“I think the solutions to sexual harassment and gender bias problems cannot solely rest with individual actors and their good intentions,” says Nilanjana Dasgupta, professor of social psychology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a two-time former Family Research Scholar. “There have to be structural solutions, policies, procedures, incentives to be fair and checks in the system to ensure that the solutions are working as intended.”

Among many recommendations, the scientists pitched that investigators should be required to disclose harassment findings and settlements to all funding agencies and potential employers. According to a recent survey conducted by the American Physical Society, nearly three-quarters of the 471 undergraduate women who attended Society’s 2017 Conferences for Undergraduate Women in Physics (CUWiP) had experienced sexual harassment at some point over the last two years. The study also found that 73 percent of respondents experienced gender harassment, which is often not categorized as a case of sexual harassment.