Opportunity Youth and Sex-based Harassment in the Workplace: A Scan of Research and Resources

Part of: Opportunity Youth and Sex-based Harassment in the Workplace: A Scan of Research and Resources

Opportunity youth, or young people ages 16 to 24 who are not currently connected to school or work, tend to work in sectors and environments that put them at a greater risk of sex-based harassment/victimization.

Sex-based harassment is a form of sexual discrimination—or unfavorable treatment based on an employee’s sex—and it is illegal and unacceptable. It is a complex problem that can take multiple forms and may not be recognized or reported by workers. It is also extremely common; each year, sex-based harassment is formally reported more than 10,000 times, and it is likely that a much larger proportion of workers experience it but do not report their experience.^1,2

Youth-supporting professionals are critical resources to the young people they serve, but when it comes to workplace sex-based harassment, they may feel there is not much they can do to intervene. While it is true that youth-supporting professionals may not be able to fully prevent harassment from occurring, they can tailor services and supports to help protect youth—and to help youth protect themselves—by recognizing harassing behaviors and navigating how to address harassment if it does take place.

Understanding sex-based harassment is an important tool for youth-supporting professionals and can empower opportunity youth as they navigate the workplace. This resource describes how youth-supporting professionals can aid youth by:

• Becoming familiar with the topic of sex-based harassment
• Recognizing elements of employer and workplace environments that enable or prevent harassment
• Monitoring youths’ experiences
• Being sources of stability and support

Why focus on sex-based harassment and opportunity youth?

As with other forms of workplace violence, sex-based harassment is largely shaped by an individual’s field of work, the provisions of their employment, and/or their perceived consequences of reporting the harassment. Opportunity youth need support to understand and address sex-based harassment. Unfortunately, opportunity youth may be at particular risk of harassment when (re)joining the workforce, and the consequences of harassment may be detrimental to their future work experiences. Some of the highest-risk industries for harassment—such as hospitality, service, retail, and construction—are also industries that frequently employ young people. They are some of the most common industries in which opportunity youth are most likely to have early employment experiences as they prepare to (re)join the workforce.

Because sex-based harassment is often perpetrated by those with more power in the workplace against those with less power, harassers may perceive opportunity youth as potential targets for victimization. Additionally, the personal and career impacts of experiencing sex-based harassment could be especially damaging to opportunity youth because of factors such as limited work experience, fewer perceived job alternatives, and past histories of trauma and potential for re-traumatization, among others. As with other vulnerable youth populations,³ opportunity youth may also face greater risk of being targeted for sex trafficking (for more information on sex trafficking, read Activate’s A Research-Based Question and Answer Resource on Sex Trafficking for Youth-Supporting Professionals).

Methods

We conducted a multi-step scoping review of peer-reviewed and grey literature that focuses on elements of sex-based harassment most relevant for opportunity youth, including the following:

1. Individual and group discussions to identify a set of relevant concepts with eight youth-supporting professionals, six current or former opportunity youth, and five subject matter experts
2. Initial searches of recent (2010-2023) peer-reviewed literature using search terms related to sex-based harassment and opportunity youth (see Methods Note)
3. Search of non-peer-reviewed literature (“grey literature”) across relevant organizations and initiatives
4. Consultations with seven project advisors (six youth-supporting professionals and one former opportunity youth) to present initial findings and identify next directions for the search
5. Supplementary targeted searches on topics resulting from consultations with advisors
6. Feedback from final reviews from project advisors (three youth-supporting professionals) on content and structure

We scanned research and resources (“sources”) for relevance and—if deemed relevant—added them to a database that tracked sources based on their type (e.g., peer-reviewed article, report, toolkit), population of interest, and content. Across 40 years of U.S.-based research on sex-based harassment reviewed for this resource, opportunity youth were never the focal population. For this reason, we considered sources that focus on other populations such as young workers, workers in specific industries, and other workers at risk of experiencing sex-based harassment. The review prioritized sources that were recent (published after 2010) and focused on the United States, although exceptions were made for sources that contributed unique or highly relevant information in other ways. In total, 150 relevant sources were reviewed during the production of this resource. More information about the literature search methods is included in the Methods Note.

