Since the Harvey Weinstein story broke last fall and the rise of #MeToo and Time’s Up, the cultural conversation has been focused on sexual misconduct in show business. So it’s no secret that sexual harassment and assault are rampant in Hollywood. Now, thanks to a recently published survey from USA TODAY, there are numbers to prove just how rampant these problems are. The publication revealed that 94 percent of respondents have experienced sexual harassment or assault while working in Hollywood.
In collaboration with The Creative Coalition, Women in Film and Television, and the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, USA TODAY surveyed 843 women working in entertainment. Respondents included actors, writers, directors, producers, editors, and more. The survey was conducted online from December 4 to January 14.
The fact that 94 percent of these women have been subjected to sexual misconduct is sickening, but it’s far from the survey’s only revelation. USA TODAY also found that 21 percent of respondents have been forced to perform a sexual act. About 75 percent didn’t report the harassment or assault because they feared “personal or professional backlash or retaliation.” Of the 25 percent who did report their experience, just 28 percent say their treatment at work improved as a result.
As much as these findings shed light on Hollywood’s toxic culture, they also suggest that things are changing from generation to generation. The survey concluded that older, more experienced women have been subjected to more instances of sexual misconduct. However, “younger women with less than five years of experience in the industry are more likely to blow a whistle on misconduct.” This suggests that younger women are less fearful of the fallout from reporting sexual harassment.
While USA TODAY warns that, due to the nature of the survey, its findings do not necessarily represent Hollywood as a whole, Dr. Anita Raj, director of the Center for Gender Equity and Health at the University of California, San Diego’s medical school, believes that the numbers are still “credible and important.”
“The [survey’s] percentages are higher than what we typically see for workplace abuses, but we know there is variation by the type of workplace,” Raj observed. “It makes sense to me that we would see higher numbers [in the entertainment industry],” she added, seemingly referencing the casting couch and Hollywood’s unorthodox professional culture.
Raj said she’d “like to see more solidity in the scientific aspects of how the data was collected,” but concluded that “94 percent does not seem shocking.” “It says this is ubiquitous in Hollywood. There is a lack of clarity on what constitutes professional interactions in this [Hollywood] context. So it wouldn’t surprise me if in fact it were 94 percent.”
You can read through all the survey’s findings, including breakdowns on types of misconduct and demographics on victims and perpetrators, over at USA TODAY.