Gender Prototypes Shape Perceptions of and Responses to Sexual Harassment

Abstract

We provide a model describing how the narrow prototype of women as having conventionally feminine attributes and identities serves as a barrier to perceiving sexual harassment and appropriately responding to sexual-harassment claims when the victims of harassment do not resemble this prototype. We review research documenting that this narrow prototype of women overlaps with mental representations of sexual-harassment targets. The prototype of women harms women who diverge from this prototype: Their experiences with sexual harassment are less likely to be perceived as such, and they experience more negative interpersonal, organizational, and legal consequences when they experience harassment. Perceptions of sexual harassment are the catalyst by which sexual harassment is recognized and remedied. Thus, narrow gender prototypes may impede the promise and potential of civil rights laws and antiharassment policy.

Bystanders’ thresholds for intervention in Black vs. White women’s sexual harassment

“…There are two approaches to prototype fit: within-group prototypicality, which refers to variation within a group on traits, interests, and behaviors that are prototypical of that group, and between-group prototypicality, which refers to variation between intersectional groups who possess two or more subordinate social identities. More specifically, a prototypical woman is stereotypically feminine rather than masculine in her traits, interests, and behaviors (within-group prototypicality), and White rather than Black, in her intersectional identities (between-group prototypicality) [24]. In a meta-analysis of four studies, a sexual harassment target's within-group prototypicality significantly impacted bystander intervention where bystanders had a greater threshold for intervention in a stereotypically masculine (nonprototypical) vs feminine (prototypical) woman's harassment [25].…”

“…For example, sexual harassment is often framed as discrimination based on gender alone, neglecting Black women's unique experiences with sexual harassment based on their race and gender [21,28]. Indeed, stereotypical attributes of the category "victim of gender discrimination", overlap more so with stereotypical attributes of White vs Black women, and Black women are perceived as less likely targets of sexual harassment than White women [24,29,30].…”

“…Additionally, Black women's greater perceived masculinity is linked with rating them as less attractive than White women [52]. These stereotyped perceptions of Black women as more masculine and less attractive than White women may drive neglect of their sexual harassment because prototypical victims are expected to be feminine and attractive, but not masculine [24,53]. Without variation in masculinity, femininity, and attractiveness, bystanders may have perceived the Black and White women as equally likely victims, eliminating the effect of race on their thresholds for intervention.…”

Waist-to-Hip Ratio Predicts Sexual Perception and Responses to Sexual Assault Disclosures

“…In this work, we investigate whether WHR is part of sexual victimization prototypes. Past work suggests that the prototypic individual who has been sexually victimized is a feminine and attractive White woman who fought back against the perpetrator and is emotional about her victimization (e.g., Kaiser et al, 2022; McKimmie et al, 2014; Schuller et al, 2010). Given that WHR is a sexually dimorphic trait that influences judgments of attractiveness, we hypothesize that WHR may affect whether women are perceived as aligned or misaligned with this prototype.…”

“…Importantly, there is evidence that cues of prototypicality can have important downstream effects in judgments of sexual victimization reports (see Kaiser et al, 2022 for review of gender prototypes and responses to sexual harassment). For example, Schuller and colleagues (2010) found that participants believed a woman’s sexual victimization report less if she was portrayed as behaving in non-gender stereotypic ways.…”