From the office of Senator Harris.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senators Kamala D. Harris (D-CA), Jacky Rosen (D-NV), and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) on Thursday announced the Combating Sexual Harassment in Science Act of 2019, legislation to provide for research to better understand the causes and consequences of sexual harassment in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields, examine policies to reduce harassment, and encourage interagency efforts in these matters. This bill follows a landmark report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, which found that sexual harassment is pervasive in institutions of higher education and contributes to loss of talented, highly-trained individuals in the STEM workforce.
“As the daughter of a barrier breaking woman in STEM research, I know the importance of ensuring more women enter and excel in this field,” said Senator Harris. “As more women enter STEM fields, we must do more to ensure appropriate steps are taken to change the workplace climate and prevent sexual harassment. By shining a light on sexual harassment in STEM, this legislation is a step in the right direction to fostering an environment across STEM where everyone is safe and able to achieve their full potential.”
“Sexual harassment is an issue that affects every type of workplace – and it’s especially pervasive in academia and among those working in the sciences, a field that’s been traditionally male-dominated,” said Senator Rosen. “This legislation will take much needed steps to address this issue by directing the Office of Science and Technology Policy to issue uniform sexual harassment policies that will help empower survivors to come out from the shadows and share their stories.”
“Harassment and discrimination deprive our nation of great minds, and rob individuals of promising careers,” said Senator Blumenthal. “This legislation will help us directly confront a pervasive culture of sexual harassment that has been allowed to persist in STEM for far too long. STEM fields already suffer from gender inequality – we should be making it easier for women and other underrepresented groups to get into these industries, not turning a blind eye to the kind of unacceptable harassment and discrimination that make it even harder for them.”
The Combating Sexual Harassment in Science Act is the Senate companion to legislation introduced in the House of Representatives by Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX) on January 3, 2019.
“Sexual harassment in the academic workplace undermines the contributions of women in critical STEM fields and drives talented scientists away from careers in research,” said Representative Johnson. “Our nation’s scientific and technological leadership depends on ensuring our best and brightest are able to conduct their research free of harassment and abuse. I am glad to see my Senate colleagues introduce a companion to my Combating Sexual Harassment in Science Act to tackle this problem. We must do more to empower and protect our increasingly diverse scientific workforce and this bill is an important step in that direction.”
The Combating Sexual Harassment in Science Act would:
- Create a new grant program through the National Science Foundation (NSF) to better understand the factors contributing to, and consequences of, sexual harassment, and examine interventions.
- Direct Federal statistical agencies to gather national data on the prevalence, nature, and implications of harassment in higher education.
- Direct NSF to enter into an agreement with the Academies and update professional standards of conduct in research, evidence-based practices for fostering a climate intolerant of harassment, and methods for identifying and addressing incidents.
- Establish an Interagency Working Group for the purpose of coordinating Federal science agency efforts to reduce the prevalence of sexual harassment involving grant personnel.
- Authorize $17.4 million a year to carry out the Act, following recommendations by NSF and the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.
Supporters of the Combating Sexual Harassment in Science Act include The American Chemical Society, American Educational Research Association, American Geophysical Union, American Mathematical Society, American Physical Society, American Physiological Society, American Political Science Association, American Psychological Association, American Society for Microbiology, Association for Women Geoscientists, Association for Computing Machinery’s Council on Women in Computing, Association for Women in Mathematics, Computing Research Association, Consortium of Social Science Associations, Endocrine Society, Federation of Associations in Behavioral and Brain Sciences, Santa Barbara Women’s Political Committee, Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Society of Women Engineers, The Optical Society, The Paleontological Society, and the Association for Women in Science.
“The AGU community of 60,000 Earth and space scientists is proud to endorse the Combating Sexual Harassment in Science Act of 2019, and we applaud Senator Harris’s efforts to expand protection against sexual harassment,” said Chris McEntee, AGU Executive Director and CEO. “Harassment, bias, and discrimination undermine the scientific enterprise by interfering with critical discoveries and innovation. AGU looks forward to working with Senator Harris, Congress, and others in the scientific community to foster safe, inclusive working environments in which all scientists and researchers can thrive.”
