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A total of 100 African American undergraduate students were given the Sexual Experiences Questionnaire (SEQ)(Fitzgerald et al., 1988) and an open-ended question assessing experiences of sexual harassment. Results showed a significant frequency of sexual imposition (19%), particularly sexual touching. Participants also clearly delineated a new category of sexual harassment previously untapped by largely Caucasian studies: comments or sexual attention based solely on racial stereotypes or racially based physical features. In conclusion, the reported differences with regard to experiences and definitions of sexual harassment indicate that previous assumptions of homogeneity of experience (with Caucasian women being the standard) appear to be incorrect.

This study was designed to examine the impact of sexual harassment on Hong Kong Chinese women in the workplace and in college. Questionnaires assessing sexual harassment incidents experienced by self, perceived prevalence of sexual harassment in the organization, job or study satisfaction, and organizational commitment were completed by 77 female secretaries and 84 female college students in Hong Kong. Consistent with our hypotheses, personal experience of sexual harassment was found to be negatively associated with respondent satisfaction with their jobs or studies. However, these experiences were found to be unrelated to organizational commitment. In addition, most of the coping strategies adopted by the harassment victims tended to be nonassertive in nature. As one of the few systematic sexual harassment studies on Chinese working women and female students, we interpret our findings from an indigenous perspective and discuss both theoretical as well as applied implications for research in this area.

This article examines the effects of participant gender, researcher gender, and group gender composition (ratio of women to men) on individual judgments about an ambiguous, hypothetical, sexual harassment grievance. The participants (116 men and 113 women) served on five-person mock hearing boards. A main effect for participant gender was found (p < .01), with significantly more women (58.4%) making affirmative sexual harassment judgments than men (35.3%). A significant three-way interaction (p < .01) revealed that, when led by male researchers, men in groups where they were the numerical minority (3 women/2 men) made significantly lower ratings, indicating less belief that sexual harassment had occurred (M = 2.83), than those men in groups where they were in the majority (2 women/3 men, M = 4.87; 4 men/1 woman, M = 4.88). Ingroup and outgroup behavior observed by Rogers, Hennigan, Bowman, and Miller (1984) is proposed as a possible explanation for these results.

An extensive body of literature has documented the widespread and damaging nature of sexual harassment and assault on college campuses, yet little research has investigated the impact of such victimization on the academic climate. This study examined experiences of sexual harassment and assault among 1,037 female undergraduate and graduate students, with a particular focus on educational outcomes. Multivariate analyses of variance revealed significant negative effects of harassment and assault on perceptions of academic climate. We also investigated the extent and effects of double victimization (i.e., experiences of both harassment and assault), as well as the relationships among sexual harassment types, incidence rates, and frequencies. Issues of sexual orientation and race/ethnicity are explored throughout the article, with membership in different groups affecting victimization incidence rates as well as harassment labeling.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that sexual harassment may cause women to doubt their abilities, attributing their success to their professor's or supervisor's attraction to them rather than to their qualifications. Two experiments assessed whether a decrease in confidence could result from something as seemingly harmless as flirting. In Experiment 1, a male confederate posing as an advertising executive asked 56 female students to draw an advertisement, which he then praised. He behaved either flirtatiously or neutrally. In Experiment 2, female and male students interacted with a flirtatious or neutral advertisement executive of the other gender. In both experiments, women's self-creativity ratings decreased significantly more from pre- to posttest in the flirtatious condition than in the control condition. Men were affected less than women by the ad executive's flirtatiousness. The results suggest that flirtatiousness by an authority figure may have negative consequences for women's self-confidence.

Data were collected from 4,011 male and female university students, faculty, and staff regarding responses to unwanted sexual attention. Women and undergraduate students reported the highest incidence of unwanted sexual attention; most harassers were peers. Ignoring the behavior was the most common response, followed by avoiding the harasser and talking to others about the harassment. Harassment severity was the strongest predictor of responses, with more direct responses being made to more severe harassment. Bivariate correlational analyses suggested that unwanted sexual attention was rated as more distressing by women than by men, by faculty/staff than by students, by individuals with less tolerant attitudes toward harassment, and when the harasser was in a position of authority or when the harassment was of longer duration. In path analyses, only the relations between attitudes and responses were mediated by differences in perceived severity. The gender and status (i.e., student vs. faculty/staff) of the harassee, the duration of the harassment, and whether the harasser was in a position of authority had direct effects on responses not attributable to perceived severity. Implications for policy and future research are discussed.

