From Signs of the Times:
Women who hold supervisory positions are more likely to be sexually harassed at work, according to the first-ever, large-scale longitudinal study to examine workplace power, gender and sexual harassment.
The study, “A Longitudinal Analysis of Gender, Power and Sexual Harassment in Young Adulthood,” reveals that nearly fifty percent of women supervisors, but only one-third of women who do not supervise others, reported sexual harassment in the workplace. In more conservative models with stringent statistical controls, women supervisors were 137 percent more likely to be sexually harassed than women who did not hold managerial roles.
While supervisory status increased the likelihood of harassment among women, it did not significantly impact the likelihood for men.
“This study provides the strongest evidence to date supporting the theory that sexual harassment is less about sexual desire than about control and domination,”said Heather McLaughlin, a sociologist at the University of Minnesota and the study’s primary investigator. “Male co-workers, clients and supervisors seem to be using harassment as an equalizer against women in power.”
McLaughlin and her co-authors examined data from the 2003 and 2004 waves of the Youth Development Study (YDS), a prospective study of adolescents that began in 1988 with a sample of 1,010 ninth graders in the St. Paul, Minnesota, public school district and has continued near annually since. Respondents were approximately 29 and 30 years old during the 2003 and 2004 waves. The analysis was supplemented with in-depth interviews with a subset of the YDS survey respondents.
The sociologists found that, in addition to workplace power, gender expression was a strong predictor of workplace harassment. Men who reported higher levels of femininity were more likely to have experienced harassment than less feminine men. More feminine men were at a greater risk of experiencing more severe or multiple forms of sexual harassment (as were female supervisors).
In a separate analysis examining perceived and self-reported sexual orientation, study respondents who reported being labeled as non-heterosexual by others or who self-identified as non-heterosexual (gay, lesbian, bisexual, unsure, other) were nearly twice as likely to experience harassment.
Researchers also found that those who reported harassment in the first year (2003) were 6.5 times more likely to experience harassment in the following year. The most common scenario reported by survey respondents involved male harassers and female targets, while males harassing other males was the second most frequent situation.
Via Hunter of Justice.
Men who reported higher levels of femininity were more likely to have experienced harassment than less feminine men.
How is femininity of men – in fact, femininity overall – quantified?
Curious at the lack of trans people in this despite all the trouble that trans people face at work. Is it a matter of over looking the community? Not enough of population sample? Are we trans people secretly loved by everyone and not a minority?
I wonder how great is the contribution of the conventional and oft-repeated portrayals of women in power (bosses, teachers, cops, etc) in pornography and other hetero-men-targeted media as women madly desirous of sex in spite of initial appearances (and even protestations) to the contrary? Do hetero men tend to ‘fall back’ upon an ingrained social-sexual script which only allows for the existence of powerful women if they are subsequently sexually dominated?
Nicole,
Probably not enough of a population sample. there are numerically a lot of trans people in the country, but as far as I understand they are quite rare on average. I think it’s something like 2-3% and that isn’t that many in the context of a less-than-huge-study.
Vidya,
Keep in mind that the term “sexual harassment” is sometimes a misnomer for what is actually “sex harassment.” “Sexual harassment” is harassment that is sexual: pestering someone for a date or sex, making crude jokes, etc. “Sex harassment” may have nothing to do with sex-the-act: a hostile environment in which women are constantly described as stupid and incompetent, women’s complaints are all dismissed as the product of PMS, etc. is not sexual but rather harassment based on sex.
I think it’s probably sex harassment that’s being employed most against “feminine” men and non-heteros. Het-identified men who harass a “feminine” man for being insufficiently manly are not precisely trying to “sexually” dominate him; they are maintaining a hierarchy based on adherence to gender roles, in which a man who (for a random example) prefers to go to a gym’s spinning class with female co-workers rather than lift weights with male co-workers will be deemed insufficiently adherent, and therefore harassed in order to (1) reinforce the hierarchy in which masculinity = good and femininity = bad; and/or (2) use “tough love” to get the non-adherent man to be “better,” i.e. more masculine.
