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This study demonstrated relations between men's perceptions of organizational justice and increased sexual harassment proclivities. Respondents reported higher likelihood to sexually harass under conditions of low interactional justice, suggesting that sexual harassment likelihood may increase as a response to perceived injustice. Moreover, the relation between justice and sexual harassment proclivities was especially marked for men low in agreeableness and high in hostile sexism. This finding is consistent with an interactionist perspective, suggesting that individual differences in hostility in general and toward women in particular affect how a person reacts to perceived unfairness. Keywords: sexual harassment, organizational justice, personality, sexism, workplace deviance

Sexual harassment has consistently negative consequences for working women, including changes in job attitudes (e.g., lower satisfaction) and behaviors (e.g., increased work withdrawal). Cross-sectional evidence suggests that harassment influences turnover intentions. However, few studies have used actual turnover; rather, they rely on proxies. With a sample of 11,521 military servicewomen with turnover data spanning approximately 4 years, the authors used the appropriate method for longitudinal turnover data--Cox's regression--to investigate the impact of harassment on actual turnover. Experiences of harassment led to increased turnover, even after controlling for job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and marital status. Among officers, harassment also affected turnover over and above rank. Given turnover's relevance to organizational bottom lines, these findings have important implications not only for individual women but also for organizations. Keywords: sexual harassment, turnover, attrition, job attitudes

This study explicates the complexity of sexual harassment coping behavior among 4 diverse samples of working women: (a) working-class Hispanic Americans, (b) working-class Anglo Americans. (c) professional Turks, and (d) professional Anglo Americans. K-means cluster analysis revealed 3 common harassment coping profiles: (a) detached, (b) avoidant negotiating, and (c) support seeking. The authors then tested an integrated framework of coping profile determinants, involving social power, stressor severity, social support, and culture. Analysis of variance, chi-square, and discriminant function results identified significant determinants at each of the 4 levels of this ecological model. These findings underscore the importance of focusing on whole patterns of experience--and considering influences at the level of the individual employee and multiple levels of the surrounding context--when studying how women cope with workplace sexual harassment.

This paper examines the relationship between experiences with unwanted sexual behavior at school and adolescents' health. Adolescent boys and girls (N = 2,808) participated in a 1998/1999 survey of secondary school students in two regions of The Netherlands. The psychological issues investigated included psychosomatic problems and self-esteem. It was hypothesized that adolescents who have experienced unwanted sexual behavior at school would report more psychosomatic problems and lower self-esteem. Furthermore, it was hypothesized that girls would report lower self-esteem and more psychosomatic problems than would boys. Regression analysis indicated that experiences with unwanted sexual behavior were related to adolescents' psychological health, independently of other variables., Previous research suggests that sexual harassment at school can have significant negative effects on adolescents' well-being (Stein, Marshall, & Tropp, 1993; Larkin, 1994). In a study involving grades 7 to [...]

Many have argued that sexualized banter is indicative of 'masculine' culture, serving as a mechanism by which men construct masculine identity and dominance and create a climate of sexual harassment. While this claim has much empirical support, sexualized banter among women remains undertheorized. Furthermore, many contemporary scholars agree that the meaning of a sexual exchange may vary widely between cultural and material contexts, but this insight has only recently been applied to studies of workplace sexuality. This article considers the issues of gender, sexuality, power, and context in light of ethnographic data collected in two service work (waitressing) establishments. Within these organizations, many workplace sexualized interactions emerge as facilitating camaraderie and empowerment between workers. The article concludes that the sexual particularities of a workplace should be interpreted as one of its many cultural features, reflective more of its organizational conditions than of a static sexual symbolism. Keywords: service work; sexuality; camaraderie; sexual harassment

This study used published arbitration decisions as a data source to explore identifiable behavioral patterns of sexual harassment perpetrators. The results of the multi-method analysis generally supported the need to distinguish between different types of perpetrators and provided the basis for a new typology of sexual harassers. Two dominant themes emerged around the number of targets and the nature of the harassing behavior. Some harassers appear to target a small number of victims persistently, while others appeared to harass any and all targets whenever possible. Whereas some harassers engaged in very sexualized behaviors, others seem to prefer aggressive actions. A discussion of research and managerial implications focuses on the importance of distinguishing between different types of sexual harassers. KEYWORDS multi-method analysis * perpetrator typology * sexual harassment

That women tend to see harassment where men see harmless fun or normal gendered interaction is one of the more robust findings in sexual harassment research. Using in-depth interviews with employed men and women, this article argues that these differences may be partially explained by the performative requirements of masculinity. The ambiguous practice of 'girl watching' is centered, and the production of its meaning analyzed. The data suggest that men's refusal to see their behavior as harassing may be partially explained through the objectification and attenuated empathy that the production of masculine identities may require. Thus, some forms of harassment and their interpretations may more accurately be seen as acts of ignoring than states of ignorance (of the effects of the behavior or the law). Implications for anti-sexual harassment policies and training are explored.

