美国国家公共电台 NPR Poll: Americans Overwhelmingly Support 'Zero Tolerance' On Sexual Harassment

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

The climate surrounding sexual harassment 1 has changed drastically in the past few years, and Americans overwhelmingly favor a zero-tolerance policy. Those are findings of a poll NPR conducted with the firm Ipsos. NPR's Danielle Kurtzleben is here with more on that poll. Hello, Danielle.

DANIELLE KURTZLEBEN, BYLINE 2: Hi, Robert.

SIEGEL: First, how big was this poll, and how recently was it taken?

KURTZLEBEN: So it was an online poll of just over 1,100 people, and it was taken just a few days ago, December 8 through 12.

SIEGEL: And what did people say about a zero-tolerance policy for sexual harassment?

KURTZLEBEN: Right. This is one of the most fascinating findings we had. Eighty-six percent of Americans - so an overwhelming majority - said that they agree with the statement that, quote, "a zero-tolerance policy for sexual harassment is essential to bringing about change in society." And I want to add, a lot of things today are polarizing by party. This is not polarizing by party. Nine in 10 Democrats 3 and 8 in 10 Republicans agreed with that.

SIEGEL: How do attitudes toward sexual harassment or perceptions of what our attitudes are differ from, say, several years ago?

KURTZLEBEN: Right. So people really do seem to perceive a seismic 4 shift in how society treats sexual harassment right now. So for example, 1 in 4 people said that they agree that right now, allegations of sexual harassment are generally ignored - just 1 in 4. That's not many. So we said, five years ago, what do you think it was? And two-thirds said that five years ago, sexual harassment allegations were generally ignored. So importantly, this is not exactly a trend in attitudes.

SIEGEL: Right.

KURTZLEBEN: But it's people right now looking back and saying, hmm, I see a really big change.

SIEGEL: Things are different now, they're saying.

KURTZLEBEN: Absolutely.

SIEGEL: Did you find any significant differences between Republicans and Democrats in the poll?

KURTZLEBEN: We did find a few. Here's one in particular. We presented people with a statement. Nearly all instances of sexual harassment would end if the woman said stop. Thirty-five percent of Republicans agreed with that to some degree. Twenty percent of Democrats agreed with that to some degree. That is a significant difference. But once again, it's also a minority in both cases. So it's not as if Republicans and Democrats are living on entirely 5 different planets on this according to this poll. Really what is kind of striking is that Republicans and Democrats didn't differ on a lot of these questions in our poll.

SIEGEL: You asked people about their own personal experiences of sexual harassment. What did you hear?

KURTZLEBEN: Fifty-nine percent of women said that they have personally experienced sexual harassment, and 27 percent of men said that they have experienced sexual harassment.

SIEGEL: Twenty-seven percent of men said they've experienced sexual harassment.

KURTZLEBEN: Right - a big gap but, once again, not absolutely huge. It's not that they're on two different ends of the spectrum 6.

SIEGEL: One difference I see in one of the charts from your poll is that among Republican men, 48 percent say that they are not currently talking about the issue of sexual harassment with their family - not at all - whereas 22 percent of Democratic women say they're talking about it a lot.

KURTZLEBEN: Right, yeah. So when we did have partisan 7 and gender 8 differences, fairly often Democratic women and Republican men were at two different ends of the spectrum with Democratic men and Republican women somewhere in the middle. That is one big one. It really does look like Democratic women are having more conversations about sexual harassment right now than many other Americans.

SIEGEL: NPR's Danielle Kurtzleben talking about NPR and Ipsos' new poll on sexual harassment. Thanks.

KURTZLEBEN: Thank you.