 Sexual harassment is a way of reducing their power, of treating them as a sexual object. And so this means that they are in power because they are treating the male structure of power and the stereotypical patriarchal structure of power that we have in our labor market. So we have to look also at the structure of power because it gives us a lot of different elements for contrasting sexual harassment and for contrasting all these different types of sexual harassment that we saw in our labor market and in our reality. I'm Julia Zacchia from Sapienza University of Rome. I'm a feminist economist and I'm a proudly member of Minervalab that is a laboratory on diversity and gender inequality in Sapienza University of Rome. They twitter me to campaign that we also started in 2017. Of course I mean show us how pervasive the was and is today sexual harassment in all countries of the world in all economic sectors. But let me say and let me stress that looking at sexual harassment the main problem that we have as researchers is to quantify this problem because I mean mainly the first main problem that we have is that we don't still have a clear universal unique definitions of sexual harassment and what sexual harassment means. And so this means that also for collecting data on the phenomena we will not have data that are comparable or around the world. And another problem that we have for the quantification of this problem or this phenomenon is that we have a normalization of violence. Normalization of violence means that a lot of women that experience this phenomenon do not recognize that as sexual harassment. They don't target that as and want to sense sexual abuse I want to sense an affection that they have in their workplaces. So for example what we found and when I say we because me and my co-author is the school of looking at the European context and looking at the data for Europe we find out that just the 3% of women that has an interview that work in the formal labor market in Europe. The test I mean saying that they have experienced sexual harassment or any I mean sexual attention in the workplaces in the 12 months before the interviews has been conducted. There is also huge originating among the different countries but I mean consider that the Mediterranean countries and so I mean one of the countries where I come from Italy are those who have the lower level of women that I mean are saying that are experiencing sexual harassment in the workplaces than the northern European countries and you can imagine one of the reason of these differences is that we have different level of knowledge about this phenomenon and more all we have different social norm that acts in our society. Of course in Mediterranean countries we have patriarchal structures of all dimensions and also of the workplaces. So let me say that these official statistics are just a tip of an iceberg of these of what the quantification of this problem of this phenomenon but I mean still we deserve to analyze as we did this little I mean share of data that we have to define which are the costs. We speak about sexual harassment we used to think about I mean the top-down situation so the top-down sexual harassment where the male manager used to harass the female subordinates but we have different kind of sexual harassment we have the horizontal one that takes place between peers but we have also another form that is the bottom up sexual harassment this means that female managers are harassed by the male subordinates and a lot of the social the sociological literature is going to analyze and this and has already analyzed this latter term of sexual harassment so the bottom up sexual harassment and it's really interesting because they find out that women in top position have higher or higher risk of sexual harassment are more target of sexual harassment and this because they treat the male power in the workplaces in the labor market and this means also to treat the patriarchal structure of power that we have in the formal labor market and that's why I mean we think that we should analyze also on the economic perspective this different kind of sexual harassment introducing some analysis on the structure and gender structure of power in our formal labor market for example considering occupations or considering the gender compositions of workplaces where you know women are working and the impact of women that are target of sexual harassment are I mean of different kind of course I mean they are affected by health problems by identity problems and they also reduce the well-being I mean psychological physical but also in terms of their careers so they have problem in their career path and this of course affects also negative their wages but still on the economic spheres and economic research I mean it's doing I mean not a lot for integrating and so looking deeply in these effects that sexual harassment can have on wages there are some different theories that try to define the relationship within the wages and the risk of sexual harassment in the workplaces most of all I mean a strand of the literature tends to find a positive relationship between the sexual harassment risk and the wages applying a sort of wage premium so a sort of increasing wages due to the fact that sexual harassment is considered an extremely negative working conditions like I mean an increase in the risk of injuries or an increase in the risk of death that we can have in our labor market so we have a wage compensation theory that tend to find out these positive relationships and it's something that has been experienced and found also for united states where some study found a positive relationship between sexual harassment risk and wages of women because I mean women that used to work in workplaces within higher risk of sexual harassment I