphs an organizational climate that tolerates other forms of sexual harassment. · A recent report released by the National Academies of Sciences, The Engineering, and Medicine, for which two of us served as authors, found that sexual harassment has broad impacts. It affects not only the women who are targeted but also bystanders and the entire research enterprise.