Sexual Harassment Explains a Lot About Why Women Get Paid Less
- Workplace abuse pushes women out of higher-paying fields, jobs
- Study: 80% of harassment victims left positions in two years
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American women don’t earn as much as men do, a persistent phenomenon that can’t be explained by disparities in education, opportunity or child-bearing. But a growing body of research points to a new and compelling cause: Women make less because of the sexual harassment they face at work.
The gender-pay gap has hovered under 80 percent for nearly two decades. Most of the discrepancy is because men work in higher-paying jobs and in more lucrative fields, and most of the policy remedies have focused on encouraging women to pursue those same, high-paying opportunities.