Sexual Harassment in Organizational Context

Abstract

This study sheds light on the organizational foundations of sexual harassment. The authors evaluated a theoretical model underscoring the influence of worker power, workplace culture, and gender composition using unique data derived from the population of English-language, book-length workplace ethnographies. The authors used ordered and multinomial logistic regression to test whether organizational explanations vary in their capacity to predict three distinct forms of sexual harassment: patronizing, taunting, and predatory conduct. The findings reveal that organizational attributes influence not only the presence of workplace sexual harassment but also the specific form in which it manifests. The result is a more conceptually refined model of sexual harassment in organizational context. The authors conclude with a discussion of the contribution of this study to sociological explanations of sexual harassment, including linkages to more recent qualitative work underscoring its complexity, and with implications for policy in light of current workplace trends.

“Girl Power”: Gendered Academic and Workplace Experiences of College Women in Engineering

“…Even with the high instance rate of sexual harassment reports, research shows that some women do not report sexual harassment when it happens (Hunter 2006). Instead, women tend to use coping mechanisms such as ignoring sexual harassment or, worse, seeing it as a part of the job and not reporting it in order to maintain good working relationships with their colleagues (Chamberlain et al 2008;McLaughlin et al 2012;Stainback et al 2011).…”

“I Didn't Recognize It as a Bad Experience until I was Much Older”: Age, Experience, and Workers’ Perceptions of Sexual Harassment

“…For example, men are less likely than women to perceive potentially harassing behaviors as sexual harassment (e.g., Padavic and Orcutt 1997;Sears et al 2011). Workplace context also plays an important role in shaping experiences and perceptions of those experiences , particularly in the case of sexual harassment (Chamberlain, Crowley, Tope, and Hodson 2008;DeCoster, Estes, and Muelller 1999). In some contexts, workers find sexual behaviors to be acceptable and even pleasurable (Lerum 2004;Williams, Giuffre, and Dellinger 1999).…”

Moral disengagement as a self-regulatory process in sexual harassment perpetration at work: A preliminary conceptualization

“…In other words, certain perpetrators may be exposed to other individuals engaging in similar social-sexual activities within their environment. Through providing anonymity in a group-based context (Chamberlain, Crowley, Tope, & Hodson, 2008), their inhibitions not to sexually harass would be gradually reduced through weakened moral control. Diffusion of responsibility may, however, operate…”