Gender Differences in the Interpretation of Social-Sexual Behavior

Abstract

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.

The Changing Nature of Employment-Related Sexual Harassment: Evidence from the U.S. Federal Government, 1978-1994

“…Women remained much more likely than men to see sexual behavior on the job as sexually harassing. Such gender differences have important implications for U.S. employers as the legal system increasingly relies on what a reasonable woman (rather than a reasonable person) would find unwelcome when making determinations in sexual harassment cases (Prior et al 1997;Fitzgerald and Shullman 1993).…”

“…Two issues may be particularly relevant here. First, awareness of sexual harassment as an important social issue has grown as the result of several well-publicized court cases (Prior et al 1997). Second, many firms have responded by implementing formal policies, grievance procedures, and training programs directed toward reducing sexual harassment.…”

“…Since that time, public awareness of the issue has grown in large part due to certain well-publicized legal cases (Prior et al 1997). To date, the study of employmentrelated sexual harassment has been mainly the purview of psychologists and sociologists.…”

“…We focus on two dimensions of sexual harassment: the incidence of various unwanted sexual behaviors, and individuals' views about what behaviors in fact constitute sexual harassment. Understanding workers' perceptions of sexual behavior at work is especially important given a legal environment that relies on a reasonable victim standard-increasingly a reasonable woman standard-to make determinations in sexual harassment cases (Prior et al 1997;Fitzgerald and Shullman 1993) 2 and evidence that the negative consequences of unwanted sexual behavior at work are higher for women who believe themselves to be sexually harassed than for those who report unwanted sexual behavior but do not characterize it as harassment (Antecol and Cobb-Clark 2002).…”

An exploratory study of sexual harassment in Pakistani organizations

“…A study with a sample of students from a variety of cultures in the US found that Korean, Chinese, Russian, Spanish, Arabic, and Turkish perceived less SH than the US resident student sample (Tyler & Boxer 1996). Another study (Pryor et al 1997) that compared Brazilian, Australian, German, and US student samples revealed that the US, German, and Australian samples were very similar in their definitions of SH, whereas the Brazilians differed.…”