SEXUAL HARASSMENT

This study was designed to examine the impact of sexual harassment on Hong Kong Chinese women in the workplace and in college. Questionnaires assessing sexual harassment incidents experienced by self, perceived prevalence of sexual harassment in the organization, job or study satisfaction, and organizational commitment were completed by 77 female secretaries and 84 female college students in Hong Kong. Consistent with our hypotheses, personal experience of sexual harassment was found to be negatively associated with respondent satisfaction with their jobs or studies. However, these experiences were found to be unrelated to organizational commitment. In addition, most of the coping strategies adopted by the harassment victims tended to be nonassertive in nature. As one of the few systematic sexual harassment studies on Chinese working women and female students, we interpret our findings from an indigenous perspective and discuss both theoretical as well as applied implications for research in this area.     

Contrapower Sexual Harassment: A Survey of Students and Faculty Members

We conducted two studies to shed light on contrapower sexual harassment in an academic setting. In the first study, we surveyed a random sample of 158 college students (83.4% White) concerning their potentially sexually harassing behaviors toward professors, sexist attitudes toward women, and proclivities to harass sexually. Almost one third of the students reported having sexually harassed a professor at least once. Male students were more likely than female students to be the perpetrators. In the second study, all tenured and tenure-track faculty were mailed a survey; 209 professors (88.9% White) completed the survey concerning their experiences with sexual harassment from students as well as their coping responses, definitions of sexual harassment, and reactions to hypothetical scenarios. Over one half of the professors reported having been at least once sexually harassed by students. Although male and female professors experienced similar rates of sexual harassment from students, the psychological outcome was worse for women than for men. Male and female professors defined sexual harassment similarly. However, when more contextual information was provided in the hypothetical scenarios, several gender differences emerged. In addition, men and women used both internal and external coping responses to different types of sexual harassment. Sexual harassment as both a tool and a result of male dominance in society is discussed.     

Labeling sexual harassment in the military: an extension and replication

Research conducted by V. Magley, C. Hulin, L. F. Fitzgerald, and M. DeNardo (1999) has suggested that women who experience sexual harassment report worse outcomes independent of the labeling process. This study replicates and extends that work. Discriminant analyses were conducted on a sample of approximately 28,000 men and women from the military. The authors included variables similar to those used by V. Magley et al., as well as a variety of antecedent variables. Two significant functions were obtained from the discriminant analysis. The 1st function ordered groups according to the frequency of harassment and accounted for substantially more variance than did the 2nd function, which ordered groups according to whether they labeled their experiences as sexual harassment. The overall results from these analyses demonstrate that labeling incidents as sexual harassment is of marginal meaningfulness in terms of job outcomes and antecedents of harassment.     

Hispanic perspectives on sexual harassment and social support

Bridging the social support, sexual victimization, and cultural psychology literatures, this study examines social-support processes in the context of sexual harassment and Hispanic American culture. Surveys were administered to a community sample of Hispanic American working women, 249 of whom described some encounter with sexual harassment at work. Regression results provided mixed backing for hypotheses about support-seeking behavior, which appeared largely dependent on the social power of the harassment perpetrator. Additional findings upheld predictions about support-perception patterns; harassed women perceived more supportive social reactions when they turned to informal networks of friends and family, but responses were less positive when they turned to formal, organizational sources. Finally, as expected, perceived support and acculturation interacted to moderate relations between sexual harassment and job satisfaction. The article concludes with implications for research and interventions related to social support and sexual harassment.     

A hierarchy of sexual harassment

Undergraduate students (143 males, 100 females) and working women (n = 48) read 18 scenarios depicting a wide range of types of sexual harassment behaviors and indicated whether they personally perceived each type of behavior to be sexual harassment. A hierarchy of harassment was developed on the basis of the subjects' perceptions. Potential differences between the perceptions of working women and female students and between the perceptions of male and female students were also investigated. Although a general consensus emerged regarding the relative perceived severity of the different types of sexual harassment, the percentage of working women who considered the behaviors to be sexual harassment was greater than the percentage of female students who considered them so.     

The Psychological Impact of Sexual Harassment on Women in the U.S. Military

The purpose of this research is to study the prevalence, dimensions, and correlates of psychological harm that women experience as the result of sexual harassment in the workplace. I employed data collected from a worldwide survey of sexual harassment in the active-duty U.S. military. The scientifically selected sample included over 10,000 working military women. Four general types of negative psychosocial reactions were identified among victims of sexual harassment: productivity problems, attitudes toward the organization, emotional reactions, and relations with family. Analyses explored the relations of these psychosocial reactions to (a) characteristics of the harassing behavior (what happened and who did it), (b) characteristics of the victim, (c) characteristics of the organizational climate in which the harassment took place, and (d) the victim's coping responses.     

