DONDENA Seminar - Ingo Isphording

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"Sexual Harassment at the Workplace: The Role of Firm Policies and Managers"

SPEAKER: Ingo Isphording (Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods)

ABSTRACT: 

Sexual harassment in the workplace has far-reaching consequences for individual well-being, firm performance, and gender equality. We present new evidence from Germany on how workers and firms perceive sexual harassment, and on the role of preventive policies and management practices in mitigating its prevalence and costs. Using representative employer–employee data, we show that harassment is widespread, with women disproportionately affected. Both employers and employees report significant costs in terms of morale, productivity, and turnover. A discrete choice experiment further reveals that workers — especially women — are willing to forgo substantial wage shares to avoid firms with known harassment cases. Preventive policies and female leadership partially mitigate this negative valuation. Yet, we find a persistent gender gap in trust: women are less confident that management will respond appropriately to harassment, and this mistrust is linked to higher reported incidence. These results highlight the dual importance of effective workplace policies and credible enforcement.
 

BIO:

Ingo E. Isphording is a Senior Researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods in Bonn, Germany. Before joining the Max Planck Institute, he was Research Director at the Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).