I think the harassment of female supervisors probably is a mix of sex and sexual harassment, and mostly isn’t motivated by desire at all nor by any idea that the supervisor is just waiting to rip off her blouse and glasses and get it on in the supply closet. It’s done to deny that the woman has a higher position in the workplace hierarchy, and it works by reminding her of her low position in the sex/gender hierarchy. “Sure, you might decide whether or not I get a raise, but you’re still just a woman.”
Nicole – I agree that the lack of attention to harassment of trans people in the article is almost certainly due to the sample not having a sufficient number of trans people for the specific kinds of harassment they face to be meaningful in a statistical analysis.
On the other hand, it isn’t clear to me what’s meant by “gender expression” as used in the quoted piece, or the kinds of questions that would identify more “feminine” men, and it isn’t clear if the survey actually asked participants if they are trans people. Why can’t science reporters ever tell me what I want to know?
Any time I read studies like this, I go back to my basic belief that we each create the universe that we live in, based on our own beliefs and which of the 10,000 things happening every second we choose to focus on.
For one thing, there is no such thing as “sexual harassment”.
There are struggles for power between people, and there are different tools used in that struggle. Physical and financial intimidation, belittling people over whatever differences exist between them and the person in power, demands for displays of subservient behavior. These and others are the tools of how the species determines who is the primate troop leader.
To call any one of these dominance behaviors “sexual harassment” is to completely miss the point of what is going on. There is nothing sexual about it, just as rape is not a sexual act, it’s a form of forcing power over another person.
Also I feel that by thinking of it as “sexual harassment” it furthers the anti-sex bias our culture has. This anti-sex puritanical cultural bias is a more important topic to consider in how the lives of non-heterosexual people have been made unfair in modern life. But that’s too deep a topic for something I type while finishing a soda.
It would have been more interesting to look at the generalized behavior of the persons observed using sexual tools to assert their dominance to find out what OTHER ways they are trying to dominate others. I’d anticipate that the persons involved are highly driven to seek power, and are simply using whatever tool has served them best in the past. By punishing this specific behavior, are we simply encouraging these hyperagressive power seekers into reaching into the social tool kit to find ANOTHER way to become primate troop leader?
Brian,
I think certain forms of sexual harassment — particularly of those who are already one’s inferiors in the workplace hierarchy — are genuinely sexual and not just power plays. When the guys on Mad Men are staring at a secretary’s legs, it’s sexual harassment: they are sexually interested in her, they are responding to sexual stimuli.
And if you put it all down to “anti-sex bias,” then that threatens to erase such behavior as harassment. If the secretary says, “It makes me uncomfortable to know you’re staring at my legs,” then she’s treated as the frigid, anti-sex prude. They’re just appreciating her body, sheesh, can’t she handle a little sensuality?
As for the other behaviors people can use for dominance, frankly, I don’t think most of them are as problematic as overtly excluding and Othering people based on race, sex, religion, etc. My workplace is somewhat clique-ish, but I don’t mind the guys tending to club together a bit socially even if that’s somewhat excluding of me. It would be far more problematic if the excluding came in the form of denying the female workers’ abilities, referring to them in derogatory terms, etc. I think there is a reason some behaviors violate the law, and some are just asshole-ish but not actionable.
Sorry PG, I wasn’t clear because I was in a rush to go get a second Pepsi.
The anti-sex bias comes into play from the observers in these social games, not the players.
The male workers in your example making that justification would STILL be a form of power play, in my way of thinking. This time it’s a dismissal of the other person’s opinions as worthless.
What I was referring to is the observer saying “oh, this is sexual harassment” as if SEX is the problem, not the power struggle in any form.
Brian,
OK, if the secretary takes her concerns to Joan, the female office manager, and Joan says, “Dear, this is a friendly office. You don’t want to be known as the frigid, prudish girl who spoils everyone’s fun, do you?” then it’s the observer who, being very pro-hetero sex (including with co-workers), is refusing to see the situation as one of harassment.
And I do think some power plays are worse than others. It is worse for one of my male co-workers to make a power play by reducing me to a sex object, than it is for him to make a power play by pointing out that he has family connections and I don’t. Again, I think there’s a good reason why sex(ual) harassment is civilly illegal, but invoking nepotism isn’t.