Why Don’t We Report Sexual Harassment? An Application of the Theory of Planned Behavior

The study found that an individual’s attitudes toward the behavior, normative beliefs, and perceived behavioral control predicted an individual’s intention to report an incident of hostile environment sexual harassment. Even though women indicated a greater intention to report, there was not a gender difference in whether an individual reported an incident of hostile environment sexual harassment. Our findings provide support for the theory of planned behavior as a model for predicting an individual’s intention to report sexual harassment. These findings provide insight for the formulation of policy and procedures and the development of training programs to facilitate reporting of incidents.     

The frequency,sources, and correlates of sexual harassment among women in traditional male occupations

Sexual harassment has increasingly come to be recognized as a major problem confronting working women. Utilizing the results of a survey of women in traditional male occupations (N=160), this paper summarizes some new data on the amount, type, and sources of harassment experienced by this group. Interpreting these findings within the content of the larger theory of patriarchy, it also identifies and provides further clarification of some individual and organizational correlates of harassment. The data offer provisional support for recent theoretical claims that women in male-defined occupations occupy a particularly problematic position vis-`a-vis men. Over 75% of the respondents reported experiencing at least one form of harassment as compared to the 50% + generally cited for the population as a whole. Consistent with the general cultural patterns of sexual violation, incidence of harassment was found to be inversely related to the level of severity. Probably predicated at least partially on opportunity structure, peers were cited as the most frequent source of harassment, followed by supervisors, subordinates and clients. A number of individual correlates of harassment were also identified. As expected, married workers and older respondents reported lower levels of harassment. A curvilinear relationship was found to exist between length of employment and harassment. Finally, respondents who were employed as managers and engineers reported approximately equal levels of harassment, while those in the professions such as the sciences, computers, public administration, etc., reported significantly lower levels of harassment. Consistent with the thesis of organizational culpability in the prevalence and persistence of sexual harassment, individuals employed in firms perceived to have high equal employment opportunity for women reported significantly lower levels of harassment than those in firms with low opportunity.     

Acknowledging Sexual Harassment: A Test of Alternative Models

Few victims of sexual harassment acknowledge that their experience constitutes sexual harassment. In this study, we examined five general models gleaned from the literature on observers' or laypersons' perceptions of sexual harassment to examine their efficacy in explaining victims' acknowledgment processes: type-of-harassing experience; personal characteristics of the target/observer; and affective consequences of the event(s), attributions, and power (status) of the offender. Data were collected in a campus-wide survey of students, faculty, and staff at a large midwestern university (N = 1,147), which measured incidence rates of eight forms of sexual harassment and the situational characteristics of, responses to, and consequences of the most dramatic experience. Results from single-model and multiple-model hierarchical logistic regression analyses partially support each of the models. The following general model emerged: Individuals who experience unwanted sexual attention are more likely than others to acknowledge being sexually harassed if (a) they perceived their experience as part of a larger problem in their environment, (b) they had a strong emotional reaction to it, (c) the perpetrator was a superior, (d) they were sensitive to the issue of sexual harassment (e.g., they were women instead of men). However, differences in this pattern emerged across various subsamples. This research warrants further theoretical development on victimization acknowledgment processes.     

Does a Truck Driver See What a Nurse Sees? The Effects of Occupation Type on Perceptions of Sexual Harassment

Previous researchers have demonstrated differential prevalence of harassment of men and women in men’s traditional, women’s traditional, and neutral occupation types, but they have not looked at differences in harassment judgments among these occupations. Our hypotheses rely on the assumption that people who have observed frequent sexual harassment of others in their work environments react differently to new cases than do those who have witnessed fewer of these episodes in the past. Participants watched videos of two cases and made judgments about the presence or absence of sexual harassment. We categorized the participants based on their occupations—men’s traditional, women’s traditional, and neutral, and compared responses among groups. A gender by occupation type interaction emerged. Men in men’s traditional occupation types provided the highest ratings of harassment, followed by men in neutral occupations; men in women’s traditional occupation types provided the lowest ratings. Conversely, women in women’s traditional occupations provided the highest ratings of harassment, followed by women in neutral occupations; women in men’s traditional occupations provided the lowest ratings of sexual harassment.     

