Facts and Figures

Büro BASS (2024)

The Büro BASS conducted a study on sexual harassment in the workplace on behalf of the Federal Office for Gender Equality (FOGE) and the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO).

  • Sexual harassment, especially potential sexual harassment, is part of everyday working life in many places, affecting both women and men. 
  • More than half (52%) of employees – both women and men – have been confronted with potentially harassing behaviour at least once in their working lives. Women (58.8%) are affected more often than men (45.9%).
  • The most common types of behaviour experienced are general derogatory or obscene comments or jokes and derogatory or suggestive comments directed at the respondents personally.
  • Women are more likely to feel subjectively affected, which is considered a measure of sexual harassment under the Equality Act.
  • 43.8 per cent of women and 17.3 per cent of men have felt sexually harassed at work at some point.

UniSAFE (2022)

The UniSAFE project conducted a survey of 46 higher education institutions in 15 European countries. Over 42,000 members of staff and students were surveyed. This is the largest survey on gender-based violence in the European Research Area.

  • The prevalence of gender-based violence is defined as the proportion of respondents who have experienced at least one form of violence listed in the survey since starting work or studying at their institution. This includes physical, psychological, economic and sexual violence, as well as sexual harassment and online violence.
  • 62% of participants have experienced some form of gender-based violence.
  • Respondents from the LGBQ+ community (68%), those with a disability or chronic illness (72%) and those belonging to an ethnic minority (69%) were more likely to have experienced at least one incident of gender-based violence than those who did not identify with these characteristics.
  • Psychological violence is reported as the most common form of violence (57%). In addition, almost one in three respondents reported experiencing sexual harassment within the institution (31%).
  • Of those respondents who had experienced gender-based violence, only 13% reported the incident.