Healthcare, hospitality workers face most inappropriate behavior, especially women

People who work in healthcare and the hospitality sector are most likely to experience inappropriate behavior at work, such as sexual harassment, intimidation, physical violence, or bullying. Women are also more likely to face this than men, Statistics Netherlands (CBS) reported based on its and TNO’s National Survey on Working Conditions.

Last year, 17 percent of all workers (aged 15 to 75) indicated that they had experienced inappropriate behavior at work in the preceding 12 months. Among healthcare workers, that was 30 percent, and in the hospitality industry, it was 20 percent. Inappropriate behavior at work is least common in agriculture (6.3%) and construction (8.5%), where relatively few women work.

Women (21%) are more likely to experience unwanted behavior at work than men (13%). Inappropriate behavior also occurs more often when the work involves more contact with other people. In healthcare and hospitality, 75 percent of employees said they worked with other people almost all day. In IT and financial services, where inappropriate behavior is much less common (8.9% and 9.1%, respectively), only 50 percent of people spend most of their day working with other people.

In healthcare, men (29 percent) and women (30 percent) are almost equally likely to experience inappropriate behavior. The male-female difference is much larger in the hospitality industry, mainly due to the difference in sexual harassment - 16 percent of women experience sexual harassment, compared to 6 percent of men in the sector.

Female healthcare workers are also much more likely to experience sexual harassment than their male colleagues (10% and 5%, respectively). Male healthcare workers are more likely to face intimidation, physical violence, and bullying, making the total difference between male and female workers in the healthcare sector relatively small.