Anti-harassment training actually works for years, but it has a weird side effect—it’s basically killing off classroom romance.
April 3, 2026
Original Paper
Tackling Sexual Harassment: Short and Long-Run Experimental Evidence from India
SSRN · 6460764
The Takeaway
The training works by making men fear social disapproval rather than changing their internal beliefs. Because men start acting more respectful just to avoid looking bad, women can no longer distinguish between those who are genuinely kind and those just following the rules, causing new relationships to plummet.
From the abstract
Sexual harassment awareness training is a key tool to combat sexual harassment, which affects nearly 205 million people in the workplace (ILO, 2022). This paper provides the first randomized evaluation of such training in collaboration with colleges in Delhi, India, to study its impact on sexual harassment. I randomly assigned men to receive this training, with empathy-building, and collected reports of sexual harassment from women in their classes. The training significantly reduced sexual hara