This paper reports the qualitative data from a study of sexual harassment of female family physicians by patients. In addition to the everyday harassment that any woman might encounter in a work setting, the physicians in this study also reported types of harassment which are unique to the practice of medicine. These include opportunistic harassment such as exposure of the genitals, inappropriately touching the physician when the examination requires close contact, excessive discussion of sexual matters for apparent erotic gratification, and acting out behaviours from non-competent patients. Other reported behaviours were not, strictly speaking, sexual harassment but were troublesome nonetheless, including spontaneous erections during physical examinations, physically intimidating behaviour, and ambiguous behaviours which were sexual in nature, but difficult to interpret. The findings are discussed in the context of theory pertaining to contrapower harassment. It is concluded that for some patients the gender of the physician takes precedence over her occupational status and, this combined with the unique characteristics of the doctor/patient relationship, can make the practice of family medicine more conducive to sexual harassment than other professions. Key words - female physicians, sexual harassment, contrapower harassment

Research on sexual harassment in the workplace has followed several trajectories: the extent of sexual harassment, labeling sexual harassment, responses to sexual harassment, and contributing factors to sexual harassment. Much of this research has been necessarily applied, leaving theoretical frameworks concerning sexual harassment underdeveloped. This research uses the case of the sexual harassment of temporary workers to develop grounded theory to provide a more structural understanding of sexual harassment. While temporary employment has increased dramatically in the past 15 years, researchers have only recently begun to document the effects of this trend. This research is based on 68 in-depth interviews from two broader studies on clerical temporary work in Chicago and Los Angeles. The researchers find that the organization of temporary work fosters sexual harassment through the magnification of asymmetrical power relationships., SEXUAL HARASSMENT IN THE WORKPLACE A large portion of the social research devoted to sexual harassment has focused on documenting the extent of sexual harassment: what percentage of women are [...]

This article analyzes a case of 'sexual harassment' in an American subsidiary of a Japanese multinational firm, and captures a 'movement of meanings' concerning gender, race, and class within the bi-national politics between Japan and America. It argues that organization theories must incorporate the political process of cultural representation, with a sensitivity to multiple self-identities and to intra- and inter-subjective dialogues about organizational control. This study dismisses the ethnocentric, frozen gaze of an outside observer, and instead employs the 'emic' analysis of the native's ethnologic, taxonomic, and affective discourses and categorizations. It denounces the elitist, management-centric, or author-centric monologue on organizational reality that often has a powerful silencing effect on the 'cultural others.' It calls attention to the complexity of cultural juxtapositions within the postcolonial, postmodern, and global organizational world, and demands a new, more flexible, paradigm for social research. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)

A review of 1,610 studies on sexual coercion published between 1982 and 1992 show a lack of scientific rigor, gender biases and few insights into the causes of such coercion. The studies tend to focus on college students, and almost never consider biological influences.

The purpose of the current studies was to determine if participants would ignore a woman's dislike of sexual material in a laboratory setting. Two experiments (N = 130) were conducted in which participants were asked to show, under the guise of a distraction task, neutral, erotic, or nonerotic distracting slides to a female confederate who was depicted as strongly disliking erotic material. More men than women showed erotic slides to the female confederate who was described as disliking erotic material. Fewer men and more women showed autopsy slides when the female confederate was depicted as disliking erotic material than when she was depicted as feeling neutral about erotic material. These results provide preliminary support for this laboratory paradigm as an analogue of sexually impositional behavior.

Men have a higher tendency than women to tolerate sexual harassment, harbor conventional ideas of rape and admit that they may be tempted to rape under certain circumstances. Such an attitude may show misogyny and, as shown in a study, may be reflective of actual experience. Among women, the attitude toward sexual harassment is not related to their actual experience. In other words, females who have strong anti-sexual harassment beliefs are not necessarily spared from the threat of unpleasant encounters with sex and hostile males.