“The Society of Women Engineers is dedicated to the success of women engineers in all stages and aspects of their academic, professional and personal lives,” said Karen Horting, Executive Director and CEO of the Society of Women Engineers. “Ascertaining and addressing sexual harassment and discrimination in academic and scientific workplaces is crucial. If this country is to meet the ever-increasing demand for STEM skills and knowledge, we must do all we can to keep females in STEM fields. This bill and the steps it takes to addressing discrimination and harassment are much needed. Thank you to Senator Kamala Harris and her colleagues for introducing the Combating Sexual Harassment in Science Act. SWE looks forward to supporting the measure through the legislative process.”
“Technological advancement thrives on a constant influx of new ideas from people with diverse perspectives and skills,” said Elizabeth A. Rogan, Chief Executive Officer of The Optical Society. “The Optical Society strongly supports Sen. Kamala Harris’ bill that would foster inclusivity and examine policies aimed at curbing sexual harassment in STEM, a companion to legislation introduced in the House. Action by Congress to protect and promote diversity will strengthen U.S. leadership in STEM education, careers, and innovation.”
In addition to Senators Harris, Rosen, and Blumenthal, this legislation is co-sponsored by Senators Hirono (D-HI), Klobuchar (D-MN), Peters (D-MI), Reed (D-RI), Sanders (I-VT), and Smith (D-MN).
For further background on the bill, click here.
For full bill text, click here.
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Here is a website with some statistics and references. I have a hard time believing some of the stats.
https://www.nsvrc.org/statistics
Doesn’t make a lot of sense. One paragraph says that 63% of males at particular college admit to raping or attempting to rape!!! Right
Following paragraph says 26% girls in college had unwanted sexual contact, whatever that means.
Amazing all these parents are sending their children off to college to rape and be raped.
Depends on the definition.
In my case, if my partner or I wake up through the night and is feeling toey, there is a lot of stroking going on to wake the sleeping party up.
This would probably qualify as rape under the modern definitions.
We just enjoy it enthusiastically.
If the statistics are to believed, there’s a lot of guys targeting the same couple of girls.
Yea, that effectively means everyone in America has been raped when you add all those numbers together. Their name says it all, they were created to find a problem and exacerbate it and they are doing a bang up job.
There is one and only one thing here: Men are better at STEM and obsessing over sexual harassment gives women a way to express their hate of the facts. Jordan Peterson speaks explains well the general differences between men and women.
Sexual harassment AND STEM. Jump on bandwagons much?
I’m not a fan of heavy handed legislation, but there is definitely something not quite right in Western STEM workplaces.
When I visited an IT workplace in Taipei, women were everywhere, at all levels – managers, coders, easily a 50/50 split.
Most IT workplaces in the West, women represent maybe one in ten workers, often less.
I didn’t see any evidence of sexual harassment in IT workplaces – though not being a woman, maybe stuff happened that I didn’t see. But there is definitely some difference between Western culture and the workplace culture I saw in Taiwan, which leads to a very different office demographic.
Would heavy handed legislation fix this imbalance? I doubt it. But what I saw in Taipei, I don’t think you can simply conclude women have no interest in STEM.
In the West, something is directing women’s attention away from STEM.
Look at the last 50-60 years of “media” directed towards females from childhood on up, there is your answer. As for the differences between Asian and Western workplace habits, the designation of “men’s work” and “women’s work” have always been different. Women working at labor jobs has long been accepted in the Asian cultures I have been exposed to, while in European/American culture there has always been a sharp divide between what women and men were expected to do job wise. The American Colonial and Nation Building periods saw a change in that. Frontier/colonial societies can not afford to not have everyone working that is capable of working, at whatever needs done. The men’s work/women’s work divisions did reassert at the end of the frontier/nation building phase in America, still, women working in many men’s work categories had become accepted.
The period of militant feminism has totally screwed all of the accepted norms right into the floor and replaced them with complete incoherence. The feminists have told young women they can do whatever they want, be whatever they want. And then they tried to command those same women to be what feminists command that they be, whether they what that or not. And those who resist, in any way, are viciously attacked. And now they are systematically attacking interpersonal relations and trying to replace them with an amorphous cloud of nothing. And we wonder why so many people under 40 are so confused and filled with self-loathing and guilt for things they have never even done.
