Sex Harassment Complaints by Female City Workers Drop

The number of female Los Angeles city employees being sexually harassed has declined slightly in the last three years, and the perpetrators have more often been co-workers than superiors, according to a city survey presented to a City Council committee Wednesday.

The number of women reporting harassment dropped from 36% in a 1987 study to 31% in a 1989 follow-up survey, with the majority of respondents saying they were harassed by co-workers, said Susan J. Rose, executive director of the city’s Commission on the Status of Women, which conducted the surveys.

Addressing the City Council’s Human Resources and Labor Relations Committee, Rose said the decrease in the incidence of sexual harassment, along with the decline in harassment by supervisors, indicated steps taken after the 1987 study succeeded in educating employees about sexual harassment.

The July, 1989, survey was a follow-up to a 1987 survey. That study found that 70% of all women who did not report sexual harassment refused to do so because they thought it would do no good. More than 60% did not report the harassment out of fear of retaliation.