What is sex-based harassment?

The following section defines and identifies types of sex-based harassment in the workplace and reviews what is known about the prevalence of sex-based harassment at work.

What is the definition of sex-based harassment?

Sex-based harassment is a form of sexual discrimination, or unfavorable treatment based on an employee’s sex.

Sex-based harassment is legally defined as:

• Unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature
• Submission to or rejection of this conduct explicitly or implicitly affects an individual’s employment, unreasonably interferes with an individual’s work performance, or creates an intimidating, hostile, or offensive work environment (CFR)

In other words, the definition categorizes any unwanted sexual behavior or insinuation in which the victim’s display of (dis)engagement could possibly impact their employment, performance, or comfort in the workplace.⁴ In this resource, the broader term “sex-based harassment” is used instead of the more common term “sexual harassment,” because it captures harassment that is sexual in nature, as well as that which is based on one’s sex.

Not all sex-based harassment looks the same. Sex-based harassment can take many forms, some of which young people may not recognize as harassment. Examples of sex-based harassment include (but are not limited to) sexual jokes, sexual photos, touching, requests for sexual favors, and sexual and non-sexual conduct based on one’s sex. More specifically, this can include suggestive name calling or comments that associate one’s perceived skill or ability with their sex.

Sex-based harassment can happen to anyone. Anyone can become a victim of sex-based harassment, regardless of characteristics such as their sex, sexual orientation, race or ethnicity, relationship status or history, socioeconomic background, workplace, or role. If someone is the victim of harassment, it is never their fault. This resource will describe how some groups of workers, including opportunity youth, may face particular risk of experiencing sex-based harassment.

What are the different types of sex-based harassment?

Employees, including young employees, may face multiple forms of sex-based harassment.

These forms include:

1. Quid pro quo: An instance in which a person in a position of power demands the performance of a sexual favor from an employee in exchange for an employment-related action or benefit.⁵
2. Hostile work environment: Sexual and sex-related workplace harassment or actions that create an intimidating, hostile, or offensive work environment or contribute to an interference in employee work performance.⁶
3. Harassment by non-employees: Sexual and sex-related workplace harassment that is perpetrated by someone other than an employee, such as a client, customer, or vendor.⁷

Appendix 1: Sex-based Harassment Types and Explanations describes these three harassment types in more detail and provides sample language for communicating about them in a youth-friendly way.

Any form of sex-based harassment in the workplace is discrimination, illegal, and never okay. Workers in the United States have legal rights, protections, and recourses against workplace sex-based harassment at the national, state, and local levels. Several major federal laws, policies, and regulatory entities aim to protect employees from sex-based harassment in the workplace. The most prominent of these are Title VII, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), and Title IX. Meanwhile, specific protections offered by state laws vary.

Sex-based harassment may be sexual or non-sexual. Certain types of sex-based harassment—namely, quid pro quo harassment and harassment by non-employees—are explicitly sexual harassment. As a form of sex-based harassment, hostile work environment harassment may be sexual or sexist in nature (based in stereotypes or assumptions about one’s sex).^8–11 Legal scholars critique the limited scope of sexual harassment and relative neglect of sexist but non-sexual harassment,^12,13 concluding that existing laws and precedent fail to adequately understand or address both sexual and non-sexual sex-based harassment.

Victims may experience multiple types of sex-based harassment at once, or harassment that is also tied to discrimination based on other factors besides sex. When sex-based harassment charges are filed with the EEOC, they may be concurrently filed with allegations of other discrimination, such as by race or national origin. In a report discussing such charges, the EEOC found that 71 percent of such concurrent sex-harassment and race discrimination charges were filed by Black workers.¹⁴ Despite the frequency of such co-occurring claims, victims experiencing multiple types of harassment and discrimination face barriers to legal recourse.

Appendix 2: More Information on Sex-based Harassment provides further information about the types of sex-based harassment and describes relevant laws and policies.

