U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Sexual Harassment Statistics

Sexual harassment is a form of sex discrimination that violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Title VII applies to employers with 15 or more employees, including state and local governments. It also applies to employment agencies and to labor organizations, as well as to the federal government.

In Fiscal Year 2005, EEOC received 12,679 charges of sexual harassment. 14.3% of those charges were filed by males. EEOC resolved 12,859 sexual harassment charges in FY 2004 and recovered $47.9 million in monetary benefits for charging parties and other aggrieved individuals (not including monetary benefits obtained through litigation).

Unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature constitute sexual harassment when this conduct explicitly or implicitly affects an individual's employment, unreasonably interferes with an individual's work performance, or creates an intimidating, hostile, or offensive work environment.

Sexual harassment can occur in a variety of circumstances, including but not limited to the following:

- The victim as well as the harasser may be a woman or a man. The victim does not have to be of the opposite sex. - The harasser can be the victim's supervisor, an agent of the employer, a supervisor in another area, a co-worker, or a non-employee. - The victim does not have to be the person harassed but could be anyone affected by the offensive conduct. - Unlawful sexual harassment may occur without economic injury to or discharge of the victim. - The harasser's conduct must be unwelcome.