美国国家公共电台 NPR Poll: Americans Overwhelmingly Support 'Zero Tolerance' On Sexual Harassment

 

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

The climate surrounding sexual harassment¹ has changed drastically in the past few years, and Americans overwhelmingly favor a zero-tolerance policy. Those are findings of a poll NPR conducted with the firm Ipsos. NPR's Danielle Kurtzleben is here with more on that poll. Hello, Danielle.

DANIELLE KURTZLEBEN, BYLINE²: Hi, Robert.

SIEGEL: First, how big was this poll, and how recently was it taken?

KURTZLEBEN: So it was an online poll of just over 1,100 people, and it was taken just a few days ago, December 8 through 12.

SIEGEL: And what did people say about a zero-tolerance policy for sexual harassment?

KURTZLEBEN: Right. This is one of the most fascinating findings we had. Eighty-six percent of Americans - so an overwhelming majority - said that they agree with the statement that, quote, "a zero-tolerance policy for sexual harassment is essential to bringing about change in society." And I want to add, a lot of things today are polarizing by party. This is not polarizing by party. Nine in 10 Democrats³ and 8 in 10 Republicans agreed with that.

SIEGEL: How do attitudes toward sexual harassment or perceptions of what our attitudes are differ from, say, several years ago?

KURTZLEBEN: Right. So people really do seem to perceive a seismic⁴ shift in how society treats sexual harassment right now. So for example, 1 in 4 people said that they agree that right now, allegations of sexual harassment are generally ignored - just 1 in 4. That's not many. So we said, five years ago, what do you think it was? And two-thirds said that five years ago, sexual harassment allegations were generally ignored. So importantly, this is not exactly a trend in attitudes.

SIEGEL: Right.

KURTZLEBEN: But it's people right now looking back and saying, hmm, I see a really big change.

SIEGEL: Things are different now, they're saying.

KURTZLEBEN: Absolutely.

SIEGEL: Did you find any significant differences between Republicans and Democrats in the poll?

KURTZLEBEN: We did find a few. Here's one in particular. We presented people with a statement. Nearly all instances of sexual harassment would end if the woman said stop. Thirty-five percent of Republicans agreed with that to some degree. Twenty percent of Democrats agreed with that to some degree. That is a significant difference. But once again, it's also a minority in both cases. So it's not as if Republicans and Democrats are living on entirely⁵ different planets on this according to this poll. Really what is kind of striking is that Republicans and Democrats didn't differ on a lot of these questions in our poll.

SIEGEL: You asked people about their own personal experiences of sexual harassment. What did you hear?

KURTZLEBEN: Fifty-nine percent of women said that they have personally experienced sexual harassment, and 27 percent of men said that they have experienced sexual harassment.

SIEGEL: Twenty-seven percent of men said they've experienced sexual harassment.

KURTZLEBEN: Right - a big gap but, once again, not absolutely huge. It's not that they're on two different ends of the spectrum⁶.

SIEGEL: One difference I see in one of the charts from your poll is that among Republican men, 48 percent say that they are not currently talking about the issue of sexual harassment with their family - not at all - whereas 22 percent of Democratic women say they're talking about it a lot.

KURTZLEBEN: Right, yeah. So when we did have partisan⁷ and gender⁸ differences, fairly often Democratic women and Republican men were at two different ends of the spectrum with Democratic men and Republican women somewhere in the middle. That is one big one. It really does look like Democratic women are having more conversations about sexual harassment right now than many other Americans.

SIEGEL: NPR's Danielle Kurtzleben talking about NPR and Ipsos' new poll on sexual harassment. Thanks.

KURTZLEBEN: Thank you.

1 harassment   

n.骚扰，扰乱，烦恼，烦乱

参考例句：

• She often got telephone harassment at night these days.这些天她经常在夜晚受到电话骚扰。
• The company prohibits any form of harassment.公司禁止任何形式的骚扰行为。

2 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

3 democrats   

n.民主主义者，民主人士( democrat的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The Democrats held a pep rally on Capitol Hill yesterday. 民主党昨天在国会山召开了竞选誓师大会。
• The democrats organize a filibuster in the senate. 民主党党员组织了阻挠议事。 来自《简明英汉词典》

4 seismic   

a.地震的，地震强度的

参考例句：

• Earthquakes produce two types of seismic waves.地震产生两种地震波。
• The latest seismic activity was also felt in northern Kenya.肯尼亚北部也感觉到了最近的地震活动。

5 entirely   

ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地

参考例句：

• The fire was entirely caused by their neglect of duty. 那场火灾完全是由于他们失职而引起的。
• His life was entirely given up to the educational work. 他的一生统统献给了教育工作。

6 spectrum   

n.谱，光谱，频谱；范围，幅度，系列

参考例句：

• This is a kind of atomic spectrum.这是一种原子光谱。
• We have known much of the constitution of the solar spectrum.关于太阳光谱的构成，我们已了解不少。

7 partisan   

adj.党派性的；游击队的；n.游击队员；党徒

参考例句：

• In their anger they forget all the partisan quarrels.愤怒之中，他们忘掉一切党派之争。
• The numerous newly created partisan detachments began working slowly towards that region.许多新建的游击队都开始慢慢地向那里移动。

8 gender   

n.（生理上的）性，（名词、代词等的）性

参考例句：

• French differs from English in having gender for all nouns.法语不同于英语，所有的名词都有性。
• Women are sometimes denied opportunities solely because of their gender.妇女有时仅仅因为性别而无法获得种种机会。