A new survey for the union magazine Fagbladet 3F has revealed that about 57 percent of Danish women aged 18-35 have been sexually harassed at some point.
It also revealed that 17.5 percent of men in the same age group have experienced being sexually harassed.
“We need to create a culture in which individual employees can establish their boundaries themselves and decide whether the boss or colleagues’ comments are sexual harassment or not,” said Søren Heisel, a spokesperson for the union 3F.
“We believe the employer should pay compensation if they were in a position to do something to prevent the sexual harassment. It’s not like that today. We also believe that it should be easier to try these cases in court and that compensation should be higher.”
Break it down
As part of the survey, 29.8 percent said they had been touched in a way that had sexual undertones, while 30.7 percent said they had been whistled at, shouted at or the like in a sexually provocative way.
Some 12 percent said they had been on the receiving end of explicit sexual comments, 19.8 percent said they had been asked unsolicited questions about their sex lives and 20.1 percent said that someone had made physical movements with sexual undertones in front of them.
Finally, 9.2 percent said they had encountered false rumours of a sexual nature circulating about them.
