Sexual minorities (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals; LGBT) experience workplace discrimination that leads to decreased physical and emotional well-being, and negative job outcomes.LGBT individuals may also experience microaggressions and ostracism in the workplace. Microaggressions are brief and subtle slights or insults that can be either conscious or unconscious, which have negative consequences similar to direct "old-fashioned" forms of discrimination. Ostracism, being ignored and excluded, has similar negative outcomes. Microaggressions and ostracism are often ambiguous and difficult to substantiate legally, whereas other forms of discrimination can be observed directly. We review the literature on microaggressions and ostracism, which have recently been investigated with LGBT populations, suggesting future research directions. We suggest practices for encouraging an organizational climate of acceptance.

Bullying and sexual harassment at school have received recent attention in developed countries; however, they have been neglected in Latin America. Thus, the authors investigated these phenomena among 400 Brazilian high school students from two high schools (one private and one public). Analyses using t-tests showed that boys bullied and sexually harassed their peers more often than girls did. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses showed that boys and girls who scored high on general misconduct bullied their peers more often than those who scored low on general misconduct. Boys who believed they would be punished by their teachers for bullying and who scored low on benevolent sexism bullied more often than boys who believed they would not be punished by their teachers and who scored high on benevolent sexism. Moreover, bullying predicted peer sexual harassment for boys and girls. Recommendations to prevent bullying and sexual harassment are offered.

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Numerous studies have found gender differences in judgments about sexual harassment. However, most previous research has been conducted on U.S. samples only. The present research examines gender differences in judgments about sexual harassment from a cross-cultural perspective. College students from Australia, Brazil, Germany, and the United States were asked to judge the degree to which a specific interaction between a student and a professor described in varying hypothetical scenarios might be considered sexual harassing and to provide a brief definition of sexual harassment. In some conditions, U.S. women judged specific interactions as more harassing than U.S. men. However, this pattern did not emerge in student samples from other countries. No within-culture gender differences in students' definitions of sexual harassment were obtained, although the results revealed considerable cross-cultural differences. The relevance of these findings for understanding the "reasonable woman" standard in legal proceedings is discussed.

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The current study investigated incivility, sexual harassment, and racial-ethnic harassment simultaneously when the targets were faculty members and the perpetrators were students (i.e., academic contrapower harassment; ACH). The sample constituted 257 faculty members (90% were White and 53% were women) from a medium-sized state university in the Midwestern United States. They completed an anonymous survey, including an openended question about a critical ACH incident. The findings revealed that 72% of the total sample had experienced some type of mistreatment from students during the past 2 years. The author hypothesized gender differences in frequency rates for overall ACH, incivility, and sexual harassment; however, there were none. Hence, this hypothesis was not supported. The author also hypothesized that incivility would predict sexual and ethnic harassment. This hypothesis was generally supported. Furthermore, he hypothesized that demographic, work-related, and tolerance for faculty-student romance would predict ACH and its subscales. The findings generally supported this hypothesis, with somewhat different predictors by gender. He also hypothesized that harassed faculty, especially women, would experience worse job-related outcomes than never harassed faculty. Neither gender nor the interaction was significant, but the main effect for harassment was, with harassed faculty members experiencing worse job-related outcomes than nonharassed faculty members. Thus this hypothesis was partially supported. Practical implications are discussed.

ResumoO objetivo da presente pesquisa foi compreender a etiologia da violência de gênero usando a Teoria Bioecológica do Desenvolvimento Humano. A abordagem bioecológica concebe a violência de gênero como um fenômeno multidimensional embasado em uma interação de diversos fatores. Assim, neste artigo emprega-se o modelo bioecológico como uma ferramenta heurística para organizar esses fatores em quatro níveis: pessoal, que compreende as características biológicas e psicológicas da pessoa; processual, que envolve as interações interpessoais; contextual, que inclui os aspectos da rede de apoio social, da comunidade, da cultura da pessoa; e temporal, que corresponde à intrageracionalidade, intergeracionalidade e transgeracionalidade. Os autores sugerem que o modelo proposto é um instrumento útil para guiar futuras investigações científicas e intervenções. Palavras-chave: Violência de gênero; violência doméstica; violência contra a mulher; desenvolvimento humano. AbstractThe purpose of the present study was to examine the etiology of gender violence using the Bioecological Theory of Human Development. Such approach considers gender violence as a multidimensional phenomenon grounded in an interrelationship among several factors. Thus, this model is an heuristic tool that organizes several factors into four levels: personal (biological and psychological characteristics), processing (interpersonal interaction), contextual (social support network, community, and culture), and temporal (intra-, inter-, and trans-generational). The authors suggest that the proposed model is a useful tool for guiding future research studies and interventions.

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