In Ellison v. Brady, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals said that the perspective of a reasonable woman, rather than just a reasonable person, should be used in deciding whether or not the plaintiff has experienced sexual harassment. One of the assumptions underlying the Ellison opinion, traceable to findings from research, is that men and women perceive and define sexual harassment differently. In this article, we review the research to see if the conclusion is warranted. In general, the finding that women define sexual harassment more broadly and inclusively than men is reliable, but the difference is small, often smaller than intrasex differences, and is affected by a variety of factors, including characteristics of the study itself. After reviewing the evidence, we evaluate the use of a reasonable woman standard, concluding that this standard is not helpful.

In two decades of research on sexual harassment, one finding that appears repeatedly is that gender of the rater influences judgments about sexual harassment such that women are more likely than men to label behavior as sexual harassment. Yet, sexual harassment judgments are complex, particularly in situations that culminate in legal proceedings. And, this one variable, gender, may have been overemphasized to the exclusion of other situational and rater characteristic variables. Moreover, why do gender differences appear? As work by Wiener and his colleagues have done

Perceptions of stalking behavior vary tremendously, yet the factors that influence these perceptions are largely unknown. This article reports on two studies that analyzed individual and situational variables that may influence perceptions of stalking using hypothetical vignettes that varied the gender of the perpetrator and target. The first study varied the nature of the relationship between perpetrator and target while holding constant the stalking behavior. The second study manipulated the degree of seriousness of the stalking behavior according to New York’s stalking law. Gender of the perpetrator strongly influenced several of the safety variables, with male stalkers producing concern for the target’s safety. Determinations of stalking were more likely when the characters had no prior relationship and when the behavior was more serious. Findings suggest that situational variables may influence perceptions of whether behavior constitutes stalking and the assessments of risk or violence potential.