Allegations of Sexual Harassment in Research Paper

Women in the military reported being sexually harassed at six times the rate of civilian women, and reported being sexually assaulted at more than twice the rate of civilian women. Moreover, women in the military seem even more hesitant than civilian women to report sexual assault or sexual harassment. Civilian women were almost three times as likely to report sexual harassment as women in the military. Moreover, while both civilian women and military women failed to report an alarming percentage of sexual assaults, civilian women were more than three times as likely to report those assaults than military women.

While this survey makes it clear that women in the military are at greater risk of sexual assault and sexual harassment than civilian women, it does not explain why the women are at risk. Future studies should look at the impact of race and socioeconomic status on those issues, because it is likely that women who enter into the military at an early age are prompted by socioeconomic factors. Moreover, many of the college-age women studied had yet to hold a professional position, which may have skewed their workplace sexual harassment results.

PROBLEMS ENCOUNTERED

There were no problems in collecting the data. However, because the research questions ultimately focused on the number of women who had been assaulted or harassed who reported that behavior, the sample size appeared too small by the end of the study. Any future research in this field should begin with a sample size of no fewer than 1000 military and 1000 civilian women to control for this winnowing effect.

REFERENCES

McCall-Hosenfeld, J.S., Liebshutz, J.M., Spiro, a., & Seaver, M.R. (2009). Sexual assault in the…