How prevalent is sex-based harassment?

The true prevalence of sex-based harassment is much higher than the number of charges filed, and opportunity youth likely face higher rates of victimization than the general population.

Estimates of experiences of sex-based harassment in the workplace for opportunity youth specifically have been hard to calculate because of underreporting and because few estimates focus on opportunity youth. One oft-cited statistic, drawing on governmental reports from the 1980s, suggests that 50 to 80 percent of working women have experienced sex-based harassment at one point, with only a fraction telling anyone and less than one in 20 making a formal complaint.¹⁵ In comparison, according to data from 2000, an estimated 13 to 31 percent of working men have experienced sex-based harassment¹⁶; and, as of 2009, men have made up about 20 percent of all sex-based charges and 16 percent of all sexual harassment charges filed with the EEOC.¹⁷ More recent U.S.-based data on the prevalence of sex-based harassment is scant, but suggests similar rates of victimization.¹⁸ Workers who are Black and/or Hispanic, Native or Indigenous, queer, documented immigrants, or undocumented immigrants are more likely to report sex-based harassment in the workplace.^19–21

The number of sex-based harassment charges filed in fiscal year (FY) 2024 (15,438) is slightly higher than in FY 2023 (14,195), and both years are substantially higher than FY 2022 (11,090).²² However, estimates are complicated by low levels of formal reporting and extremely wide variation in survey-based findings, depending on how studies are conducted.²³ Further, the transition back to in-person work following COVID-related shifts to remote work may explain at least part of this increase—although opportunity youth and other young workers had a greater likelihood of working in-person jobs, even during the COVID-19 pandemic.²⁴ It is unclear whether these trends are reflected in sex-based harassment charges filed with state and local agencies, however, as state- and local-level data are not included in EEOC data and reporting data and practices differ widely across states.^25,26 The underreporting of sex-based harassment—both in formal complaint procedures, but also in surveys and other research—is problematic for multiple reasons. A lack of consistent data on the topic means that it is difficult to identify effective policy approaches that prevent its occurrence. Moreover, it means that sex-based harassment is a more widespread issue than any one data point would indicate.

What should youth-supporting professionals know about sex-based harassment in the workplace?

Opportunity youth tend to work in sectors and environments that put them at a greater risk of sex-based harassment/victimization.

Because young workers are more likely to find work in contexts in which they may experience more victimization, it is reasonable to conclude that opportunity youth might face greater risk of sex-based harassment than older adults. Specifically, researchers understand three things that suggest that opportunity youth are more likely than the average young worker to be at increased risk for sex-based harassment in the workplace: 1) the demographic groups to which opportunity youth are more likely to belong, 2) the workplace risk factors and experiences for which sex-based harassment is more common, and 3) the experiences many opportunity youth bring into the workplace.

Examples of jobs that involve greater risk of sex-based harassment include janitorial and property services, agricultural work, restaurants and food service, retail, home-based care, and hospitality.^27,28 Young people are more likely to work in roles—for example, as a tipped worker, in an isolated work context (for example, domestic care, janitorial, or hotel work), or in jobs with significant hierarchies in the workplace—that the EEOC most closely associates with sex-based harassment.²⁹ Evidence of workplace harassment in these workplaces is shared below.

• Retail sales. People working in retail sales occupations experienced about 13 percent of reported sexual harassment³⁰—and a similar proportion of workplace violence overall³¹—while accounting for about nine percent of employed persons.
• Restaurants. Sex-based harassment affects both men and women who work in restaurants, but women face particularly high rates of harassment. One survey found that more than half of women working in restaurants experienced sexual harassment by managers, that nearly two thirds were harassed by coworkers, and that one third were harassed by customers—each week.³² In the United States, the outsized role of tips in restaurant workers’ incomes means that one’s paycheck often depends on tolerating customer harassment.³³
• Hotels. One study of hotel workers found that 58 percent experienced being sexually harassed by a guest.³⁴ Of these, almost half of all hotel workers had a guest answer the door naked or expose themselves. In this study, 56 percent of women who had been harassed by a guest said they did not feel safe returning to work after the incident, but many reported they felt there was nothing they or anyone could do about it.
• Construction. Nearly one quarter (23.6%) of women in construction reported experiences of sex-based harassment in the workplace, and nearly four in 10 reported considering leaving their job because of harassment or lack of respect.³⁵
• Health care and other care work. Sex-based harassment in medical settings is common.^36,37 In home-based care settings, reporting has tended to be very low even though home care workers have rated sex-based harassment as a top concern.³⁸

Opportunity youth may be more vulnerable to sex-based harassment.