Tariqata- the Bem Sex Role Inventory is a popular way of measuring masculinity/femininity. Basically, ask people to rate whether a long list of adjectives apply to them, and then take a separate survey where you ask random people off the street whether they think those adjectives are masculine, feminine, or neither. I dunno if they used that here, of course.
It’s kind of hard to tell from most of these studies what they meant by “gender expression” and so on. A lot of researchers have kind of a vague grasp on everything to do with the LGBT community, and would rather just omit concepts like transgender from their studies than have to explain them to grant committees.
Brian,
I think I hear what you’re trying to say, but I think you’ve got this one wrong. Yes, power is part of it. But I think you’re looking at this in a way that erases the gendered aspect of it. With the study that Amp is citing, the obvious take-away is that sexual harassment is used as a way of enforcing conformity to traditional gender roles – women in subordinate positions, men being all manly and everyone being straight. The people doing this may or may not be exercising any personal power play or angling for any personal benefit. And they may or may not be the type of person who would otherwise try to demean another person, for example, a sufficiently manly straight man in a position of authority.
In the two cases of really blatant sexual harassment I’ve experienced personally (setting aside times I’ve been, say, ignored or discounted), I wasn’t in a position of authority and the person doing the harassing already had authority over me. There was no need to pull a power play, and they didn’t treat male coworkers or employees that way
Do you have that same problem when you see the words, “sexual assault”?
RadFem @ 13:
Yes, I have problems with “Sexual Assault” being used for something other than “an assault by a person whose object is sexual contact or gratification.”
If a woman is mugged because she’s seen as an easier target, I’d say that’s a gender-based assault. If a woman is mugged to be groped or flashed, that’s “sexual assault.”
But language sucks, people aren’t going to change, I’ve learned to accept things I can’t change ;)
chingona @ 12:
It isn’t always about gaining power. It can also be about maintaining power, as well as making sure that other men who don’t have “supervisory power” still have power over you.
I was a software architect (person who designs software systems) at a Big Computer Company. One year they decided to bring all of the architects into the same department, rather than leaving us scattered around. Guess which architects they didn’t pull in to the department? Then because I was still in a development department, when my manager decided we were under-staffed, he did exactly what the in-gathering of the architects was intended to prevent — he dumped large workloads onto me.
But it is. The problem arises from the specific instance:
Power struggle, generically, is not something that we necessarily try to stop.
Power struggle involving harassment, generically, is something which we view as improper but not necessarily illegal.
Power struggle involving harassment that is based on sex or another immutable characteristic, generically, is something which we view as illegal but not necessarily morally reprehensible.
Power struggle involving harassment that is based on sex and that also involves overt sexual assault–from groping to rape to bosses forcing people to have sex via threat of firing–is something which we view as illegal and also morally reprehensible.
Saying “oh, they’re just power struggles!” is to fail to make the very important distinctions based on the specific instances involved.
Sailorman,
In fairness to Brian, he isn’t saying they’re “just” power struggles; he’s saying that all power struggles are equally morally bad. That is the point where I disagree with him. Some kinds of power struggle (those in which the tools are based on race, sexuality, etc.) are worse than others (tools based on social intelligence, talent, willingness to work more hours, etc.).
PG @ 17:
I’m curious about what kinds of “power struggles” you’d accept. Because I’m pretty big on “merit-based power” in situations where it’s merit and not something else, and I don’t think “merit-based power” (with the appropriate caveats) is ever a bad thing.
I was kind of tired and distracted when I wrote that comment, and I would have put it differently if I’d thought about it more.
My point was that sex was not at all beside the point. These men were not casting about for something, anything, anything at all, to use over other people. I was targeted because I was a woman (a girl, really, in both cases) and that sex was what was used to humiliate me was not at all beside the point. That it even occurs to people that sex can be used as a weapon against people, either because of their sex or the way they perform gender, is a big part of the problem and you cannot just sever the “sex” from the “harassment” as if they are distinct. (In one case, it was sexual harassment, and in the other case, sex harassment would be a better term, and I think the distinction PG made was useful.)
