EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

In light of concerns about sexual harassment within our profession, especially at the APSA Annual Meeting, the APSA Professional Ethics, Rights, and Freedoms Committee surveyed the entire APSA membership during February-March, 2017 to determine the extent and nature of perceived harassment experience. The results were intended to complement the recent institution of a new anti-harassment policy to find out what, if any, further courses of action might be warranted. Close-ended questions asked respondents to indicate their experience with specific types of treatment at the APSA Annual Meeting during a limited time frame: 2013–2016. Three open-ended questions elicited further detail. With a universe of 13,367 members contacted, we received 2,424 completed surveys, a response rate of 18.1%.

The topline results reveal that while most APSA members have not experienced harassing behavior at the Annual Meeting, a sizeable minority have, including a much higher percentage of women than men. About 63% of members, including 74% of men and 51% of women said they had never experienced any of the negative forms of behavior listed. We examined three broad categories of negative behavior. The first is feeling put down or experiencing condescension; 42% of women and 22% of men said this had happened to them. The second concerns inappropriate language or looks, such as experiencing offensive sexist remarks; getting stared at, leered, or ogled in a way that made them uncomfortable; or being exposed to sexist or suggestive materials which they found offensive. The results are that 30% of women and 10% of men report negative experiences in this regard. The third is inappropriate sexual advances or touching, such as unwanted attempts to establish a sexual relationship despite efforts to discourage it, being touched by someone in a way that was uncomfortable, or experiencing bribes or threats associated with sexual advances. About 11% of women and 3% of men reported these experiences.

Even in those cases where the percentage of members experiencing such incidents may be low, the number is nonetheless disconcerting. That 29 of our members felt they had experienced threats of professional retaliation for not being sexually cooperative, and 44 felt they were being bribed with special professional rewards is, respectively, 29 and 44 people too many.

Further analysis reveals no differences across race/ethnicity categories. Colleagues from newer professional cohorts are more likely than more senior colleagues to say they have had experience with negative behavior. Likewise, untenured faculty experience more harassing and negative behavior than tenured faculty. Neither graduate students nor post-docs differ from senior faculty in these reports.

Multivariate analysis shows that gender, cohort, and meeting attendance predict negative conference experiences such that women and more recent PhD’s are subject to more negative and harassing behavior as are colleagues who attend meetings more frequently. These results vary somewhat depending on the type of negative behavior.

The responses to open-ended questions amplified and added rich detail to this quantitative analysis. They revealed five general categories of behavior colleagues described as examples of the negative experiences they had had:

1. (1) General disrespect, including being ignored or otherwise demeaned in ways that are not explicitly sexual;

2. (2) Referencing their gender, sexuality, or bodies in non-professional ways;

3. (3) Persistent or otherwise inappropriate romantic or sexual overtures;

4. (4) Discriminatory statements or attacks on one’s gender or sexuality;

5. (5) Harassing, demeaning, or discriminatory behavior based on categories other than gender; especially, race and prestige.

The abbreviated report published here provides more detail about the survey, and both the quantitative and qualitative analysis. The full report is available online at apsanet.org/reports. ^{Footnote 1}

INTRODUCTION: LEGAL AND HISTORICAL CONTEXT OF SEXUAL HARASSMENT

Recent news events highlight the prevalence of sexual harassment in many professions. But not so long ago sexual harassment did not even have a name, and not until 1986 did the Supreme Court rule that sexual harassment is a violation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Over time, the legal definition of sexual harassment has evolved. While at first the law recognized only quid pro quo harassment, involving specific threats or benefits, it now includes unwelcome sexual conduct that “has the purpose or effect of unreasonably interfering with an individual’s work performance or creating an intimidating, a hostile, or offensive working environment.” Increasingly, the notion of sexual harassment has been expanded to include gender harassment, or verbal or nonverbal behavior that is not explicitly about sexual relations, but which systematically demeans or insults people on the basis of their gender.

Thus, until very recently, the vast majority of senior members of our discipline, and certainly its leaders, were men who were unlikely to have been the targets of sexual or gender harassment and who had completed their professional socialization before there were many women in the discipline, and before sexual or gender harassment behavior was recognized as discrimination.

