Workplace Harassment and All-Cause Mortality in a Longitudinal Cohort over a 24-Year Period

The objective of this research was to examine the effects of sexual and generalized harassment in the workplace on risk for all-cause mortality in a sample (n = 1745) originally drawn from a university workplace and followed over a 24-year period after baseline. Eleven timepoints of data on self-reported workplace harassment were collected between October 1996 and February 2021, at time intervals ranging from one year to 13 years, and linked to mortality data (n = 249 deaths) from the National Death Index through December 2021. We used proportional hazards modeling to examine the risk for all-cause mortality associated with workplace harassment (as measured by a modified version of the Sexual Experiences Questionnaire and the Generalized Workplace Harassment Questionnaire) occurring in the previous time period. We also examined differential risk by gender for White and Black study participants. In fully adjusted models, experiencing generalized harassment (GH) was associated with significantly increased hazard of mortality at the next time point for White women (HR = 1.03, p < 0.01). Experiencing sexual harassment (SH) was associated with a trend-level increase in the hazard of next-time-point mortality for Black women (HR = 1.05, p = 0.09). Neither SH nor GH was associated with increased hazard of mortality for men. Workplace interventions to address harassment, stronger enforcement of sexual harassment policy and law, and enactment of policy and law to prevent generalized harassment and bullying may contribute to the reduction of all-cause mortality among working women.