The Psychology of Gender 4th Edition

Paid Worker Role and Health 479

Unfortunately, the failure to file a complaint

makes victims less credible and less success-

ful in court (Gutek, 2008). Why don’t victims

report harassment? There are a number of

reasons. Victims may be embarrassed, may

fear for their jobs—especially in a situation

in which the person’s income is essential to

the family—or may fear that they won’t be

believed and will be further victimized. Lab-

oratory studies on sexual harassment have

compounded this problem by overestimat-

ing the extent to which victims would con-

front a perpetrator. One group of researchers

compared what people said they would do in

response to harassment via a vignette study

to how people actually responded to harass-

ment in an experimental study (Woodzicka &

LaFrance, 2001). In the vignette study,

women were asked how they would respond

to a job interviewer who asked harassing

questions, such as if they had a boyfriend and

if they thought women should wear a bra to

work. In the laboratory study, women were

asked these questions during a mock inter-

view. Although 68% of the women in the

vignette study said that they would refuse to

answer one or more questions and 25% said

they would tell the interviewer off or leave,

none of the women in the laboratory study

refused to answer the questions, none of the

women confronted the interviewer, and none

of the women left.

Men may be even less likely than

women to report sexual harassment. Men

are expected to handle these kinds of situa-

tions on their own; admitting to harassment

means admitting to victim status, which is

inconsistent with the male gender role. Be-

ing the subject of harassment by another

man would be especially threatening to men.

Thus it is not surprising that men are even

less likely to report sexual harassment by

other men (Dziech & Hawkins, 1998).

likely to be harassed, but females are more

bothered than males by the harassment. Les-

bian, gay, and bisexual students were more

likely than heterosexuals to experience ha-

rassment. Interestingly, when students were

asked why they engaged in sexual harass-

ment, the most common response was be-

cause they thought it was funny. Only 17%

did so because they wanted to date the per-

son. Conduct your own study of sexual ha-

rassment on campus with Do Gender 12.5.

Sexual harassment has been studied

among high school students. In one such

study, nearly all students (96% female, 88%

male) said that they had experienced at least

one sexually harassing behavior from peers

when completing an adapted version of the

Sexual Experiences Questionnaire, shown in

Table 12.4 (Ormerod, Collinsworth, & Perry,

2008). Just over half of females (53%) and

38% of males said that they had been sexually

harassed by an adult. Females reported more

frequent and more severe harassment.

One reason that the problem of sexual

harassment is underestimated is that vic-

tims do not always report sexual harassment.

DO GENDER 12.5

Prevalence of Sexual

Harassment on Campus

First, you must decide on a definition of

sexual harassment. Then, you must decide

on the behaviors that constitute sexual ha-

rassment. Administer a survey to 10 men

and 10 women on campus and ask them

how frequently they have experienced

each behavior. After the frequency ratings

are made, you might ask the respondents

to evaluate whether they perceive each of

these behaviors as sexual harassment.

M12_HELG0185_04_SE_C12.indd 479 6/21/11 9:16 AM