As discussed in the introduction, sex-based harassment is usually driven by those who have more power over those who have less. Opportunity youth, who may not have prior work experience or adult role models, have fewer opportunities to build professional “soft skills” that allow them to succeed.³⁹ This, in turn, may make them more vulnerable to sex-based harassment that is driven by power imbalances when people in positions of power take advantage of employees’ limited experience with how workplaces function or what is considered acceptable behavior on the job.

Opportunity youth may have themselves been fired when reporting harassment or know people who have—a consequence that may be more likely to happen in retail or customer service-related jobs where legal protections may be more sparse.^a Opportunity youth are also more likely than their connected peers to report having a disability.⁴⁰ Disabled workers have high rates of experience with harassment.^41,42

Economic vulnerability, such as living paycheck-to-paycheck or engaging in informal work, can increase vulnerability to on-the-job threats such as sexual harassment.

Opportunity youth may be at particular risk relative to others in their workplace. Those who feel like they do not have many other employment options may feel particularly reluctant to report or to rock the boat. Opportunity youth may specifically face publicly mandated requirements to gain and maintain employment and/or enrollment in an employment program to access public benefits, thereby creating reluctance to address sex-based harassment in favor of maintaining employment. Vulnerability to sex-based harassment is also high for youth who are engaged in sustenance sex work or sex work-adjacent professions (for instance, working in nightclubs or sexually themed restaurants), both because of unclear boundaries between harassment and expected behavior and because of fears that reporting harassment may jeopardize their employment and self-sufficiency.⁴³

Sex-based harassment is detrimental to opportunity youth’s potential career growth, physical health and wellness, and mental health.

Experiencing sex-based harassment can take a toll on one’s personal health and professional standing and may lead to significant career and life difficulties. Well-documented professional harms from sex-based harassment include missing work, decreased job satisfaction, and lower productivity.^44,45 One study, focused on early career women, found that those who experienced sex-based harassment were up to 6.5 times as likely to change jobs within two years of the harassment, compared to those who had not been the targets of harassment—a change that precipitated financial distress.⁴⁶ Opportunity youth may be especially concerned about the downstream impacts of losing a job. These might include debt, lack of savings, and the possibility of losing housing.⁴⁷

Sex-based harassment also has troubling effects on a victim’s health and wellness. Those who experience sex-based harassment suffer worsened mental and physical health, present more symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, and report lower life satisfaction.^48,49 Sex-based harassment can also have compounding harms. For instance, the negative impacts of sex-based harassment have been found to be outsized when victims are young or early in their careers.⁵⁰ Sex-based harassment may not be the only form of harm inflicted on victims; for example, it is common to face both sex-based and racial harassment. The literature base is still developing regarding the health impacts of experiencing multiple forms of harassment and discrimination. One study of young Asian American women found that, in the past year, two thirds had experienced sexual harassment, more than three quarters had experienced racial harassment, and the two types were significantly correlated.⁵¹ In this study, harassment due to one’s sex was found to be consistently associated with worsened depression symptoms.

