“We count the things we value, such as the Consumer Price Index, the unemployment rate, and batting averages,” Melinda Gates reminded leaders at the 2018 World Economic Forum in Davos. “Everybody knows sexual harassment is a big problem, but if we learn precisely how big — including how many billions of dollars it steals from the economy every year — it will be addressed a lot faster.”
At Golden Girl Finance we value women’s contributions, so let’s do some counting, shall we?
- $6.7US million – loss a typical Fortune 500 firm faces each year due to absenteeism, low productivity and staff turnover as a result of sexual harassment, based on a 1988 study ($14 million in 2018 dollars).
- 6 million – estimated number of women in the US who have experienced sexual harassment on the job.
- 8 million – estimated number of Canadian women who have experienced “unwanted sexual pressure” in the workplace.
- £250,000 – secret payment to two employees of Miramax in the 1990s who accused Harvey Weinstein of sexual harassment and assault (approximately $600,000 today).
- $5 million – rejected donation Harvey Weinstein attempted to make in 2017 to establish a scholarship for female directors at the University of Southern California.
- $45 million – amount 21st Century Fox paid in the first quarter of 2017 to settle allegations of sexual harassment.
- $20 million – Fox News Channel’s payment to broadcaster Gretchen Carlson to settle a sexual harassment lawsuit against the company CEO Roger Ailes in 2016.
- $1,000 – fee for Michelle Williams to reshoot All the Money in the World.
- $1.5 million – fee for Mark Wahlberg to reshoot All the Money in the World, which he subsequently donated to Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund in Michelle Williams’ name.
- $500,000 – donation to Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund made by WME, the agency that represents both Williams and Wahlberg.
- $327 million – cost of sexual harassment within the US federal government in 1994, which included related job turnover, sick leave and diminished productivity ($550 million in 2018 dollars).
- 295 – formal complaints of sexual harassment brought against the federal government of Canada in 2015.
- 59 – countries with no laws against workplace sexual harassment.
- 80 – percentage of women who left their jobs within two years of experiencing severe sexual harassment.
- ??? – untallied economic losses to women whose careers have stagnated or been derailed, who faced diminished work hours or pay or switched jobs or industries all due to sexual harassment and hostile work environments.
What the world needs now is more women economists…
- 53 – number of data points that must be tracked by economists to achieve global gender equality, according to a United Nations report in 2015.
- 10 – current number of those data points being tracked.
- 80 – percentage of Europe’s senior economists who are men.
- 3 – number of female senior members of the economics department at Harvard.
- 40 – number of male senior members of the economics department at Harvard.
