Sexual Harassment: The research community is not spared

Studies on the subject are rare. While university research harassment is a known fact, few dare report it. The L’Oréal Foundation has decided to break this taboo: in a new survey, broadcast by FranceInfo on March 16, 2023, it focused in particular on the scientific community. In this sector, one in two female researchers (49%) say they have already been harassed in the workplace. Half of these attacks have occurred in the past five years, after the #MeToo movement began. An alarming phenomenon, which would be far from being confined to the scientific community.

Research, a male and competitive field

As remembered FranceInfoLast week, young researchers from across France co-signed an open letter protesting the silence surrounding the sexual harassment and assaults plaguing their environment:

How to explain this imperviousness of the research field to feminist advances? The testimonies collected by the L’Oréal Foundation reveal the reality ofa very closed professional sector, very male, where places are expensive, with strong competition for subsidies, and great precariousness for young doctoral students.

More often than not, victims don’t even dare to speak out, for fear of being fired or nipping their chances of success in the bud:

For people who are victims of it, fear for their career is evident, as evidenced by surveys. Because the world of research is a small world with a microcosm and therefore things are discovered quickly and people don’t necessarily have the courage to speak up, because they are afraid of appearing weak. They are afraid that what they say is not proven. So in the end let them be accused of defamation. They are also afraid that people with a little more power will eventually put them on hold. »

Adèle Combe, author of How the university grinds young researchers (Editions Otherwise), interviewed by FranceInfo, 16 March 2023

And when they testify, very often they come up against the impunity of their harassers, who benefit from a complicit silence: “ When we see that the only help we could have had is to abandon ourselves in favor of some kind of teacher protectorate, it is very difficult indeed. It is as if they are closed in a bubble of silence “, reveals Alexandra, questioned by our colleagues from FranceInfo. The young woman herself was the victim of cybersexual harassment by her thesis director, but the faculty turned a deaf ear to her. If universities struggle to react, we hope that the numbers of this new study will draw attention to this climate of violence which cannot continue to perpetuate itself in general indifference.