Aftermetoo’s vision is a world in which everyone can thrive, unimpeded by gender-based harassment at work.
That’s not the world we live in.
Gender-based workplace harassment (GBWH) does not only affect people emotionally. It affects their careers. And when it affects careers, it affects money. Over time, those financial effects accumulate. For many people, they are large and permanent.
Although no Canadian dataset currently quantifies the lifetime financial cost of workplace sexual harassment, a substantial body of American research has examined its economic impact. The findings are consistent: harassment functions as a career-disrupting event, often comparable to serious injury or illness, incarceration, or other major life shocks.
Harassment as a Career-Interrupting Event
The early years of a person’s working life — typically their twenties and early thirties — are usually a period of steady employment and rising compensation. It is during this period that people build credentials, develop professional networks, and position themselves for long-term income growth. Wage increases during this stage compound over time, forming the basis for future earnings, promotions, and retirement savings.
It is also the period in which people, especially women and gender-non-normative people, are at highest risk of workplace harassment.
Research suggests that when harassment occurs during this early career stage, it often operates as what scholars describe as a “scarring” event. People who experience harassment are significantly more likely to leave their jobs prematurely than those who do not. One major study found that women who report sexual harassment are more than six times more likely to exit their jobs. When people leave because of harassment, they frequently experience a period of unemployment or underemployment. Even when they re-enter the workforce quickly, they often accept positions of lower quality or lower pay.
These early disruptions alter long-term earnings trajectories. Lost raises are not just lost in the year they would have been earned; they reduce the base upon which future raises would have been calculated. Over decades, the difference compounds.
Retaliation and the Cost of Reporting
Many people assume that formal reporting will correct the problem. In practice, reporting often introduces new risks.
Research estimates that a substantial proportion of people who report sexual harassment experience retaliation. Retaliation can be overt, such as termination, demotion, denial of shifts, or blocked promotions. It can also be subtle. A person may become viewed as “difficult,” “disruptive,” or “not a team player.” Their opportunities for advancement may narrow. Performance evaluations may shift. Professional relationships may cool.
Even in cases where no formal punishment occurs, reputational harm can affect long-term earnings. Advancement depends not only on formal qualifications but also on informal sponsorship, goodwill, and access to networks. When those diminish, so does upward mobility.
The financial effects of retaliation often unfold gradually. They may not be visible in a single year’s income, but they reshape a career over time.
Industry Exit and Long-Term Earnings Loss
In high-harassment industries, people sometimes respond by leaving the field entirely. Research indicates that when people exit male-dominated, higher-paying industries due to harassment, they frequently move into sectors that pay less. This is not typically a lifestyle choice. It is a harm-reduction strategy.
American studies estimate that the lifetime cost to a woman pushed out of a high-paying industry due to harassment can reach approximately USD $1.3 million. These estimates include lost wage growth, foregone promotions, industry exit, and long-term compounding effects. Although there is no comparable Canadian lifetime estimate, the underlying labour market dynamics are similar.
Industry exit has structural consequences. Certain sectors offer higher wages, better benefits, and stronger long-term earnings growth. Being forced out of those sectors due to harassment represents not just a short-term setback but a permanent shift in economic trajectory.
Immediate Financial Consequences
The economic harm of GBWH is not only long-term. For some people, the financial impact is immediate and severe.
Unexpected job loss can interrupt income with little warning. Even short gaps in employment can destabilize people who are living paycheque to paycheque. Legal fees, therapy, medication, relocation expenses, and costs associated with ensuring personal safety can add further financial strain.
For people in low-paid or precarious employment, even minor disruptions can trigger cascading consequences. Missed payments lead to late fees and higher interest rates. Credit ratings can decline. Student loan balances can grow. Vehicles can be repossessed. Housing may become unstable. The financial effects are particularly harsh for people without savings or family support.
In these circumstances, harassment does not merely reduce future income; it destabilizes present security.
Long-Term Economic Security
Over time, the cumulative financial effects of workplace harassment can shape a person’s entire economic life. Periods of unemployment reduce lifetime earnings. Lower-paying jobs reduce retirement contributions. Delayed promotions affect pension calculations. Industry exit can permanently cap income potential.
Women already retire with less wealth than men on average. Time away from work, slower wage growth, and interrupted career paths further widen that gap. The long-term consequences may include delayed retirement, reduced retirement security, and diminished intergenerational wealth transfer.
These are not abstract losses. They affect housing stability, caregiving capacity, and independence in old age.
The Harm Is Structural, Not Strategic
The financial damage caused by harassment does not depend on whether a person reports, confronts, stays, or leaves. People’s responses are rational navigation strategies within constrained systems.
Some stay and absorb the harm quietly. Some report and face retaliation. Some quit and accept lower wages for safety. Some change industries. None of these strategies reliably protects income.
The financial harm flows from workplace structures that fail to prevent harassment and often protect institutions over people. The economic losses are not the result of poor decision-making by those who experience harassment. They are predictable outcomes of systems that do not function as intended.
Conclusion
Gender-based workplace harassment is often framed as a cultural or interpersonal problem. It is also an economic one.
It affects wage growth, job stability, industry participation, and retirement security. It can alter a person’s lifetime earnings by hundreds of thousands — and in some cases over a million — dollars. It can destabilize people in the short term and reduce economic security in the long term.
The financial harm is not incidental. It is one of the core ways workplace harassment constrains people’s ability to thrive.
This is the landscape our work is responding to.
Appendix: Bibliography
Cowhey, Maureen R. 2019. Measuring the Economic Costs of Workplace Sexual Harassment on Women. Scripps Senior Theses.
Institute for Women’s Policy Research and Time’s Up Foundation. 2021. Paying Today and Tomorrow: Charting the Financial Costs of Workplace Sexual Harassment.
Limiting Our Livelihoods: The Cumulative Impact of Sexual Harassment on Women’s Careers. 2019. American Association of University Women. November.
McLaughlin, Heather, Christopher Uggen, and Amy Blackstone. 2017. “The Economic and Career Effects of Sexual Harassment on Working Women.” Gender & Society 31 (3): 333–358. https://doi.org/10.1177/0891243217704631
National Partnership for Women & Families. 2023. Sexual Harassment and the Gender Wage Gap. https://nationalpartnership.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/sexual-harassment-and-the-gender-wage-gap.pdf