RAISING THE ISSUE OF SEXUAL HARASSMENT AT APSA ANNUAL MEETINGS

In 2015, eleven senior professors of political science from major universities addressed a letter to the APSA leadership and Professional Ethics, Rights, and Freedoms Committee (hereafter “the Committee”) expressing concern about sexual harassment in the political science discipline, saying that junior scholars and graduate students had often sought advice from them on how to deal with experiences of harassment at APSA meetings. A major roadblock to dealing with these experiences is that while the law covers places of employment, the Annual Meeting is not a place of employment, and therefore is not covered by the law unless the harassment occurs between people employed at the same institution.

The Committee immediately took up this matter as its major agenda for 2015–16.

At its February, 2016 meeting, the Committee concluded with the following action items:

1. 1. It agreed that designated Ombudspersons should be available at the annual meeting (a) to assist individuals who encounter harassment or other such problems to help them in determining options for resolution and (b) to bring systemic concerns to the attention of the organization for resolution. This was implemented for the 2017 Annual Meeting.

2. 2. It planned to propose to the APSA Council a new code of conduct designed to deter harassment at the annual meeting, and further proposed that the code be incorporated widely and noticeably into meetings-related communications. The code of conduct is available here: apsanet.org/divresources/policyprocedures.

3. 3. It decided to undertake a survey of APSA members to gain more understanding of meeting participants’ sexual harassment experience.

APSA SURVEY ON SEXUAL HARASSMENT: METHOD AND RESPONSE

The purpose of the survey was simply to determine the extent of perceived harassment experience, along with basic information to help us understand who is most likely to experience harassment. After review of the literature the Survey Development Subcommittee concluded that the most appropriate model to use for the APSA survey is the Sexual Experiences Questionnaire developed by the Department of Defense (Fitzgerald, et al. Reference Fitzgerald, Magley, Drasgow and Waldo1999; Gutek, Murphy, and Douma Reference Gutek, Murphy and Douma2004). The survey focused on member experiences at Annual Meetings of the APSA over a limited four-year period of time: 2013–16, and asked them only about experiences they had had personally. The close-ended part of the questionnaire presented a list of specific negative behaviors to respondents and asked them whether they had ever experienced them, and if so, had they experienced them more than once. It then used three open-ended questions to allow respondents to offer examples and suggest solutions.

The anonymous survey was fielded in February and March, 2017. The “bounce-back” rate on the e-mail addresses was around 3%. Of the 13,367 members contacted, 2,810 started the survey and 2,424 completed it, yielding a response rate of 18.1%.

Comparison with APSA membership data shows that determining the representativeness of our response group is not straightforward because of non-response patterns in both APSA membership and survey data and our survey. Bearing that in mind, our survey respondents appear to over-represent women by about 16 percentage points and over-represent white people by about 21 percentage points (see table 1).

Table 1

APSA Harassment Survey Demographics

*APSA has multiple sources of data, described in the original report

*percentages do not add to 100% because respondents could select more than one category

REACTIONS TO THE HARASSMENT SURVEY

Because this survey was intended to address issues relating to the functioning of our profession, we found reactions to the project itself informative. Some made the effort to laud APSA for this initiative. Many commended APSA for doing the survey. Some defined it as a positive step for either seeking information about the situation at meetings or as a means for alerting the membership to the issues. Soon after launching the survey we received a letter from a woman who described going to her “first and last” APSA meeting when she was a post-doc to tell us why she thought this effort was important. Having completed her PhD at an elite institution, she was invited for drinks in the hotel bar by men who were “well-established in the field.” After she finished her drink she left the bar to go back to her room. The men continued to drink and, she later found, charged all their drinks to her room. She was afraid to confront them because of their stature, and learned a fellow post-doc had been threatened by a senior member of the field who said that if she said anything about such an experience, he would destroy her career.

Some were more critical. One colleague wrote approvingly of the “motives behind the survey,” but worried that it might be detrimental by implying “that the ‘victimization’ of adult members of the political science community by other members is a rampant and pressing problem, or that adults cannot normally discourage unwanted sexual advances on their own without serious negative professional repercussions,” and that it has implications that are “both demeaning and potentially disempowering for those it intends to help.” This respondent also worried that “such a survey, by its very nature, blurs the line between relatively innocent flirtation … and illegal harassment and assault, in ways that are more likely than not to generate misleading (and potentially alarmist) data.”

Some were more blunt in their critical responses, as in this example:

Some comments were variations on this response: “Don’t make a big deal about what isn’t a systematic problem.” A few commented on question wording or other specific issues.

