1. Doing sexual harassment within gendered workplace structures
- Author
-
Schmidt, Theresa
- Subjects
- Sociology
- Abstract
Sexual harassment has destructive emotional and economic consequences for targets. It both reflects and reproduces a system of gender inequality in which men often use institutional power to coerce sex and sexual harassment to reinforce gender hierarchies. Workplaces and the climates within them are often complicit in such processes. Building on the sexual harassment literature, this thesis offers a process-based framework for understanding sexual harassment in employment. Drawing from both quantitative data and significant qualitative case materials pertaining to actual incidents of sexual harassment in the state of Ohio from 1988-2003, I examine the extent of sexual harassment across subgroups and describe the process of sexual harassment, including the actions of harassers and targets and the events that lead up to the filing of sexual harassment charges. These analyses also highlight the responses of workplaces to harassing behaviors and the descriptions of those responses and behaviors by witnesses. Results show how the process of sexual harassment differs for men and women, most notably in the overall likelihood of being sexually harassed and in the response of the workplace itself to harassment claims. Differences also exist with regard to collective and individual harassment. Finally, and in terms of the process of harassment, findings indicate that it only intensifies and takes on an aggressive, yet less explicitly sexual, form over time even when the harasser is confronted or internal workplace complaints are filed. By highlighting these events and their meanings, this thesis provides a foundation on which to construct solutions to a problem that negatively colors the daily work experiences of both women and men.
- Published
- 2005