A Statistics Canada poll has found women are more likely than men to experience workplace harassment – and it’s more common in health-related fields.
"As a nurse, when I hear that there's situations where people don't feel safe, or feel harassed at work it's concerning to me,” said Sharon Garratt, chief nursing officer for the Saskatchewan Health Authority.
Among roughly 9,000 respondents, 19 per cent of women and 13 per cent of men said they had been harassed at work.
Women in the health industry had a 27 per cent probability of reporting harassment, compared to 21 per cent of men.
“I've observed it and I've supported people who have been harassed in the workplace,” Garratt told CTV News.
The chair of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Saskatchewan said she wasn’t surprised by the findings.
“We do know that women continue to be targeted,” Marie Lovrod said.
Both men and women said clients or customers were the most common source of harassment.
“I think the health industry, that particular interface, is quite an intimate one. It's a site where someone can be alone with a patient and often, I think when people are alone with one another these kinds of acts of harassment can take place,” Lovrod said.
The report was released earlier this week based on a 2016 poll.
“This is definitely pre-MeToo," said Melissa Moyser, a senior researcher of the report.
"We would expect that with the sort of growing awareness of sexual harassment, unwanted sexual attention, etc., the results could look different when we do the next version of this."
With files from The Canadian Press
