LONDON — Two thirds of women in the British armed forces have experienced forms of “sexualized behavior” in the last year, according to a new in-depth study carried out by the Ministry of Defence.

The most common type of harassment faced by female service personnel was being subjected to sexual jokes or comments (58 percent).

Yet there was a high incidence of other kinds of misconduct, with a significant minority saying they had faced unwelcome comments about their body (41 percent), sexual gestures or body language (29 percent), unwanted attempts to establish a romantic or sexual relationship (25 percent), or exposure to pornographic material (19 percent).

Almost a third (32 percent) of women surveyed said they had experienced unwanted touching and eight percent reported non-consensual sexual activity.

Male service personnel also faced sexual harassment, with 34 percent saying they had encountered sexualized behavior, most of which was verbal.

Junior personnel were disproportionately targeted, with 71 percent of women below officer ranks having experienced sexualized behavior compared with 58 percent of female officers. Women of both rank groupings were more likely to have experienced sexualized behavior than equivalent male ranks.

The survey of more than 94,000 service personnel was carried out following previous reviews by Air Chief Marshal Michael Wigston and the House of Commons Defence Committee, both of which called for a more thorough inquiry into the scale of the issue.

Defense Minister Louise Sandher-Jones MP called the results “wholly unacceptable.”

The survey “provides a no-holds barred baseline to fully confront and address the root causes of this issue,” she added, while “new standards in transparency and accountability are being set across our armed forces.”

Chief of the Defence Staff Richard Knighton said: “The results of the survey show just how much more I, and leaders at every level, need to do to stamp out behaviour which has no place in the U.K. armed forces.”

He highlighted new independent mechanisms for reporting the most serious incidents outside of the chain of command and a complaints app, both launched recently.

The armed forces have long struggled to grapple with reports of inappropriate behavior and assault, which came to the fore again this year at the inquest into the death of teenage Royal Artillery gunner Jaysley Beck.

The inquest found that she had been overwhelmed by unwanted sexual advances and messages from a superior officer before she took her own life in 2021.