Past histories of trauma and mistreatment may lead opportunity youth to normalize the experience of harassment, react in ways that are harmful to their personal safety or best interests, or experience significant mental health consequences as a result of harassment. For example, a low sense of self-esteem and self-worth resulting from trauma may cause youth to disregard their safety and fail to properly address harassment.^52,53 Professionals also spoke specifically about the traumatic experiences of young people who have experienced or are currently experiencing commercial sexual exploitation and/or sexual abuse.⁵⁴ These youth have a heightened attunement to the possibility of harassment. Professionals find young people in these circumstances may either quit their jobs suddenly in response to crisis or try to withstand harassment out of a need for employment.⁵⁵ Finally, opportunity youth who have experienced trauma can be especially triggered or retraumatized by their experience of harassment or by structures within a workplace that are hierarchal and reinforce power dynamics, and may experience significant mental health consequences from sex-based harassment.

What can youth-supporting professionals do to prevent and address sex-based harassment?

Become familiar with the topic of sex-based harassment.

Start with the information included in this resource. Youth-supporting professionals can help by being conversational with the definitions and youth-friendly explanations of sex-based harassment in the What is sex-based harassment? section and in Appendix 1: Sex-based Harassment Types and Explanations, along with the relevant laws and state policies described in More about laws and policies related to sex-based harassment in Appendix 2. Additionally, youth-supporting professionals can review some of the following resources that discuss sex-based harassment from an advocacy perspective:

• Sexual violence and the workplace: A guide for advocates (National Sexual Violence Resource Center)
• An advocacy guide to addressing the impact of domestic and sexual violence, stalking and dating violence on the workplace (Workplaces Respond to Domestic & Sexual Violence)

Recognize risky elements of employers and workplace cultures.

While sex-based harassment may happen anywhere, and to anyone, some contexts are associated with greater or lesser risk of sex-based harassment. In fact, some experts have stated that “law is ineffective at reducing harassment” on its own,⁵⁶ indicating that—at the time of writing—it is worth giving extra consideration to the ways in which the workplace context can affect sex-based harassment.

Appendix 3: Considerations for Elements that Influence Workplace Harassment describes some aspects of workplaces and employers, their relevance to sex-based harassment, and questions that youth-supporting professionals should ask of current and potential employer partners. This information can be included in trainings or other activities with youth that introduce them to the topic of sex-based harassment. It is important to remind youth that, if they do face harassment, youth-supporting professionals are always there for them. Additionally, this information can be shared with employer partners to help them better recognize the risks of their own workplaces.

Monitor youth experiences.

Youth-supporting professionals should not stop being aware of their youth’s well-being after they move into the workforce. For young people with whom they still have regular contact through program activities (e.g., in a cooperative work experience), youth-supporting professionals could implement a regular assessment of their safety and well-being. Some youth-serving organizations regularly implement broad, in-depth assessments such as the Casey Life Skills toolkit. Youth-supporting professionals may also consider adding direct questions about young people’s safety and comfort in the workplace during check-ins, such as “Have you experienced any unwanted sexual behaviors, including comments or jokes, threats, touching, or other types of assault in the workplace or by someone who works with you?”⁵⁷

Be sources of stability and support.

Experiencing sex-based harassment can be extremely isolating. Youth-supporting professionals play important roles as trusted adults who are invested in the well-being and long-term success of a young person, and do not encourage them to “stick it out” at a job in the face of harassment. Youth-supporting professionals should make it clear to the youth they work with that it is always okay to ask or tell them about sex-based harassment, even if the youth has concluded their formal involvement in a program. Youth-supporting professionals can help youth who have experienced sex-based harassment decide what course of action they would like to take, if any. Additionally, they can serve as third-party advocates to youth and help them document instances of harassment and how it is handled by their employer.

Youth-supporting professionals should also account for the way their own organizations’ principles or approaches for working with youth can help young people recognize, avoid, and/or process sex-based harassment. How an agency works with young people—for example, through healing-centered approaches, incorporating positive youth development, or promoting health—are aligned with how they can also handle instances of sex-based harassment. For example, healing-centered approaches (also known as trauma-informed approaches) work within principles of safety; trustworthiness and transparency; peer support; collaboration and mutuality; and voice and choice.⁵⁸ Each of these factors is aligned with how youth-supporting professionals should approach conversations about sex-based harassment with young people: sensitively and safely prioritizing their autonomy and decision-making capabilities. Although there seems to be a clear alignment between healing-centered approaches and the topic of workplace sex-based harassment for youth, little research or practice-oriented materials connect them. Future work should examine and teach how healing-centered approaches can support young people, including opportunity youth, as they navigate the workplace.

