A 2025 research report, titled “Sexual Harassment in the Media” has found that sexual harassment remains persistent in newsrooms across the globe. The research has been conducted by WAN-IFRA Women in News, BBC Media Action, and City St George’s, University of London.
The study was conducted in 2025 on and it examined experiences of sexual harassment of journalists working in 21 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, the Arab region, South East Asia and Ukraine. The sample size included 2,878 media professionals, including 1,630 women, 1,090 men, 67 gender non-conforming individuals and 91 others.
Verbal sexual harassment was identified as the most common type of harassment, encountered by 45% of respondents. The gender divide became even more pronounced as 60% of women reported this type of harassment, compared to 25% of men.
The findings do, however, show that global prevalence rate of sexual harassment in newsrooms stands at 29%, compared to 34% in 2020.
Gender non-conforming respondents shared that they have experienced the most severe form of sexual assault at work — rape. Around 12% of the respondents shared that they had been raped compared to 5% of women, and 4% of men.
Across all forms of sexual harassment, around 69% of the respondents chose not to tell their employees. Men seem marginally more likely to tell their employers than women, particularly in cases of physical sexual harassment (34% compared to 27%).