mean tend to have a wage premium so a compensation in wage but this is true just for white women well for for example for non-white women we don't find any compensation for these worst conditions in the work in in the workplaces and so what we have trying to do or me and my colleague we are trying to analyze the context of Europe and so to see if also in Europe we can speak about a wage premium connected with higher sexual harassment risk in the workplaces or as we did we can speak just about risk penalties so a penalty in wages due to the fact that you work in a context at higher risk of sexual harassment what we found looking at the micro data about the european conditions and for women employed in the former labor market we mainly find that there is a statistically significant negative impact the fact of sexual harassment risk on wages so meaning that I mean working in in workplaces at higher risk of sexual harassment decrease the wages of women but this impact is particularly negative for high-skill women and for high-skill female workers and most of all for those women that we can call so in higher positions so white collar high-skill female workers and this is something that was particular I mean in times and we wanted to investigate it a little bit more looking also at the structure of these workplaces where these high-skill women are working so we frame three different scenarios one where I mean that these women tend to work in in a workplaces characterized by a high level of men so mainly mainly men that have a high position in in the workplaces and workplaces where we have more women in top hierarchical positions and the workplaces where we have a gender balance in the top management and what we found once more is that sexual harassment risk of course has a negative effect and reduce the wage premium for those women for working in higher hierarchical positions but most of all I mean this negative effect is experienced by women that used to work in male dominated workplaces in workplaces where we have a concentration of men in top position for Europe we can say I mean safely that we don't have a wage compensation effect for sexual harassment but that instead it's not a wage premium but it's the wage penalty the risk the sexual harassment and the sexual harassment risk in the workplaces for women working in the formal labor market and most of all I mean we can interpret that as the fact that the women that used to work in the counter stereotypical workplaces and this means of course working in higher top positions but also in a context where we have more male and more masculinized workplaces they are more penalized on that so the interpretation is that on one sense I mean sexual harassment risk can increase the gender pay gap at the European level because we analyze of course the the data about the European labor market but I mean looking at the second part so this treat this power treat facts that we can find for I mean women in the top positions we can say that sexual harassment is an extra cost for women and I mean a way to discourage them to enter in top higher position and top hierarchical position in the labor market but also in the male dominated sectors in the labor market so this means once more not only an increase in gender pay gap but also an increase in gender segregation in the labor market that would be of course vertical and horizontal sexual harassment of course can be used and this is something that comes also from the astrological literature can be seen as an equalizer meaning that for example for those women that work in the top hierarchical position that are mainly we say target of sexual harassment this sexual harassment is a way of reducing their power of treat them as a sexual object and so this means that they are they power because they are treating the male structure of power and the stereotypical patriarchal structure of power that we have in our labor market so we have to I mean look also the structure of power because give us a lot of different elements for contrasting sexual harassment and for contrasting all these different types of sexual harassment that we saw are in our labor market and in our reality and we're all part of that absolutely also for the economist and in our profession I mean the policies and the consequences are different are different of course I mean we cannot try to find one solutions and of course just some education for male manager I mean is yes could be I mean one part and one little part of these stories but we saw that we have different kind of sexual harassment there is also this bottom-up sexual harassment so we have to consider broadly we have to consider the complexity of this aspect also in policies and so we have to broaden our definitions and in that sense I really think that what is missing is data so we should have a data collection a better data collections that will give us information about sexual harassment first of all working conditions the pay status and the pays of the people that are working in our formal labor market and pay transparency and also working condition transparency is essential also for reducing the discrimination in the labor market the gender discriminations so having data about that I mean will help us to monitor and to try to better and to try to reduce these ascetics phenomenon and also this gender discrimination and I also let me say think that trade unions and all social dialogue infrastructures I mean can be really supportive and can have a real impact on reducing and preventing from sexual harassment in the workplaces because they voice women's minorities and more vulnerable workers giving them more bargaining power so maybe a much more involvement of I mean social dialogue structures and trade unions will help us in this fight against sexual harassment