Help employers understand the consequences of sex-based harassment.

Sex-based harassment is costly to employers. For each of the past three fiscal years, monetary payouts for sex-based harassment claims in the United States have exceeded $140 million.⁵⁹ Beyond legal payouts, employers have to contend with turnover, absenteeism, and other interruptions to work that result from sex-based harassment—regardless of whether or not the harassment is ever formally reported to the employer or EEOC.⁶⁰ Employers can also incur damages to their reputations via word of mouth and the press.⁶¹ Youth-supporting professionals can vet the employers they work with by requesting their policies related to harassment and discrimination and by learning about their track record with youth workers. When examining policies, youth-supporting professionals should also consider whether they are likely to be understood by a young person and whether they are available in multiple languages.

Appendices

Appendix 1. Sex-based Harassment Types and Explanations^62–64

Appendix 2. More Information on Sex-based Harassment

More about the types of sex-based harassment

Quid pro quo harassment is a concept exclusive to sex-based harassment.⁶⁵ For victims of quid pro quo harassment, sex-based harassment may involve economic abuse or exploitation, as wages or benefits may become contingent upon tolerating harassing behavior. Notably, quid pro quo harassment also affects other employees besides the specific target of the harassment.⁶⁶ This is due to sexual favoritism: When a person in power grants an employment opportunity or benefit based on an employee’s submission to implicit or explicit sexual harassment, other qualified employees are then denied that opportunity or benefit as a result of the harassment. In addition to the actual victim of the quid pro quo harassment, these third-party employees may also have grounds to claim sex-based discrimination.⁶⁷

Courts have established a high threshold for proving hostile work environment sex-based harassment claims.^68,69 A breadth of legal scholarship chronicles the history and evolution of quid pro quo and hostile work environment harassment jurisprudence since Title VII (for more information on Title VII, see More about laws and policies related to sex-based harassment below). Broadly, hostile work environment harassment cases are often viewed as less straightforward, more ambiguous, and overall harder to prosecute than quid pro quo harassment claims.^70,71

Approximately 24 percent of workplace-based violence (including sexual harassment) is perpetrated by someone with a personal, not professional, relationship to the victim.⁷² Workplace violence includes verbal, physical, and sexual abuse. A study conducted in 2006 found that, although verbal abuse was the most prevalent form of workplace violence (31%), physical (15%) and sexual abuse (4%) followed respectively.⁷³

More about laws and policies related to sex-based harassment

Title VII. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VII) is the landmark federal law prohibiting discrimination in employment based on race, color, sex, religion, or national origin. Title VII is the most commonly discussed legislation in the context of sex-based harassment.^74–79

Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is the main federal entity responsible for enforcing Title VII and other federal laws pertaining to sex-based harassment in the workplace. The EEOC produces official publications related to sex-based harassment.^80–82 Other organizations and experts examine EEOC guidance or recommendations for addressing sex-based harassment or discrimination in the context of specific experiences or sub-topics: domestic or dating violence,^83–85 sexual violence,^86–88 stalking,^89–91 sexual favoritism,⁹² mandatory arbitration,⁹³ recidivist harassment,⁹⁴ and employer liability.⁹⁵

Title IX. Title IX of the Higher Education Amendments Act of 1972 (Title IX) is the federal law enforced by the U.S. Department of Education and prohibiting sex-based harassment and discrimination in federally funded public education and educational employment settings. Research suggests that courts are divided over whether Title VII, Title IX, or both may apply to workplace harassment or employment discrimination in educational institutions.^96,97

State and local policies vary. Far fewer sources focus on state- and local-level laws, policies, and regulatory entities addressing workplace sex-based harassment. One web source delves into workplace training requirements by state, including anti-sexual harassment training^b as well as workplace civility and bystander intervention training.⁹⁸ Another source directs to local EEOC district or field offices in each state and summarizes notable state-specific policies for filing a workplace harassment claim.⁹⁹ Most resources simply mention that some states also have laws and protections against workplace harassment and discrimination, which may apply.