Recently the focus of sexual harassment research on the harassment of women by men has been challenged. Treatments of sexual harassment of men, however, have generally ignored power differentials between the genders. Our analysis predicts that behaviors identified as harassing by men stem from negotiations of gender in the workplace that challenge male dominance, whereas behaviors experienced by women as sexually harassing reinforce female subordinance. Consistent with our predictions, results indicated the following: men are considerably less threatened than women are by behaviors that women have found harassing; men find sexual coercion the most threatening form of harassment; men as well as women sexually harass men; and men identify behaviors as harassing that have not been identified for women. Results also showed signs of backlash among men against organizational measures that address sexual harassment and discrimination against women. Implications for psychological and legal definitions of sexual harassment of men are discussed.

Predictors and outcomes of male harassment and hostility toward women (woman-unfriendly experiences) were analyzed for professional and blue-collar women (N = 805) in three geographic regions. Two central questions were addressed by using multiple regression: Do the same types of variables predict woman-unfriendly experiences across regions? Are there similar job-related and psychological outcomes of woman-unfriendly experiences across regions? Americans reported more such experiences and they affected more outcomes. Scandinavians had fewer woman-unfriendly experiences than Americans, fewer job-related or psychological problems, more autonomy, and better work environments. Former Soviet professionals reported more unfriendly experiences than workers but less than their peers in the other regions. Differences among the regions were attributed to general social and economic policies that have attempted to eradicate gender inequality (Scandinavia), occupational status levelling and traditional gender stereotypes (former USSR), or cultural values of competitiveness and individualism and heightened sensitivity to the issue of sexual harassment (United States).

The present study replicates the work of Konrad and Gutek (1986) within a college sample and extends their work by examining the impact of gender identity and adversarial sexual beliefs as predictors of attitudes toward sexual harassment. One hundred seven college students indicated specific aspects of their direct experiences with sexual harassment and then completed several attitudinal measures. Endorsement of adversarial sexual beliefs and experience with sexual harassment significantly predicted negative (less tolerant) attitudes toward sexual harassment for male respondents. Strong gender group identity and the endorsement of adversarial sexual beliefs significantly predicted negative (less tolerant) attitudes toward sexual harassment for female students. Implications for the focus of intervention strategies within an academic environment are discussed.

Two hundred eight faculty members and 314 graduate students located at a West Coast university were presented with 24 brief situations describing five types of sexual harassment in a university setting: gender harassment, seductive behavior, sexual bribery, sexual coercion, and sexual imposition or assault. The participants were randomly assigned to rate the situations under one of four instructional conditions that described combinations of the level of the student and authority of the faculty portrayed in the brief vignettes. Women were more likely than men to view less explicitly coercive situations as harassing; however, neither the target student's level (i.e., graduate or undergraduate) nor the degree of faculty member's power over her affected the participants' ratings of the situations. The results indicated that, with the exception of the more coercive and intrusive behaviors, considerable uncertainty may still exist about what constitutes sexual harassment within the university setting.

REPORTING SEXUAL HARASSMENT The purposes of this study were (a) to explore the utility of a model for predicting reporting of sexual harassment and b) to collect data on the incidence of sexual harassment using the Sexual Experiences Questionnaire (SEQ; Fitzgerald et al., 1988). The sample included 214 tenure-track faculty women and 276 women graduate students. The full model postulated that age, marital status, feminist ideology, and frequency of behavior would be directly related to perceived offensiveness of the behavior. In turn, perceived offensiveness, normative expectations for reporting, and perceived outcomes of reporting would directly influence reporting. As predicted, perceived offensiveness showed a direct influence on reporting, and feminist ideology and frequency of behavior were significant predictors of perceived offensiveness. incidence data showed that the most frequently experienced situations involved gender harassment and seductive behaviors. Results suggest that educating women about the offensiveness of sexual harassment might increase frequency of reporting. Also, further exploration of the model seems warranted.

This study explores the direct and moderating influences of sexual-harassment (SH) pervasiveness, coping strategies, and gender on work-related consequences of sexual harassment among a national, representative sample of federal employees who had experienced some form of unwanted sexual attention (N = 553 men and 1,782 women). Regression analysis revealed that, contrary to conventional wisdom, individuals who experienced frequent SH and who used confrontive coping strategies tended to experience worse job outcomes than did others. Furthermore, use of confrontive coping tended to amplify associations between harassment pervasiveness and consequences, especially for men. A 'wimpy male' hypothesis to explain this last finding is discussed. Finally, the study suggests that efforts to help both women and men to effectively respond to sexual harassment are needed.