Sexual Harassment of Women Climate, Culture, and Consequences in Academic Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (2018) / Chapter Skim
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2 Sexual Harassment Research
2 Sexual Harassment Research
Pages 23-50
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From page 23... ...
In reviewing what sexual harassment research has learned over time, the chapter also examines the research methods for studying sexual harassment and the appropriate methods for conducting this research in a reliable way. The chapter provides information on the prevalence of sexual harassment and common characteristics of how sexual harassment is perpetrated and experienced across lines of industry, occupation, and social class.
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Hostile environment harassment also encompasses unwanted sexual overtures such as exposing one's genitals, stroking and kissing someone, and pressuring a person for dates even if no quid pro quo is involved (Bundy v. Jackson 1981;3 Meritor Savings Bank v.
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From page 25... ...
Psychologists who study gender-related behavior have developed more nuanced terms to describe sexual harassment in order to more precisely measure and account for the behaviors that constitute sexual harassment and to describe how targets experience those behaviors. A three-part classification system divides sexual harassment into distinct but related categories: sexual coercion, unwanted sexual attention, and gender harassment (see Figure 2-1; Fitzgerald et al.
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The crude harassment form of gender harassment is defined as the use of sexually crude terms that denigrate people based on their gender (e.g., using insults such as "slut" to refer to a female coworker or "pussy" to refer to a male coworker; Fitzgerald, Gelfand, and Drasgow 1995)
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. B Interestingly, the motivation underlying sexual coercion and unwanted sexual attention behaviors appears different from the motivation underlying gender harassment.
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. Ambient unwanted sexual attention and sexual coercion refer to observed instances of unwanted sexual pursuit, targeted at a fellow employee.
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In addition to sexually harassing behavior, examples of this include pay or hiring discrimination based on one's sex or gender. Sexual harassment: A type of sex/gender discrimination that encompasses gender harassment, unwanted sexual attention, and sexual coercion.
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Sometimes, too, using multiple instruments and data sources can be a highly effective approach. Though surveys have often focused on the targets of sexually harassing behavior (e.g., Fitzgerald, Drasgow, and Magley 1999)
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. This illustrates what other research has shown: that in both the law and the lay public, the dominant understandings of sexual harassment overemphasize two forms of sexual harassment, sexual coercion and unwanted sexual attention, while downplaying the third (most common)
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32 SEXUAL HARASSMENT OF WOMEN FIGURE 2-2 The public consciousness of sexual harassment and specific sexually harassing behaviors.
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. A reluctance to answer questions about sexually harassing experiences could represent a nonresponse bias.
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The largest concern when comparing prevalence rates is differences in how sexual harassment is defined in the survey and during the analysis of the responses. A meta-analysis of sexual harassment surveys demonstrates that the prevalence rate is 24 percent when women are asked whether they have experienced "sexual harassment" versus 58 percent when they are asked whether they experienced harassing behaviors that meet the definition of sexual harassment (and are then classified as such in the analysis)
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. Laboratory experiments can help uncover situational factors that encourage or discourage potential perpetrators from engaging in sexually harassing behavior.
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. Such methods are thought to be particularly well suited to providing key background information and highlighting the experiences and perceptions of targets of oppression, such as those who have experienced sexual harassment.
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. A sociolegal research method requires study of the law at many levels of experience to approach sexual harassment, for example, because it matters just as much what women think they deserve or will likely get as what the law formally offers them.
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Even when legal scholars attempt to collect samples of hundreds of sexual harassment claims, such as Ann Juliano and Stewart J Schwab's 2000 survey of every reported federal district and appellate court ruling on sexual harassment between 1986 and 1995, totaling nearly 650, they concede that these cases are not representative of the universe of incidents.
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This section and the next one review what research can tell us about the trends in sexual harassment rates over time and what the common characteristics are of sexual harassment and sexually harassing environments. Wherever possible, the report cites the most recent scientific studies of a topic.
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Whereas previous surveys assessed the prevalence of sexually harassing behaviors, the RAND survey used behavior-based questions to determine the prevalence rate of legally defined sexual harassment, meaning that they asked questions and grouped results based on hostile work environment and quid pro quo harassment. While quid pro quo harassment maps cleanly to sexual coercion, hostile work environment requires the condition that the sexually harassing behaviors (such as gender harassment and unwanted sexual attention)
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(%) Gender Harassment: Crude and Offensive 50 54 43 47 Gender Harassment: Sexist 45 52 41 41 Unwanted Sexual Attention 27 32 23 23 Sexual Coercion 8 8 8 8 SOURCE: DMDC 2003, 2008, 2011, 2013.
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In both samples, gender harassment was by far the most common experience: 54–60 percent of women described some encounter with gender harassment, either with or without unwanted sexual attention. In contrast, sexual coercion was rare, described by approximately 4 percent of women in each sample.
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. That gender harassment is the most common type of sexual harassment is an unexpected finding in terms of what constitutes sexual harassment because unwanted sexual advances and sexual coercion are the most commonly reported both in official Title IX/Human Resources documentation (Cantalupo and Kidder 2017a, 2017b) and in the media.9 This is in part why the misguided idea that sexual harassment is about sex has persisted.
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. Additionally, the cultural context in which people from different racial and ethnic backgrounds operate, as well as when they are numerically less represented in a workplace, can have effects on how they experience sexual harassment (Cortina et al.
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. The RTI International interviews11 were able to glean complexities of intersectionality and sexually harassing behavior.
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. This trend continued for the other forms of sexual harassment (unwanted sexual attention and sexual coercion)
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, sexually harassing behavior was more commonly reported "among men who say their company does not have guidelines against harassment, hotlines to report it or punishment for perpetrators, or who say their managers don't care." Social situations in which sexist views and sexually harassing behavior are modeled can enable, facilitate, or even encourage sexually harassing behaviors, while, conversely, positive role models can inhibit sexually harassing behavior (Dekker and Barling 1998; Perry, Schmidtke, and Kulik 1998; Pryor, LaVite, and Stoller 1993)
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It is considered illegal when it creates a hostile environment (gender harassment or unwanted sexual attention that is "severe or pervasive" enough to alter the conditions of employment, interfere with one's work performance, or impede one's ability to get an education) or when it is quid pro quo sexual harassment (when favorable professional or educational treatment is conditioned on sexual activity)
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is by far the most common type of sexual harassment. When an environment is per vaded by gender harassment, unwanted sexual attention and sexual coercion become more likely to occur -- in part because unwanted sexual attention and sexual coercion are almost never experienced by women without simultaneously experiencing gender harassment.
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9. Organizational climate is, by far, the greatest predictor of the occur rence of sexual harassment, and ameliorating it can prevent people from sexually harassing others.
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