In the Time's Up era, Hollywood is being forced to confront a lot of ugly truths about itself, and a sobering new statistic demonstrates just how overdue this reckoning is. According to a new report, 94 percent of women in Hollywood say that they have experienced some type of harassment or abuse.
The survey of 843 women in the industry was conducted by USA Today, in partnership with the National Sexual Violence Resource Center. The most commonly reported behavior was unwelcome sexual comments, jokes or gestures, while "being touched in a sexual way" was also commonly reported (69 percent). 21 percent of women said that they had been forced into a sexual act. Only one in four women reported the incident, and just 28 percent of those women said their workplace experience improved after doing so.
There are some caveats to note about this research: most importantly, those surveyed were a self-selecting group. Researchers sent emails to members of the Creative Coalition and Women in Film and Television, and because the responses were self-selected, the margin of error is large. But given the flood of allegations that has emerged against powerful men in the industry over the past several months, including Harvey Weinstein, James Toback, Brett Ratner, Matt Lauer, and television producers like Supergirl's Andrew Kreiseberg and One Tree Hill's Mark Schwahn, these numbers do not seem implausible.
