"Taking One for the Team": How sexual assault affects women in the workplace

 Are women safe in the workplace?

Short answer: Depends on where you work.

Reports of sexual assault on female soldiers while deployed in war zones, and most recently the beating and sexual assault of Lara Logan while reporting from the protests in Egypt, must be seen as a reminder and a call-to-action.

Photo of Lara Logan reportedly taken minutes before her assault. CBS News.

Despite disturbing the glass ceiling of hostile and typically gendered work environments women are not viewed as sexual equals. This is evidenced largely by the media response to news of Lara Logan’s attack.

Most disturbing are the blogs asking: "Why was Lara Logan raped?" Was it her killer good looks or her  "gutsy" journalistic attitude?"

Why are people murdered?  Good question, but no where close to being an appropriate one. 

Lara Logan has built her journalistic career on a solid belief that media coverage of overseas events are whitewashed and that the Western audience is only getting half the story. As a long time fan of the work that Logan has done as chief foreign correspondent for CBS News, I'm appalled and disillusioned by the way we have objectified her. 

In a disgustingly ironic show of true American mindfulness, we have not assumed that she chose to report her attack because she holds a biting belief in the whole truth. 

2008 Cover of New York Post in which details of Lara Logan's sex life are "investigated".

This isn’t the first time that Logan has been subjected to the fodder that comes with female success and rumors regarding her sex life. In 2008, the  New York Post made it a priority to delve into the correspondent's sex life as if it were a matter of national security, reporting on the "beaus" she courted while working in Baghdad.

It is behavior like this that keeps women from reporting sexual assaults for fear that they will appear promiscuous and therefore deserving. Add to that the possibility of career loss, and women are reduced to taking one for the team. 

Lara Logan is just one example of the glass ceiling women, specifically those regarded by the mainstream as attractive, face when entering a male dominated world such as foreign reporting or the military.

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