Sexual Harassment in the Accounting Profession: Has the Situation Improved?

This study reexamines sexual harassment in the accounting profession to update our 1997 study of the same issue. We find that improvements in addressing sexual harassment still need to be made. Both men and women still perceive themselves to be victims of sexual harassment and firms still need to improve their methods of addressing client-initiated sexual harassment of their employees. But not all of the news is bad. Several important improvements have been made since the last study. Firms have made serious attempts to implement sexual harassment policies and to communicate those policies to their employees. The occurrence of sexual harassment has decreased substantially and firm reactions to incidents of harassment appear to have improved as well.