1.
“I had no power to say ‘that’s not okay:’”
Reports of harassment
and abuse in the field
Kathryn Clancy, University of Illinois
Katie Hinde, Harvard
Robin Nelson, UC-Riverside
Julienne Rutherford, UI-Chicago

2.
Turner 2002

3.
Isbell et al 2012

4.
WHAT IF A FACTOR IN GENDER
DISPARITIES IN SCIENCE IS A DENIAL OF
OPPORTUNITY?

5.
• Who gets targeted?
• Who perpetrates harassment?
• Who witnesses it?
• How do individuals frame their experiences?
• How do interpersonal relationships influence
their experiences?
• Do they identify cultural, structural, systemic
issues?
This is happening.

6.
Web survey and phone interviews
• Survey design: harassment literature
• Web survey opened on February 21st
• 42/124 respondents agreed to a follow-up
phone interview; emailed a random half
• N = 16 completed phone interviews

7.
Participant demographics
• Gender: 79% (N=98) 18.5% (N=23)
• Race/Ethnicity: 86% white (N=107)
• Country of Origin: 81% United States (N=101);
15 countries represented
• Sexual Orientation: 85% heterosexual (N=106)
• This limits our ability to explore or compare
issues for non-white, non-straight respondents

8.
“At your field site* how frequently have you observed or heard
about other researchers and colleagues making inappropriate
or sexual remarks?”

9.
“At your field site* how frequently have you observed or heard
about other researchers and colleagues making inappropriate
or sexual remarks?”
Chi-square= 0.22 p=0.99

10.
“Have you ever personally experienced inappropriate or sexual
remarks, comments about physical beauty, cognitive sex
differences, or other jokes, at an anthropological field site?”
59% SAID “YES”
(73/124)
*
WHO ARE THE
VICTIMS?
WOMEN EXPERIENCE
HARASSMENT AT A
HIGHER RATE THAN MEN
63% (62/98) vs. 39% (9/23)
Chi-square =4.3, df=1, p=0.038, Odds Ratio: 2.7
95% CI [-0.97, -0.03]

11.
“Have you ever personally experienced inappropriate or sexual
remarks, comments about physical beauty, cognitive sex
differences, or other jokes, at an anthropological field site?”
59% SAID “YES”
(73/124)
WHO ARE THE
PERPETRATORS?

12.
“Have you ever experienced physical sexual harassment or
unwanted sexual contact?”
18% SAID “YES”
(21/120)
WHO ARE THE
VICTIMS?
WOMEN EXPERIENCE
HARASSMENT AT A
HIGHER RATE THAN MEN
21% (20/97) vs. 5% (1/21)

13.
“Have you ever experienced physical sexual harassment or
unwanted sexual contact?”
18% SAID “YES”
(21/120)
WHO ARE THE
PERPETRATORS?

14.
Framing: “There’s no way that I could
be empowered”
• “Young,” “naïve”
• Questioned or blamed themselves at some
point during harassment
• Feelings of powerlessness and/or fear
• Felt targeted/under additional scrutiny
because of their gender
• Frustration with interference with research

15.
“As a man who was ambitious at the time and
didn't know how to intervene, it was a weird
place to be because these are my friends. We
spent time in the field so you can't build
friendships anywhere else and I was unable
to, or paralyzed for fear that my dissertation
would be shut down. I relied on the site and
access would be shut down, my career would
have been shut down, if I was going to stand up
to this guy.”

16.
Relationships: “Everybody knew what
was going on”
• Unequal distribution of tasks
• Rank influences relationships
• Women in power helped conditions

17.
“So I talked to the director that night and he was asking
me what I should do… because he has known this guy
for ten years… He was like, ‘in different cultures that's
not abnormal.’ But I was like this is a violation….
“He did talk to the guy he just said that he needed to
stay away from me and… I don't know how much it
worked…. Because at night we'd have a fire… and he'd
still find his way to come and sit next to me… and I'd
have to tell him to stop, but I think I put the director in
a weird position… especially since this was sort of our
liaison… if you piss him off and he stopped
cooperating, then we could have real problems.”

18.
Climate: “If I had bruises on my
body, you would believe me more”
• Unclear power structure  more harassment
• Explicit comments that women are less
capable than men at fieldwork
• Challenges juggling cultural differences
• “What happens in the field, stays in the field”

19.
“It’s not like someone specifically says, ‘You’re
not welcome here anymore.’ It’s just a
constant, subtle attitude that makes you feel
like you don’t want to be there any more. And
that made me really mad, too, that the idea
that someone could take something that I
thought would be great, and sort of take it away
from me and say, ‘Yeah, this isn’t for you. You’re
not welcome here.’”

20.
We need to stop prioritizing our
research over our researchers
• “I never thought anyone would take this
seriously”
• Code of conduct, legal action
You should not have to “suck it up” in order to
survive academia

21.
• Thank you to the survey respondents and
interviewees who shared their stories
• Please fill out the survey and share:
http://bit.ly/fieldexp13
• #safe13 on Twitter
• Laboratory for Evolutionary Endocrinology:
Mary Rogers, Catya Mesyef, Raia Hamad, Kim
Anderson
The discipline that shines a light on these issues
empowers others to do the same