Appendix 3. Considerations for Elements That Influence Workplace Harassment^100–103

Methods Note

The overall approach to developing this resource is described in the Methods section; this Methods Note provides more details on how sources for the resource were identified and reviewed for inclusion.

Initial search of peer-reviewed literature. We searched the peer-reviewed literature using relevant terms and phrases across four domains: workforce, sex-based/sexual harassment, opportunity youth, and other populations of interest. Examples of peer-reviewed literature databases used for this search included Academic Search Complete, OmniFile Full Text, PubMed, and Google Scholar. Example search terms included:

Grey literature search. We searched for research and resources published by organizations that focus on opportunity youth, employment rights, workplace harassment, and/or employment preparation. These included both nongovernmental and federal government (or federally funded) sources. For example:

Nongovernmental organizations included in the grey literature search were:

• American Association of University Women
• American Public Health Association
• American Youth Policy Forum
• Aspen Institute
• Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP)
• Dibble Institute
• Futures Without Violence
• Hire Opportunity Coalition
• Institute for Women’s Policy Research
• Jobs for the Future
• National Sexual Violence Resource Center
• Project WHEN
• YouthBuild

Governmental and federally funded pages and initiatives scanned were:

• Apprenticeship.gov
• CDC: Teen Pregnancy
• Family and Youth Services Bureau
• EEOC Youth@Work
• Reproductive Health National Training Center
• Workplaces Respond to Domestic and Sexual Violence
• Youth.gov

Results from initial searches. Initial peer-reviewed and grey literature searches resulted in 192 potentially relevant sources. Of these, 124 were found to be relevant to the resource and screened in full. We developed a coding schema to identify the type of source (e.g., peer-reviewed article, fact sheet, brief/report, tool), population of interest (e.g., opportunity youth, all workers), relevance for broad topics (background on sex-based harassment, understanding experiences of sex-based harassment, addressing/preventing sex-based harassment), and relevance for notable emergent themes (e.g., equity, policies, employer influence, examples of harassment).

Targeted searches. Consultation with seven project advisors resulted in several additional topics for further searches: hospitality and sustenance sex work, relevant approaches to practice engaging opportunity youth, factors influencing reporting of sex-based harassment, and the effectiveness of legal approaches (laws and policies) for preventing sex-based harassment. We conducted supplementary targeted searches by pairing the below terms with “sex based harassment,” “sexual harassment,” or “sex harassment”) and searching in the same peer-reviewed literature databases as the initial search:

• Hospitality and sustenance sex work (e.g., “sex work,” “nightlife,” “hospitality”)
• Assessments (e.g., “life skills assessment”)
• Relevant frameworks/approaches for practice (e.g., “strengths based,” “relationship based,” “trauma informed,” “healing centered”)
• Factors influencing reporting of sex-based harassment (e.g., “reporting mechanisms,” “reporting policies,” “reporting challenges” “United States”)
• Effectiveness of laws and government policy for preventing sex-based harassment (e.g., “state law” AND “effectiveness,” “sexual harassment prevention” AND “effectiveness” AND “law”)

Targeted searches resulted in 61 potentially relevant sources, of which 26 were found to be relevant to the resource and screened in full. In total, 150 sources were reviewed and coded for this review. The results of the review were organized around three categories: what is sex-based harassment, sex-based harassment and the law, and equity/considerations for opportunity youth. The results of the search for each category are reported in the tables below.

Footnotes

1. A project advisor from the Research Alliance described the experience of young workers being fired after bringing up issues of harassment. ↩
2. Importantly, there is little evidence that employer-mandated sex-based harassment trainings are effective in preventing harassment. Researchers have suggested that employers do more thorough education on harassment, rather than boilerplate trainings that serve to protect employers’ interests rather than those of employees (see, for example, Freyd & Smidt, 2019). ↩