History's first governmental report into workplace sexual harassment has uncovered statistics so grave that Sex Discrimination Commissioner Kate Jenkins, who commissioned the report, described it as "shocking".
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
However, the report comes as no surprise to 70-year-old Wagga feminist Jan Roberts, who said she has seen it all before.
"It's been accepted and kept quiet; it just needed women to start saying it's not on before there was any attempt to understand the problem," Ms Roberts said.
"The word 'sexual harassment' wasn't even around in the 1970s. We didn't have the word for sexual assault, there was no word for domestic violence either."
Over her 70-year-long crusade as a feminist Ms Roberts said she's seen great strides being made for women, however she says the modern world presents its own problems.
"In today's climate jobs are not necessarily secure - there's a huge amount of casual work and contract work so hanging onto your job is pretty important," she said.
That is a lesson learnt the hard way for many of her female friends, many of whom have either been pressured into leaving a job or voluntarily quit after facing sexual harassment in the workforce.
The problem is especially bad in male-dominated trade fields, according to Charles Sturt University human resources expert Larissa Bamberry.
"A lot of the report's findings are congruent with some of the research we've been doing in the Women in Trades Project," Dr Bamberry said.
"We find sexual harassment is higher male dominated workplaces such as construction and mining; non-traditional areas for women."
Dr Bamberry said there is a double-whammy for female tradies in regional areas, where there are fewer recourses for somebody who has faced sexual harassment.
Whereas city-based companies have large human resources departments who handle such problems, smaller companies often have no ways for women to report inappropriate behaviour.
Dr Bamberry said women were often helped by online networks of women who gave each other advice and shared resources for what to do in the event of a sexual harassment.
However on the other side of the coin Dr Bamberry said those online spaces were a new avenue where women were experiencing sexual harassment from colleagues and bosses in the first place.
"It's a double edged sword, technology," Dr Bamberry said.
"It's important to see workplace issues within the broad context of sexual violence within modern society."