“And then it clicked”

A groundbreaking report on the experience by Black women of sexual harassment in the workplace was released by the Trade Union Congress (TUC) on the 27^th November 2024. The author of the report, Carol Freguson the Equality and Strategy support officer at the TUC worked tirelessly in putting the report together.

The report sets out numerous recommendations following the research and analysis of the data collated for employers, government, and trade unions.

The Chair of the Black Women’s Sexual Harassment Advisory Group, Michelle Codrington Rogers states:

“Until this report there has been little to no study that articulates the lived experience of sexual harassment that Black women face in the workplace here in the UK. It is for this reason that the TUC brought together the Black Women’s sexual harassment Advisory group We wanted to provide a space to consider the experiences Black women have, and enhance the work started in 2020 by the TUC Anti-Racism Taskforce and the work of the EC working group on tackling sexual harassment since it’s set up in 2021. The women we spoke to described situations where they were without an effective support system to help them challenge their organisation or had no route to hold their employer to account for the emotional, mental, and physical threats they face at work“.  

This research was carried out by Gill Kirton, Queen Mary University of London, Cécile Guillaume, University of Surrey and Renu Gupta, Queen Mary University of London on behalf of the TUC.  

The report surveyed 115 Black women across the movement and the key findings included:  

• 65% of respondents to our survey reported experiencing sexual harassment of some form, with high rates of unwelcome verbal sexual advances, unwanted touching, or sexual jokes.  
• 35% of respondents told us that they had experienced negative, gender-based attitudes that diminish women in general, or Black women specifically  
• 51% of respondents said that their experience of sexual harassment had a negative impact on their mental health. 36% said they felt less confident at work, 27% felt isolated at work and 22% said that their experience had had a negative impact on their performance at work.  
• We also gathered data on racism at work. 73% of respondents told us that they had been bullied or harassed, with 53% reporting that they had been subject to racist remarks or racist comments made in their presence.  
• We found that 58% of Black women who experienced sexual harassment did not report it to their employer, with 38% of respondents telling us they did not think it would be taken seriously if they did report it.  

The aims of the recommendations in the report are to tackle the cultural issues that continue to exist in workplaces that allow racialised sexual harassment to go unchallenged. 

Although the findings of the report are not surprising for many of us, it does highlight the prevalence of misogynoir. In many reports we read on the experience of sexual harassment of women in the workplace there is very little if at all of misogynoir. Misogynoir – a term created by Moya Bailey – describes the specific type of discrimination that Black women face when racism and sexism combine, creating unique challenges that affect Black women because of both race and gender at the same time.  This is highlighted in the report, and it’s probably the first time in the UK we have heard the voices of Black women in the workplace who have been subjected to sexual harassment with specific recommendations.

The misogynoir experienced by Black women is often understated and, in some cases, missed out, leaving Black women to “navigate spaces where we are often alone and at risk of harassment and assault”.

A truly historical report on the experiences of Black women subjected to sexual harassment in the workplace.