The Maasai tribe in Kenya WIKIMEDIA, MATT CRYPTOMore than 20 percent of female bioanthropologists who took part in a new survey are victims of “physical sexual harassment or unwanted sexual contact” in the course of their scientific research, primarily at the hand of superior professional colleagues, even their own mentors.
After talking to a friend that had been raped by a colleague, anthropologist Kathryn Clancy of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign decided to look into the matter further. “It was like a slap in the face to learn that this was happening to my friends,” Clancy told ScienceInsider.
She began posting anonymous stories of sexual harassment, shared with her by her female colleagues, on the Scientific American blog Context and Variation. The stories began to draw comments of other researchers’ harassment stories. “This is definitely not limited to just my discipline,” Clancy told ScienceInsider—nor is it limited to females, she found.
To get a better handle on the frequency with which such harassment occurs, Clancy and colleagues conducted a (still ongoing) online survey, asking scientists ...
