A prominent champion of women’s workplace empowerment is sounding a cautious note on the #MeToo movement against sexual harassment and assault.
About 35 percent of men in senior workplace roles feel uncomfortable working alone with women due to the recent campaign publicizing reports of sexual harassment and assault allegedly committed by powerful men, according to a recent poll sponsored by former Facebook CEO Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In initiative, which is focused on empowering women in the workplace.
Numbers were similar among all men in the survey, with 32 percent expressing lower levels of comfort working alone with women since the #MeToo movement took off last year.
The Twitter hashtag #MeToo touched off increased conversation and media attention around workplace sexual behavior after Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein faced a flurry of assault and harassment accusations. After Weinstein, allegations damaged – or ended – the careers of powerful men like Sen. Al Franken, actor Kevin Spacey, Def Jam records founder Russell Simmons and comedian Lewis C.K.
More than one-quarter of men, 27 percent , said they would feel uncomfortable socializing with women from work alone outside of work, while 34 percent of men in senior roles felt the same. One-in-four senior men said they would feel uncomfortable going to an evening work-related event with a woman from work.
When asked to consider how their feelings have changed since the Weinstein allegations energized the #MeToo movement, men generally felt more uncomfortable working with women. In the Lean In survey, when men were specifically asked how they felt before #MeToo, 13 percent of senior men said they had felt uncomfortable working alone with a woman in the office. But 28 percent said they were uncomfortable working alone with women since the start of the campaign.
Almost two-fifths of senior men said they would be hesitant to join a junior female co-worker for dinner, while 30 percent said they would be uncomfortable traveling together with a junior female for work purposes. When asked whether they felt differently about junior male co-workers, only one-in-nine senior men said they would be hesitant to have a dinner outside of work, and 6 percent said they would be uncomfortable traveling with a junior male.
In other words, senior men are more than three times more likely to hesitate to have a work dinner with a junior-level woman than they are with a man, and are five times more likely to be uncomfortable traveling with a woman than they are with a man.
Some prominent female voices have said that a lack of available mentors creates obstacles for women interested in playing a larger role within the financial services industry, with men appear less willing to serve as mentors in the wake of #MeToo. While just 5 percent of senior men said that they felt uncomfortable mentoring a woman from work before #MeToo, that number tripled to 15 percent of senior men after the allegations.
In a Rasmussen Reports survey of 1,000 U.S. adults on Feb. 5 and Feb. 6, 35 percent felt like the #MeToo movement has gone too far in punishing those accused of harassment, while 18 percent felt lke it hasn’t gone far enough. Another 34 percent of respondents believed the level of outcry over harassment was “about right,” while 14 percent were undecided.