Harassment of Women Found Rampant at Military Academies

Sexual harassment of women is rampant at the nation’s military academies and up to 97% of female students felt some harassment in 1991, congressional investigators said Thursday.

Widespread harassment of women and a prevailing attitude among male recruits that women do not belong were detailed in a General Accounting Office report presented to the Senate Armed Services personnel subcommittee.

“Although relatively few cases of sexual harassment were formally reported, responses to our survey indicated that nearly all academy women reported experiencing at least one form of sexual harassment during the academic year 1991,” GAO military analyst Mark Gebicke told the panel. The GAO is the investigating arm of Congress.

Sen. Dan Coats (R-Ind.) criticized the GAO for drawing so inclusive a definition of harassment that the statistics were skewed and that a manageable problem appeared to be out of control. Coats said that under the GAO definition, a cadet saying, “You’d better shape up,” during exercises could be accused of harassment by a cadet of the opposite sex.

The study covered the United States Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., the Naval Academy at Annapolis, Md., and the Air Force Academy at Colorado Springs, Colo.

A survey of the class of 1993 at all three academies found that 80% of the female cadets either observed or experienced sexist comments in the past year. A 1992 Air Force Academy survey found that 78% of all female students and 52% of the men said they daily heard sexist or demeaning remarks about women. Women make up between 11% and 14% of the student body at the academies.

Female cadets wrote of being ostracized for reporting blatant incidents of harassment.

Examples of harassment uncovered by the GAO included:

* Prank phone calls, offhand comments and derogatory name-calling.

* An upperclassman entering a female student’s room and fondling her.

* A male student videotaping a female student taking a shower.

* A senior man ordering a woman in a group of underclass trainees to stay behind after dismissing others and then attempting to kiss her.