Giving Compass' Take:

• Carra Sim, a senior behavioral and social scientist at RAND, discusses the evolution of sexual harassment in the workplace and the implication of the #MeToo movement on workplace policies in 2019. 

• How have you seen policies on sexual harassment in the workplace change over time?  What progress has been made so far?

• Learn about the psychological impact of #MeToo on sexual assault survivors. 

Carra Sims is a senior behavioral and social scientist at RAND. She's also a member of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, which recently asked her about one of its top ten workplace issues to watch in 2019: sexual harassment and what's next for the #MeToo movement.

As a researcher who has studied sexual harassment in the workplace for over a decade, what is your perspective on the changes that have taken place in recent years?

Interest in the topic of harassment seems to come in waves, with each wave getting us a little farther up the beach. If you go back, in the early '90s you had the Tailhook scandal and Anita Hill really helping to move the discussion into the national consciousness. Then people seemed to move on. A few years later, the scandal at Aberdeen Proving Ground broke, and you had the harassment class-action lawsuits on Wall Street. Now, we have #MeToo.

Today, two things are different. First, there is more conversation around the daily low-grade behaviors that contribute to environments in which harassing behaviors are seen as acceptable. And there's more conversation around how you have to pay attention to these low-grade behaviors as well, stopping negative tendencies before they develop. Second, there has been a broadening of the conversation to include industries that often get less focus, such as fast food service.

So, I do think things are getting better. My perspective is that we are moving forward but that the underlying societal cause of sexual harassment—that women are still not quite seen as equal—remains. We're making incremental improvement on average: We move a bit forward and then get a reminder that the problem isn't solved.

Read the full article about sexual harassment in the workplace by Cara Simms at RAND.