#MeToo: Men now avoid one-on-one meetings with female co-workers

Study shows how men, women interaction was impacted in workplace environment after the movement began

#MeToo is a term coined by social activist Tarana Burke back in 2006, aiming to encourage survivors of sexual harassment to speak up about their experiences.

Since the #MeToo movement began in 2017, with Hollywood actor Alyssa Milano making it popular on Twitter, the world has seen an alarming number of harassment cases come to the fore. Not just in the entertainment industry but high-profile politicians, authors, bankers, doctors and professionals from every other field have been exposed in its wake, making sure that those guilty reap just what they sow.

Perhaps as a result of this far-reaching domino effect, a new study has claimed that a high percentage of men nowadays are reluctant to interact with their female colleagues, reported The Independent.

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Researchers from the University of Houston carried out an investigation in early 2018 to explore whether the increase in conversations regarding sexual harassment impacted how men and women interacted with one another in a working environment.

In early 2019, the researchers conducted a second survey to examine whether their results would differ one year on. According to their findings, men are 3%  less likely than they were in 2018 to hire a woman that they deem "attractive" now. Furthermore, they are 6% less likely to hire a woman for a job that requires "close interpersonal interactions" with male colleagues, such as going travelling.

There's a difference between a #MeToo case and two-way flirting 

In fact, in the 2019 survey, more than a quarter of men said that they would be hesitant to conduct a one-on-one meeting with a female colleague.

Nonetheless, the researchers stated that their findings are telling of the negative attitudes that some men still hold towards women in the workplace. “I’m not sure we were surprised by the numbers but we were disappointed,” said Rachel Sturm, professor at Wright State University.

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“When men say, ‘I’m not going to hire you, I’m not going to send you travelling, I’m going to exclude you from outings’ – those are steps backward.”

For both studies, the participants were asked to state whether they thought a list of 19 behaviours constituted sexual harassment, including commenting on a female inferior's appearance and emailing sexual jokes to a female inferior.

Leanne Atwater, management professor at the University of Houston, said that while the majority of the reactions to the #MeToo movement were "celebratory," the researchers remained dubious. "The idea that men don't know their behaviour is bad and that women are making a mountain out of a molehill is largely untrue. If anything, women are more lenient in defining harassment," Atwater stated.

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