Given recent court decisions, there is a need to investigate less common forms of sexual harassment, including women harassing men and same-gender harassment. The present study was a 2 (harasser gender) x 2 (target gender) x 2 (participant gender) factorial design in which 408 mock jurors made decisions in a hostile work environment case. Women harassing men were more likely to be found guilty than were men harassing women, and harassers in same-gender cases were more likely to be found guilty and were perceived more negatively than harassers in cross-gender cases. Participant gender differences were found in cross-gender, but not same-gender, conditions. Results suggest that the gender composition of the harasser and target may be an extralegal factor influencing managerial and juror decision making.

Sexual harassment research has been primarily limited to examination of the phenomena in U.S. organizations; attempts to explore the generalizability of constructs and theoretical models across cultures are rare. This study examined (a) the measurement equivalence of survey scales in U.S. and Turkish samples using mean and covariance structure analysis and (b) the generalizability of the L. F. Fitzgerald, F. Drasgow, C. L. Hulin, M. J. Gelfand, and V. J. Magley (1997) model of sexual harassment to the Turkish context using structural equations modeling. Analyses used questionnaire data from 336 Turkish women and 455 women from the United States. The results indicate that, in general, the survey scales demonstrate measurement equivalence and the pattern of relationships in the Fitzgerald et al. model generalizes to the Turkish culture. These results support the usefulness of the model for explaining sexual harassment experiences in a variety of organizational and cultural contexts.

Sexual harassment and its corresponding outcomes develop and change over time, yet research on this issue has been limited primarily to cross-sectional data. In this article, longitudinal models of harassment were proposed and empirically evaluated via structural equations modeling using data from 217 women who responded to a computerized questionnaire in 1994 and again in 1996. Results indicate that sexual harassment influences both proximal and distal work-related variables (e.g., job satisfaction, work withdrawal, job withdrawal) and psychological outcomes (e.g., life satisfaction, psychological well-being, distress). In addition, a replication of the L. F. Fitzgerald, F. Drasgow, C. L. Hulin, M. J. Gelfand, and V. J. Magley (1997) model of harassment was supported. This research was an initial attempt to develop integrated models of the dynamic effects of sexual harassment over time.

Research on sexual harassment is still in its infancy. Over the past 20 years, research has moved from prevalence studies to more sophisticated empirical and theoretical analyses of the causes and consequences of sexual harassment. This review provides an overview of the prevalence and measurement of harassment along with some suggestions for developing standard measures of sexual harassment. Researchers are encouraged to include organizational forms of harassment in their measures, along with commonly understood individual forms. The most prominent and promising explanations of harassment are discussed including societal, organizational, and individual level approaches. Of particular promise are approaches incorporating the gendered nature of organizational structures and processes. Research on the responses to and consequences of sexual harassment are also presented. The review ends with a discussion of overlooked areas and directions for future research, including the need for more advanced survey data col lection techniques and qualitative research., Even social scientists didn't study it, and they study everything that moves. Catherine MacKinnon (1987:106; commenting on the lack of information about sexual harassment) Twenty years ago, the study of [...]

Flirting, bantering, and other sexual interactions are commonplace in work organizations. Not all of these interactions constitute harassment or assault; consensual sexual relationships, defined as those reflecting positive and autonomous expressions of workers' sexual desire, are also prevalent in the workplace and are the focus of this paper. We begin by reviewing research on the distinction between sexual harassment and sexual consent. Next we examine popular and business literatures on office romance. Finally we discuss sociological research on consensual sexual relationships, including research on mate selection, organizational policy, and workplace culture. We argue that sexual behaviors must be understood in context, as an interplay between organizational control and individual agency., INTRODUCTION Sexual bantering, flitting, and dating are commonplace at work, but with few exceptions, sociologists have not paid much attention to these behaviors. The Weberian assumption that organizations progressively shed [...]

A telephone survey of 405 male and 827 female working adults in Los Angeles County, California was conducted in 1980 as a method of studying sex roles in the workplace. Results support the thesis that sex-role stereotyping exists in the workplace as it does in society in general. This spillover effect suggests that women who work in jobs traditionally dominated by men are commonly seen by men as socially deviant sex objects, and may face discrimination and harassment. Women pursue these non-traditional jobs because of financial incentives and improved status. Those women who work in jobs traditional for women and who come in contact with many men are also likely to be viewed as sex objects. Few men work in the lower paying, lower status female-dominated fields, and those who do so tend to return to male-dominated work later. In areas where sex ratios are more even, sexual harassment is minimal, and sex role spillover is less of a problem.