It’s been more than a year since the #metoo movement swept across the globe, revealing the extent to which sexual harassment has infiltrated virtually every industry, as women and men have come forward to share their stories.
Despite the global outcry—and the naming and shaming of some of the culprits, which has resulted in public scandals and resignations reaching the very top of billion-dollar corporations—there is still little evidence of systemic change from companies themselves. In most cases, it appears that, for now, the movement has had consequences for individuals, rather than altering the corporate culture that has made sexual harassment permissible—or at least allowed some employees to get away with it.
When trying to understand just how prevalent this behavior is in the workplace, numbers help. According to a 2017 BBC survey, more than half of women and a fifth of men have been subjected to workplace sexual harassment in the UK. Across the pond, statistics from Statista reveal that 42% of women and 11% of men have experienced it. However, it is also crucial to note that the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission estimates that around 75% of all workplace harassment goes unreported, so as bad as these figures appear, the reality is probably much worse.
Most businesses have a set of human resources rules to deal with not only these issues, but all forms of discrimination, alongside the more mundane tasks of day-to-day working life. However, normalized HR practices to tackle sexual harassment are more often than not based on antiquated laws that are in need of an update to deal with the problems that appear in the modern workplace as society evolves.
As with any industry nowadays, when there’s a need for disruption, a good place to turn for innovative solutions is the startup world. Over the past couple of years, a rash of new companies have cropped up to not only help those who have been affected by sexual harassment, but also to try to prevent it in the first place.