EXPERIENCES OF HARASSMENT: QUANTITATIVE DATA ANALYSIS

The core of the survey asked, “At any APSA Annual Meeting you have attended in the past four years (2013–2016), has anyone attending the meeting ever done the following to you personally:

• • Put you down or was condescending to you?

• • Made offensive sexist remarks in your presence?

• • Stared, leered, or ogled you in a way that made you feel uncomfortable?

• • Displayed, used, or distributed sexist or suggestive materials (for example, pictures, stories, or pornography) which you found offensive?

• • Made unwanted attempts to establish a romantic sexual relationship with you despite your efforts to discourage it?

• • Made you feel like you were being bribed with some sort of reward or special treatment to engage in sexual behavior?

• • Made you feel threatened with some sort of retaliation for not being sexually cooperative (for example, by mentioning an upcoming review, grant, promotion, etc.)?

• • Touched you in a way that made you feel uncomfortable?

Let us emphasize two aspects of the survey instrument before presenting the results:

First, the survey listed both experiences that constitute sexual harassment as traditionally understood and those that can constitute gender harassment. Second, the survey did not ask respondents whether they have experienced things of a sexual nature, but whether they had such experiences that they found offensive or made them uncomfortable, etc.

The majority of respondents report no personal experience with the offensive and demeaning behaviors the survey lists. About 63% of respondents say they had never experienced any of the listed negative behavior. In response to open-ended questions some said that they had experienced these negative behaviors, but before the four year time frame. Some said that as older women they were no longer subject to these problems, but had encountered them when they were younger.

Among those who indicated that they have experienced one or more forms of demeaning or offensive behavior, the largest percentage have experienced “put-downs” or condescending behavior. About 16% said they experienced put-downs only and another 15% said they had experienced put-downs and another form of negative behavior. About 5% said they had experienced only some form of negative behavior other than put-downs or condescension.

The topline results are enumerated in more detail in table 2. Almost one-third of respondents said they have experienced condescending or “put down” behavior, evenly divided between those who said it has happened once and those who say it has happened more than once. The other categories are smaller, some considerably so, but given how serious some of these charges are, we cannot feel relieved by the data. Consider that 29 colleagues say they were threatened with retaliation for not being sexually cooperative at a meeting, and the 44 who thought they were being bribed with some sort of reward or special treatment to engage in sexual behavior. Another 4%—108 people—feel that they have been sexually pursued at our professional meetings “despite … efforts to discourage it.” Although these represent small percentages of our membership, too many colleagues have had their experience of our professional conference marred by encountering seriously nasty behavior.

Table 2

Topline Results

As all previous literature suggests, women and other more vulnerable members of the profession—especially younger people and those without tenure—are more likely to report experiencing negative behavior from others. Figures 1–3 combine the specific listed behavior into three categories: put down, language and looks, and advances and touching. They analyze, respectively, gender, PhD cohort, and occupational differences. We do not show differences by race and ethnicity because that analysis revealed no differences in harassment reports. As expected, women are more likely than men to have experienced most of these forms of negative behavior, as are younger cohorts, and untenured professors. Although we expected graduate students and post-docs to stand out as well as compared with tenured faculty, they do not.

Figure 1

Annual Meeting Harassment by Gender

•• p < .05

Figure 2

Annual Meeting Harassment by PhD Year

• p < .10 •• p < .05 <2000 is baseline

Figure 3

Annual Meeting Harassment by Occupation

•• p < .05 Tenured Prof is baseline

Finally we did multivariate (ordinary least squares) analysis to investigate the impact of gender, cohort, occupation, frequency of attendance, and race/ethnicity on experience of harassment (tables 3–tables 5). ^{Footnote 2} In general, gender, cohort, and meeting attendance predict negative conference experiences such that women, more recent PhD’s, and colleagues who attend more regularly are subject to more negative and harassing behavior. We note that being untenured “falls out” of the picture in the multivariate analysis, presumably because age/cohort remains in. In the case of “advances and touching”—the clearest cast of sexual harassment in the most conventional sense, and the most egregious—only gender and regularly attending the APSA conference are significant predictors.

Table 3

Linear (OLS) Probability: Put Down

Table 4

Linear (OLS) Probability: Language and Looks

Table 5

Linear (OLS) Probability: Advances and Touching

EXAMPLES FROM THE OPEN-ENDED QUESTIONS

Responses to the open-ended questions add examples and texture to the quantitative survey results.