Youth at work: Adolescent employment and sexual harassment

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

“…Nevertheless, age appears to operate together with gender to shape experiences across diverse school and work settings (AAUW 2001;Connell 2000;McLaughlin, Uggen, and Blackstone 2008;Uggen and Blackstone 2004). What we know about young workers and sexual harassment comes primarily from three recent studies using quantitative survey data (Fineran 2002;Sears et al 2011;Uggen and Blackstone 2004; see also Fineran and Gruber 2009). These investigations concluded that many adolescents experienced some form of harassing behavior at work.…”

Sexual Harassment, Psychological Distress, and Problematic Drinking Behavior Among College Students: An Examination of Reciprocal Causal Relations

“…However, like high school students, employed college students typically have part-time jobs that are considered low-status, including retail, restaurants, grocery stores, and health care, which are types of jobs that have been found to pose increased risk for experiencing SH compared to higher status jobs (Fineran & Gruber, 2009). Early research on employed high school students indicated that approximately 30% of high school girls reported experiencing SH at their jobs (Strauss & Espeland, 1992).…”

“…Later research using more detailed measures of SH experiences reported that in a sample of 393 employed high schoolers, 63% of employed adolescent girls reported one or more SH experiences, compared to 37% of employed boys, and that girls were significantly more threatened or upset by their experiences (Fineran, 2002). In another sample of students from an all-girls high school, 52% of the employed students indicated that they had experienced one or more forms of SH at work in the past year, and that a majority of the perpetrators (56%) were coworkers rather than supervisors (Fineran & Gruber, 2009). In addition, young, unmarried women and those with low status or low seniority were more likely to experience harassment (Fitzgerald & Ormerod, 1991; Gruber, 1998; USMSPB, 1995); since these are common characteristics of college students who work, it is important to protect this population.…”

“…Among adolescents, some of the consequences of SH at school included staying home from school, quitting activities, trouble studying, and trouble sleeping (Hill & Kearl, 2011) whereas adolescents who were sexually harassed at work also had significantly higher levels of school avoidance and academic withdrawal compared to other employed teenagers (Fineran & Gruber, 2009). Thus, it is likely that SH among college students would have similar negative consequences.…”

“…Some have suggested that the most common type(s) of harassment may have less psychological or work-related impact (Fineran & Gruber, 2009; Pina et al, 2009) whereas more severe SH may have more serious consequences. However, in a study of workplace harassment among university employees, Richman and colleagues (1999) found that, for women, only gender harassment had effects on problematic drinking and prescription drug use whereas unwanted attention and coercion were unrelated to outcomes.…”