Sexual Harassment Rampant In Military

More than half the military women responding to a massive Pentagon survey said they were subjected to sexual harassment in the last year, officials said Tuesday, indicating a pervasive problem despite Defense Department efforts to stamp it out.

The survey of service members of both sexes was described by the Pentagon as the most extensive ever undertaken on the subject.

It included two checklists of offensive behavior ranging from crude language to rape.

One list contained 25 types of behavior that the Pentagon said is now deemed to be offensive. Fully 78 percent of the women who responded said they had experienced at least one of those behaviors.

The other list contained just 10 types of behavior and was included so the Pentagon could compare the responses to an identical list on a 1988 survey.

Of the items on that list, 55 percent of the women said they were victims of at least one incident over the last year - compared to 64 percent in the 1988 survey.

Unknown, however, is how many servicewomen were actually subjected to harassment in the last year because nearly half of the 90,000 mail-out surveys were not returned.

On the basis of the 1988-1996 comparison, Edwin Dorn, undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, told a news conference: “There is some good news here, some encouraging news. Sexual harassment is declining.”

Dorn said there are no truly comparable surveys of sexual harassment among civilian workers. But women with civilian jobs in the federal government were asked questions over the last 10 years that compare to those on the Pentagon’s 10-item list. In 1987, 42 percent reported at least one incident. In 1994, the figure rose to 44 percent.

The latest Pentagon questionnaire also found that, among personnel with two to five years of service, 46 percent of the women and 58 percent of the men said that the rate of sexual harassment has declined in recent years.

Most of the figures reported Tuesday were based on answers to the longer, 25-item check-list which the Pentagon said will become the baseline for future surveys.

It indicated that most incidents of sexual harassment happen during working hours, with 43 percent of the women who said they had been harassed citing superior officers as the offenders, while 44 percent said that they were harassed by coworkers.

Sixty percent of the women said they did not make a formal complaint, partly out of fear of retaliation.

Summing up the survey, Dorn said military commanders must realize that “sexual harassment is occurring, it may be occurring in your organization on your watch and some believe that it isn’t being taken seriously enough.”

Although 78 percent of the women and 38 percent of the men checked at least one example of unwanted sexual behavior to which they were subjected, the Pentagon said, only 52 percent of the women and 9 percent of the men described themselves as victims of sexual harassment.

The rest apparently did not consider the incidents serious enough to qualify as harassment.

Grouping the 25 questions into five broad categories, the report showed that 70 percent of the women and 35 percent of the men had been subjected to crude and offensive behavior, which could include offensive language.

Sixty-three percent of the women and 15 percent of the men said that they had experienced sexist behavior.

Forty-one percent of the women and 8 percent of the men experienced unwanted sexual attention like touching and fondling, while 13 percent of the women and 2 percent of the men suffered sexual coercion such as demands for sex in exchange for job benefits.

Six percent of the women and 1 percent of the men said they were raped or subjected to attempted rape.

The latest survey came against the backdrop of a concerted Pentagon effort to combat sexual harassment, prompted by the 1991 Tailhook scandal in which dozens of women were groped and assaulted by drunken Navy and Marine Corps aviators during a convention in Las Vegas.