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2024 Report from The University of Sydney, published by Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety (ANROWS)

Sexual harassment is a systemic and pervasive feature of the retail industry ecosystem and a persistent part of daily interactions between retail workers, and their managers, peers and customers. It is such a common experience that many retail workers perceive it as “just part of the job”. Sexual harassment causes harm on multiple levels: it affects the wellbeing of individual employees, damages team cohesion, creates economic damage for businesses, and is a drag on the national economy.

Key report findings
  • Finding 1: Retail is a very high-risk industry for sexual harassment and the experience of sexual harassment is pervasive across retail workplaces
  • Finding 2: The risk of experiencing sexual harassment is heightened for particular groups of retail workers, especially young women
  • Finding 3: Retail workers experience sexual harassment perpetrated by managers, peers and customers
  • Finding 4: Customer-perpetrated sexual harassment is a significant problem and is perpetuated and enabled by prevailing industry norms
  • Finding 5: Organisational policy on how to deal with sexual harassment is inconsistent and information is not easy to access or understand
  • Finding 6: Organisational and industry-wide training of workers and managers on sexual harassment is inconsistent, infrequent and poorly targeted
  • Finding 7: Sexual harassment data collection and analysis is non-standardised, limited and ad hoc and this limits insights in relation to incidence

Download the full report now.

"Just another day in retail": Understanding and addressing workplace sexual harassment in the Australian retail industry
(2010KB) Download