JHC,
I am not sure what you mean by “accept.” I don’t protest or publicly complain about any form of power struggle that is not prohibited by law.
PG @ 20 —
It could be my reading of you @17, but you didn’t seem to leave room for power struggles to be “Good” and “Acceptable”.
I started my business 6 months ago and I plan to crush my competition by offering a superior product at a lower price, based on my fairly substantial experience and skills.
Is that “Good” and “Acceptable”? Because I run into people who feel that “Collaboration” and “Cooperation” are always better than “Competition”.
JHC,
I am not sure competition is the same as power struggle. I compete with others all the time — I’m a litigator, it’s my obligation to my clients to do my best, within ethical requirements, to get them what they want. I don’t see myself as trying to dis-empower the other side, however. We make our arguments before a neutral arbiter and the person with the better argument gets (some of) the relief they wanted.
Not a mod, but can I respectfully suggest a discussion of collaborative vs. competitive behavior in general is pretty off-topic. PG’s original comment was in response to Brian about the nature of sexual harassment.
The main question for me is (having read so much bad reporting) whether “135% more” means “approximately two and one third more often” or whether it means “35% more often.”
And yes, i know what it is SUPPOSED to mean.
The sex vs sexual distinction, at least, certainly fits with this bit from the Left Behind series (continued here).
PG, glad you got my point. In all discussions of racism, sexism, and the other ways we unfairly game each other to seek personal advantage, people tend to miss the forest for the trees, or even miss the forest for the bark. For me, it’s a matter of philosophy.
A social transaction is either done by mutual consent (and litigation is mutual consent, with some hard ball rules) or it is done using some sort of force. While I disagree with Ayn Rand on a lot of things, her points of view that a civilization has to be based purely on voluntary cooperation to be civilized was valid.
Going back to the start of the topic, I still would like to see a sociologist seriously look at the sum total of social transactions of people considered to use “sexual harassment” to see how prevalent force of some sort is over mutual consent in ALL their contact with others.
I’d do it, if anyone would write me a grant.
As a sort of pastor/life coach, I deal with folks coping with being on the losing side of involuntary power struggles all the time. I’m biased, but I see force as a social tool as being one of the major problems in life. To focus one’s anger on just a few PARTS of the power junkie’s tool kit is to miss the forest for the bark.
I’ve spent too many hours in the last 20 years helping rape survivors patch their minds and souls together to mistake what they went through as anything close to sex. It’s a way for a power junkie to exhibit control, nothing else. What is termed “sexual harassment” is just the same basic tactic, at a lower level. Still not sex, still a power game.
To some, my objection to thinking of it purely in terms of “sexual harassment” may be straw splitting. OK, I’ll cop to that. But if we’re really going to make a better world, the key is to increase the number of voluntary social transactions and minimize the number of ones based on force and coercion. ALL of them, not just a few. Or I could be wrong.
Brian,
Not to be rude, but it’s kind of hilarious that you’re citing Ayn (rape is hawt!) Rand while arguing for the proposition that one shouldn’t think that rape is sex without consent, but something else entirely.
PG, irony is a harsh mistress. I am usually aware of it as i use it, and I considered that an easter egg for anyone who found it. Happy Easter. ;-)
chingona @ 23:
Not a problem — PG made a comment that I thought was over-reaching and she explained herself. Pretty well, I might add.
This study is fatally flawed. Who “reports” sexual harassment these days? Not the endlessly replaceable rank-and-file, I assure you. We just want health insurance, and the emotional cost of the occasional derogatory remark beats market premiums any day. Should it be any surprise, particularly in this economic climate, that some measure of job security (which we might reasonably infer from a “supervisory” position) correlates strongly with the (self-)reporting of incidents of sexual harassment? Is this not
thecausal link? At issue, then, isn’t gender, at least not directly, and certainly not in the way that the study purports to demonstrate. What’s demonstrated, equally lamentable as it is unsurprising, is that women (and effete men) are less likely to receive promotions. That doesn’t mean they won’t be harassed; it just means they won’t do anything about it.