Gender Discrimination at Work Is All Too Real, With 42 Percent of Women Experiencing It

Better Life Lab senior policy analyst Alieza Durana and Better Life Lab editor Haley Swenson reported on Slate on new research from Pew Research Center showing sexual harassment is just one kind of problem, with 4 in 10 women workers saying they’ve experienced one of 8 kinds of gender-based discrimination at work.

Think problems in the workplace are limited to sexual harassment? Think again. New data from a nationally representative Pew Research Center survey out Thursday show upward of 4 out of 10 employed women report experiencing at least one kind of gender discrimination, not including sexual harassment, at work. A separate question found 22 percent of women have experienced sexual harassment in the workplace. The findings are especially significant because the survey was conducted between July and August of 2017, months before reports of sexual harassment and abuse across industries could have impacted perceptions of the questions.

The survey asked both men and women to report whether a series of incidents had happened to them because of their gender, including whether they had earned less than a woman/man doing the same job; were treated as if they were not competent; experienced repeated, small slights at work; been passed over for the most important assignments; felt isolated in the workplace; or been denied a promotion.