Women are directing women’s attention away from STEM in the West, Eric.
The freer and more egalitarian the society, the more disparity there is between male and female choices of career.
There’s good published literature on that.
40 years with a BSCS both as an employee and an independent, and all I ever noted was that because of their relative scarcity in the field, women tended to have the upper hand in personal relationships and often wrongly were not held to the same high professional standards as the men…
Anything Senator Richard “Rambo” Blumenthal is associated with is suspect due to his chronic lies about having served in Vietnam. If the Senate collectively as a body had any honor and decency they would remove him from office and not allow him to serve. He probably could be and should be prosecuted under the “Stolen Valor” law.
So now they are coming for the scientists.
But I did nothing because I was not a scientist.
And then they came for me.
And I looked around for someone to help me.
But there was no-one.
Because they had all been taken away.
Given the news of the last several years I think there are some industries that need this law more than STEM fields. For instance: the entertainment industry, the main stream news industry and the political arena. On further reflection, there is really no distinction between these three.
Dang,I got censored.
What was the word?
That needed Moderation?
Just saying,these agencies are all funded by federal government,yet same government wants to spend $17.4 million more to investigate whether their “professional employees” are sexist pigs?
So their funding of science is ,like the IPCCs,free of ethics or standards?
I know,the democrats should ban science,cause it is sexist and racist.
And repeal all natural laws that violate their “understanding” of reality.
Sexual harassment: bad manners fueled by testosterone. There. Can I get my ignoble prize now?
This is a mind-numbing, virtue signalling, progressive democrat solution in search of non-existent problem.
My day job is for a reasonably large company that employs a lot of engineering professionals (and me for some reason… cough…).
About a year back the internal email highlighted our female engineer of the year. Paraphrasing she was asked what it was like to be a female engineer.
(again paraphrasing from memory)
“It’s great. You actually get much more done much more easily because male engineers are scared to argue with you”
Nature is interested in just one thing, ” Propagation of the species”.
It could not care less as to how that happens.
MJE VK5ELL
This bill fits perfectly into the fundamental laws of pseudo scientific principles which is.
“If you look for it you will find it”
The reason man made climate change is so pervasive, is because that is what the IPCC is tasked with finding. They were not told to find what causes/caused climate to change. They were tasked with finding man made causes only.
Hey presto, unlimited funds are made available to look in the wrong place for the wrong things.
This latest socialist attack on normality, will have unknown and unknowable consequences. What is known is, it is a pointless waste of resources.
I say this, as the father of a daughter who is a highly qualified senior, in an international firm of actuaries. She got there because she is very bright, mathematically exceptional, and because she is the right person for the job, not because of her gender.
Sexual harassment needs to be dealt with but I fail to see why this needs research costing $17.4 million a year. Jobs for the boys or, in this case, for the girls.
Totally fake issue promulgated by non-scientific idiotistas. At University there were just a few girls in my STEM classes and they were a coddled bunch who usually got extra help from every one. I made the mistake of taking one as a lab partner in physics — she was useless so I ended up doing all the work myself. In all, it was the opposite of sexual harassment. At work, women were always favored and were a terror in management, usually thinking they could do no wrong whereas the men managers were more circumspect and considerate, usually. I could go on but nah.
“Sexual harassment in STEM.” I would have thought sexual (and any other types of) discrimination would have been more of a problem. This new “field of research” is probably just to deflect the focus away from the bigger problem (by orders of magnitude) which is academic harassment. No cash for research there, then?
If a federal study commission is formed with a mission statement of “Quantifying the horrors of Sexual Harassment in STEM fields”, you can be assured that they will find it and put a number on it whether it exists or not. Study commissions never fail to find what they were formed to find, ever!
Perhaps if Robert Mueller were to be put in charge ….
Sorry, I am at a complete loss!
Who ARE these “men” they keep talking about? These same people tell us male and female are simply personal preferences. So if a “woman” is being oppressed by a “man”, all she has to do is declare herself a “man” and she will instantly become an all-powerful, toxic oppressor herself, easily able to defeat any other “man” who is up to no good.
