THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, June 15, 1996 TAG: 9606150329
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY BRADLEY GRAHAM, THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: 59 lines
An extensive new Defense Department survey shows a significant reduction in the number of women in uniform who report suffering sexual harassment, particularly in the Navy, but more than half still say they encounter offensive behavior.
Defense officials reviewing the results said they were encouraged by the drop to 55 percent, down from 64 percent in 1988 when the last poll was taken. But the officials also expressed surprise and distress at the continuing high incidence of offensive behavior in the ranks.
``When you see 55 percent saying they feel some sexual harassment, you have to be concerned,'' one senior official said. ``That's bothersome. You look at that number and you say, `Gee whiz, what more can we do?' ''
When asked in the poll about a wider-ranging list of offensive behaviors, 78 percent of the women said they had experienced some type in the previous year, although one-third indicated that they did not consider the incidents sexual harassment.
In particular, 70 percent reported being targets of crude behavior such as whistling, leering or the telling of unwanted sexual jokes; 63 percent suffered sexist behavior, meaning insulting or condescending attitudes; 41 percent received unwanted sexual attention such as touching; 13 percent experienced coercive proposals for sex in return for job advancement; and 6 percent were victims of sexual assault.
The survey indicates that the Navy has made the greatest strides among the services, dropping 13 percentage points since 1988 in women reporting sexual harassment. With 53 percent of Navy women polled saying they experienced harassment, the Navy ranked lower than the Marine Corps (64 percent) and the Army (61 percent), and a bit higher than the Air Force (49 percent). The Navy scored better than other services when members were asked if service leaders make ``honest and reasonable efforts to stop sexual harassment.''
Senior defense officials called the overall findings unacceptably high and reiterated the department's policy of zero tolerance. Defense Secretary William J. Perry moved a year ago to adopt recommendations of a task force on harassment, clarifying Pentagon policy, intensifying sensitivity training and revising systems for processing of complaints.
But his aides said the new polling results could not be read as a measure of the success or failure of these stepped-up efforts, since the survey was conducted last year just as the initiatives were ordered.
Nonetheless, the military's sexual-harassment problem appears significantly greater than the civilian sector's. While comparable data is scarce, the most recent results of a periodic survey of federal civil-service workers, similar in size and scope to the Defense Department survey, showed 44 percent of women reporting any harassment.
Each of the military services has been devoting considerable attention for some time to curtailing sexual harassment, none more publicly than the Navy, whose leadership continues to struggle under the shadow of the scandalous 1991 Tailhook convention at which aviators groped and abused dozens of women.
The survey included three different questionnaires and covered a total of 90,000 active-duty military personnel.
KEYWORDS: SURVEY U.S. NAVY SEXUAL HARASSMENT by CNB