Strategies and Dispositional Correlates of Sexual Coercion Perpetrated by Women: An Exploratory Investigation

This research tests whether theoretical constructs typically associated with male perpetrators of sexual coercion are predictive of women who perpetrate sexual coercion. We administered a questionnaire that contained measures of sexual experience, social dominance, ambivalent sexism, sex roles, attitudes toward sexual harassment, and lovestyle approaches toward intimate relationships to a sample of women undergraduates. Results found 18% of women to report engaging in sexually coercive behaviors. Coercive women exhibited higher tolerance of sexual harassment, and were significantly higher in femininity than noncoercive women. Coercive women were also found to embrace a ludic (manipulative, game-playing approach toward love) lovestyle significantly more than noncoercive women, while pragma (a logical approach toward love) was negatively associated with coercion. Lastly, a significant difference was found between coercive and noncoercive women and self-reported victimization. Eighty-one percent of women who reported using coercive strategies in their relationships also reported having been sexually victimized.     

Moderating Effects of Personal Cognitions on Experienced and Perceived Sexual Harassment of Women at the Workplace

This study investigated actual and perceived sexual harassment (SH), as well as the discrepancy between them of women in the workplace, as related to several factual and perceptual variables which were selected on the basis of theoretical considerations and previous findings (i.e., harasser status, workplace sex ratio, and perceptions of intensity of intergender interaction, normative beliefs about SH, and personal attractiveness). The sample included 138 women. employed in four organizations, who responded to anonymous questionnaires. Results showed that women reported engagement in diverse actual SH episodes, which varied in frequency (2% to 27%) along five levels of SH severity continuum. Only 10.1% of the women perceived these episodes as sexual harassing. It was found that the higher the severity of the SH episode, the stronger was the tendency to perceive it as sexual harassing. While actual SH was found to be significantly correlated with all research variables ( R = .49), perceived SH was only related to normative beliefs about SH ( r = .38), and the discrepancy mainly to personal attractiveness ( r = -.21). Various implications of the findings were discussed in light of social judgment perspective.     

Victim Resistance: Theory and Data on Understanding Perceptions of Sexual Harassment

This article reports on a study of perceptions of sexual harassment when a victim offers verbal resistance, and introduces the theoretical application of the notion that women sometimes use token resistance to sexual attention. Perceptions of sexual harassment were examined based on a vignette in which physical or verbal harassment and victim's facial expression were varied. Participants were 337 undergraduates (91% European American, 5% African American, 1% Hispanic American, 1% Asian American). Perceptions of sexual harassment were stronger for physical harassment than verbal harassment, except when the target smiled. Overall, women had stronger perceptions of harassment than did men. Also, a stronger belief in women's use of token resistance to sex was associated with weaker perceptions of sexual harassment. These findings suggest that a number of factors influence perceptions of harassment, even when a victim verbally resists.     

Feminist Active Commitment and Sexual Harassment Perception among Chinese Women: The Moderating Roles of Targets’ Gender Stereotypicality and Type of Harassment

In recent years, sexual harassment has become more acknowledged in many developed countries. However, in East Asian culture, it is a sensitive and controversial topic upon which few scholars have focused. The current research aimed to explore whether the relationship between feminist identity and perception of sexual harassment was affected by target’s traditional or nontraditional gender stereotypicality and types of sexual harassment (unwanted sexual attention or gender harassment) among Chinese working women. The participants were 424 heterosexual women, aged 18 to 71 years-old (mdn?=?31), who completed surveys that assessed their feminist Active Commitment and perception of sexual harassment after reading a randomly assigned sexual harassment scenario. Women with higher scores on Active Commitment were more aware of both types of sexual harassment, and participants’ perception of unwanted sexual attention was significantly stronger than their perception of gender harassment. In addition, the types of targets and types of sexual harassment moderated the relationship between Active Commitment and the perception of sexual harassment. Our findings highlight the importance of feminist identity for the perception of sexual harassment and suggest that improving gender equality and feminist education is very important for enhancing the perception of sexual harassment.