To take it one step further, who are these “angry white men” I keep hearing about? When I look around, everyone I see who is accused of being an angry white male is, in fact, a prehistorically dispossessed, melanin-disadvantaged African transgender operation-denied, crossdressing lesbian female speaking truth to power. Those who are slandered as angry white men are the very PEAK of victimhood, baby, and all other “victims” should bow down in awe.
My education and career has been in health care. I work in an organization largely run by women, with a predominantly female workforce, and as a male physician I have seen the balance tilt considerably toward more female than male graduates in medicine. I don’t see this trend as good or bad as long as qualified, intelligent and dedicated people staff our services. Maybe one day 90% of health care workers in all roles will be women – that would not be evidence of a problem if the system works for those who need it. It would not be evidence of discrimination if all who wish to enter the field are given equal opportunity to compete for positions. It also would not imply that sexual harassment of men in health care by women was a systemic problem. Sexual harassment in any field of work or study is wrong and should be treated as an issue independent of whatever area of human endeavor is being discussed. Aiming at STEM is ridiculous and clearly part of a political agenda.
If chicks didn’t treat nerds like trash in high school they wouldn’t be catching blow-back from them later when the nerds outnumber in college STEM classes.
I don’t know about that, most of the women I studied with were nerds in high school. Funny thing about nerds, people assume that because they don’t spend a lot of attention on their appearance that they aren’t fine specimens of the human species. I have been to formal occasions with groups of nerds, and must say they clean up quite nicely!
Yes, indeed, you can polish a nerd.
excellent!
Now, there seems to be a necessity by claim, of really seriously regulating by law and legislation the intellect Phd scientific higher class medium of minds and higher thinking thinkers, in the matters of sexual harassment,
is that it!?
Oh well, wandering what could be next!
Who would have thought these kinda of guys and girls of higher thinking and higher top education could be so “predatory” sexual bully nasties!
It most probably is only an exaggerated joke, or something like that….supposedly.
cheers
A paper summarised at Science Daily, “Gender gap in spatial reasoning starts in elementary school, meta-analysis finds” (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/04/190411154728.htm) makes the following statements which probably has one hell of a lot to do with the imbalances in STEM.
“It is well-established that, on average, men outperform women on a spatial reasoning task known as mental rotation…
Mental rotation is considered one of the hallmarks of spatial reasoning…
Prior research has also shown that superior spatial skills predict success in male-dominated science, technology engineering and math (STEM) fields, and that the gender difference in spatial reasoning may contribute to the gender disparity in these STEM fields.
It would be the height of folly (which liberals are quite disposed toward) to assume that this is a nature/nurture issue which can be solved with enough “nurture”. The liberal meme of today that there is no natural difference between men and women is a delusion. Since the dawn of time gender roles have been ingrained deeper and deeper in our genetics. Certainly there is a percentage of the female population capable of performing in STEM at the highest levels. To expect that percentage to be the same as the male population is wishful thinking of the worst kind. It is not just the capability that must be considered but also the “urge” to pursue that capability in STEM as a career. Without the urge the capability is not significant to the STEM universe. What these liberals fail to recognize is that capability can manifest itself in all kinds of other endeavors. Take a look at the “Magnolia” magazine sometime. Or the meal presentations of top chefs. Or the clothes of top fashion designers. All involve the ability to perform spatial reasoning at a high level.
Why don’t these liberals pursue equalizing the number of female and male nurses in health care?
I entered the forestry field as an adult, from a different career, in the early 1970s when women were just beginning to take an interest in resource management work. In more than 30 years with several employers at various levels from field timber management to university teaching to technical support, I watched women competently undertaking increasingly responsible jobs, and never observed a single instance of serious sex harassment, or saw any significant obstacles placed in the way of women’s advancement. The door had been unlocked for a long while; all they ever had to do was turn the handle and enter.
The problem is of course biology. If both men and women were able to have babies, then we could compare their performance, but nature decided otherwise.
If as a woman gets older, and realises that her biological clock is ticking down, then quite obviously her thinking, and with it her ability to carry out certain jobs, will differ from that of a male colleague.
Because of that possible desire to have a child will mean that she now wants
a job with less hours of work.
Over a lifetime this will mean that she cannot expect to advance in a carrier to the same extent as her male colleagues.
MJE VK5ELL