For Female Astronomers, Sexual Harassment Is a Constant Nightmare
I must admit that I was genuinely surprised by this. I have worked in Astronomy (as a technologist) for over a decade, and I have never witnessed this sort of behaviour. Of course, I am male. There are, however, plenty of assholes in the world including in academia, and I have noticed that universities tend not to want to rock the boat, so I suppose that it is not entirely surprising that these things are occurring.<p>My wife is an academic (biology). Thankfully, so far as I know, she has never had to deal with sexual harassment. She did have an experience of dealing with an extreme bully during her PhD (who threatened her career and the like; pro-tip: individual assholes generally don&#x27;t have the power to destroy your career). The university was not at all supportive, but her PhD advisor was, so things generally worked out in the end, but it was a lot of stress along the way. Besides that, she has suffered the occasional subtle discrimination for being a woman or a mother, generally from older males in the field, but all in all, I don&#x27;t think she would say that harassment is rife. I think she would pin the problems on individual assholes rather than a systemic problem in science. You do need to look out for yourself, however, as the institutions generally won&#x27;t, and I do find that a bit sad.