Today I read an article from the Huffington Post, my attention having been grabbed by the dramatic headline
Patronised, Talked Down To And Harassed: Parliament’s Boys’ Club Culture Laid Bare
Now there’s an eye catching headline!
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But lets look at the evidence it’s based on:-
208 females in houses of parliament were asked to complete a survey about bullying/ sexual harassment etc 40 responses given(19.2%),
this might suggest that 168 of them (80.8%) did not think it an issue.
3 in 10 of the respondents said they had been sexually harassed that actually = 12 people.
Just over half experienced bullying = 20 people, it is unclear if those subjected to sexual harassment are also in the numbers of those subjected to alleged bullying.
40% of the 40 respondents =16 said they had either received an complaint or lodged a complaint about harassment/ bullying so this includes those who were alleged victims-
Over half of the respondents said the situation in parliament was worse than in previous jobs, there is no actual number given so this could be anything from 50.1% and is therefore to ambiguous to have significant meaning.
Finally 57.5% of the 40 respondents = 23 people felt it was harder to get things done in parliament if you were a woman.
Whilst any kind of harassment is wrong, only the Huffington post could come up with this dramatic headline based on 19.2% of the female population of parliament. In reality if we assume those who did not respond were not victims then it means less than 10% of the females in parliament said they were subject to inappropriate behaviour.
Ahhh I hear you cry, you cannot assume that those who did not respond had never been subjected to inappropriate behaviour and you are of course right; but equally you cannot assume they have been victims of this uninvited behaviour, either way it does not support the dramatic and misleading nature of the news report.
The fact is that there are few sad souls around like me who will actually look at the figures in more detail, so they will have read the piece and been left with the (I suggest intended) impression that the house of parliament is a seething mass of hormone driven out of control males. I think the results probably reflect behaviour in other organisations, not that I am for one minute suggesting this is O.K.
Another thing to consider is whether or not the behaviour was from one or more individuals and was the bullying from males/ females or both, as we know both are capable of these behaviours. The truth is that on closer scrutiny this report does not support the headline suggestion of parliament having a ‘boys club culture’.
Would a more appropriate headline be
Twenty of the 208 females in parliament report being bullied and 12 report having been sexually harassed.
But would that have grabbed as much attention?
No, probably not, however it would have been accurate so it begs the question
‘Does the Huffington Post want to be taken seriously or not’? If it does it needs to hugely improve the quality of its reporting, currently I think it deserves to be awarded first place in the toilet tissue holder!!
I expect the media to take a responsible approach to their job of keeping the public informed, I don’t expect these so called journalists to keep spewing forth this inaccurate shit. This is an insult to serious and reliable journalism.
Read the article and decide for yourself
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Crank Corner 