     

A Listening Guide Analysis of Lesbian and Bisexual Young Women of Color’s Experiences of Sexual Objectification

In the present study, I utilize objectification theory and compulsory heterosexuality as theoretical lenses to investigate lesbian and bisexual young Women of Color’s sexual objectification experiences. In-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight Black and Latina 16–19 year-old young women who identified as lesbian or bisexual. Using the Listening Guide method of narrative analysis, two voices pertaining to young women’s objectification experiences were identified: a Voice of Surveillance and a Voice of Self-Surveillance. Findings suggest that young women experienced sexual objectification as rooted in their gender, sexuality, and racial identities. Experiences were further shaped by the contexts in which objectification occurred: participants voiced distinct struggles navigating (a) sexual harassment and violence in relationships with peers and romantic partners, (b) sexual harassment and discipline in school, and (c) street harassment and violence from men. Findings highlight the importance of understanding sexual objectification experiences as they are informed by gender, sexuality, and race, as well as the ways that young women actively cope with and resist objectification. Psychologists, activists, and mental health professionals are encouraged to consider how sexual objectification is rooted in multiple forms of oppression, its implications for young women’s identity, desire, and well-being, and how young women can be supported as they struggle against it.     

Sexual Harassment and its Impact for Women Officers and Cadets in the Swedish Armed Forces

We examined the incidence, dimensions, and impact of sexual harassment on women officers and cadets in the Swedish military (N = 324). We expected that harassment rates for direct measures would be lower than for indirect measures; hostile environment harassment would be more prevalent than quid pro quo harassment; and harassment would negatively influence women's job-related outcomes and their psychological and physical health. We found that harassment rates for direct measures were lower than indirect measures; hostile environment harassment was more prevalent than quid pro quo harassment; and harassment was associated with decreased job satisfaction, organizational commitment, work group effectiveness, and psychological and physical health. We discuss the theoretical, methodological, and practical implications of our findings for studying harassment across cultures.     

Perception Differences in Ambiguous Forms of Workplace Sexual Harassment: A Comparison between the United States and Turkey

Certain social–sexual behaviors that could be potentially encountered in workplaces are ambiguous in nature and perceiving them as sexual harassment can depend on the culture. With an aim to delineate the overlap and distinctions of sexual harassment perceptions of such behaviors across samples of women university students from Turkey (TR, N = 215) and the United States (US, N = 209), measurement invariance and latent mean differences in perceiving three ambiguous forms; sexist hostility, sexual hostility, and insinuation-of-interest, were examined. It was hypothesized that the US sample would perceive sexist hostility more sexually harassing as sexist workplace discriminatory practices are emphasized as a form of sexual harassment, and that the TR sample would perceive sexual hostility and insinuation-of-interest as more sexually harassing as women in TR operate in a conservative context. Despite similarities in rank ordering, US participants perceived sexist hostility more sexually harassing; insinuation-of-interest and sexual hostility less sexually harassing than Turkish participants, supporting all three hypotheses. There are implications of differing perceptions across cultures for organizations in terms of disseminating awareness via training programs about the forms of sexual harassment (SH) in a local context and for taking account of local findings in shaping the labor code of countries in relation to SH.     

The Incidence and Outcomes of Sexual Harassment Among Hispanic and Non–Hispanic White Women: A Comparison Across Levels Of Cultural Affiliation

An extensive body of literature has documented the widespread and damaging nature of sexual harassment among Anglo women, but little attention has focused on the experiences of women of color. The current paper begins to address this gap by comparing sexual harassment incidence rates and psychological and work–related outcomes of Hispanic and non–Hispanic White women across varying levels of cultural affiliation. Chi–square tests of association suggest that risk of harassment increases with affiliation to the mainstream U.S. culture, and hierarchical regression analyses suggest that cultural affiliation moderates the relation between sexual harassment and occupational functioning. These provocative findings are discussed in the context of social and economic vulnerability, socio–sexual norms, and cultural background.     

Sexual Harassment and Posttraumatic Stress Symptoms among Asian and White Women

Sexual harassment is a prevalent problem that has been associated with negative psychological and physical health outcomes. Although sexual harassment has been linked to posttraumatic stress (PTS) symptoms, little is known about how PTS symptoms that arose from sexual harassment experiences might be associated with psychological and physical health. This study examined the associations among sexual harassment, PTS symptoms, and psychological and physical well-being in a sample of Asian and White women. In addition, given the lack of research on sexual harassment among Asian women, we investigated the moderating role of ethnicity. Results indicated that greater sexual harassment frequency and PTS symptom severity predicted more depression, overall psychological distress, and physical symptoms. PTS symptom severity and ethnicity moderated the relationship between sexual harassment frequency and physical symptoms. We discuss the implications of these findings and directions for further research.