Sexual HHarassment as aa GGendered EExpression oof PPowerusers.cla.umn.edu/~uggen/Uggen_Blackstone_ASR_04.pdf · MacKinnon notes that men’s victimization of women “is sufficiently

In her groundbreaking book, SexualHarassment of Working Women, Catharine

MacKinnon notes that men’s victimization ofwomen “is sufficiently pervasive in Americansociety as to be nearly invisible” (1979:1). Sincethe publication of her book, sexual harassmenthas become increasingly visible, and variants ofMacKinnon’s broad sociocultural explanation

have gained broad acceptance (Schultz 2001;MacKinnon 2002; Tangri, Burt, and Johnson1982; Welsh 1999). In reaction to evidence thatat least some male and adolescent workers aretargets of sexual harassment (Kalof et al. 2001;Talbot 2002; Thacker 1996), critics have begunto challenge feminist views of sexual harassmentas an act committed by powerful adult malesagainst “powerless females” (Patai 1998:170) asfounded on “unexamined notions of male‘power’ and predatoriness” (Patai 1998:59; seealso Francke 1997; Schultz 1998:95).Nevertheless, a systematic examination of thetheory’s basic propositions about gender andpower has yet to emerge in the social science lit-erature. No empirical study of sexual harassmenthas appeared in the prominent general interestsociology journals American Journal ofSociology, American Sociological Review, orSocial Forces (Sever 1996). In light of theimpressive body of sociological theory aroundthe phenomenon, a burgeoning research litera-ture in the top specialty journals, and the strongpublic interest it has generated, this void is sur-prising.

The neglect of sexual harassment in main-stream sociology also forestalls research thatcould have broad implications. In this paper we

Sexual HHarassment as aa GGendered EExpression oof PPower

Christopher Uggen Amy BlackstoneUniversity of Minnesota University of Maine

Drawing on recent insights from the study of legal consciousness and gender relations,

the authors test the generality of Catharine MacKinnon’s theory of the sexual

harassment of adult women. Survey and interview data from the Youth Development

Study and the General Social Survey are analyzed to identify a behavioral syndrome of

sexual harassment for males and females during adolescence and young adulthood and

to compare the syndrome against subjective reports of sexual harassment. A clear

harassment syndrome is found for all age and sex groups and MacKinnon’s predictions

about the influence of workplace power and gender relations are generally supported.

Financially vulnerable men as well as women are most likely to experience harassing

behaviors, and men pursuing more egalitarian gender relationships are most likely to

identify such behaviors as sexual harassment. Nevertheless, adult women remain the

most frequent targets of classic sexual harassment markers, such as unwanted touching

and invasion of personal space.

AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW, 22004, VVOL. 669 ((February:64–92)

#1331-ASR 69:1 f lename:69105-uggen

Direct correspondence to Christopher Uggen,Department of Sociology, University of Minnesota,267 19th Avenue South #909, Minneapolis, MN55455-0412 ([email protected]). Versions of thispaper were presented at the 2001 annual meetings ofthe American Sociological Association in Anaheim,California, and the 2002 annual meetings of the Law& Society Association in Vancouver, BritishColumbia. We thank Jeylan Mortimer for support inseveral phases of this research and Angie Behrens,Kathy Hull, Justine Jones, Mike Massoglia, JeremyStaff, Steven Smith, Melissa Thompson, and SaraWakefield for comments and other help. This researchwas supported by grants from the National Instituteof Child Health and Human Development(HD44138), the National Institute of Mental Health(MH42843) (“Work Experience and Mental Health:A Panel Study of Youth”) and the University ofMinnesota Life Course Center.

at Serials Records, University of Minnesota Libraries on December 28, 2012asr.sagepub.comDownloaded from

http://asr.sagepub.com/

elaborate and test MacKinnon’s socioculturaltheory and address three such questions bear-ing on the generality of sexual harassment. Forthe sociology of gender, we consider how fem-inist models—originally designed to accountfor men’s violence against women—can explaina diverse range of sexual harassment scenarios.For the sociology of law, we examine how peo-ple define their harassment experiences as sex-ual harassment. For life course studies, weconsider the relative prevalence of sexual harass-ment in the adolescent and adult workplace andtest whether the same individuals are likely tobe targeted at different life course stages.

We first discuss existing theory and research,focusing on legal and sociological definitionsof sexual harassment as a syndrome of relatedbehaviors. We then develop a general concep-tual model of harassment experiences and legalconsciousness, introducing hypotheses aboutsex and age differences in experiencing andperceiving harassment. We explain the targetingof men and adolescents by uniting R.W.Connell’s notion of a gender system that privi-leges a particular vision of heterosexual mas-culinity with MacKinnon’s power-based accountof the sexual harassment of adult women. Next,we detail our survey and interview data sourcesand strategy of analysis. Because sexual harass-ment involves a complex of behaviors, we uselatent class analysis to measure and assess groupdifferences based on responses to survey items.We then present statistical results and interviewexcerpts, focusing on age and gender differ-ences in harassing experiences, their meaningto targets, and their relation to workplace powerand gender relations. Finally, we take stock ofMacKinnon’s model in light of recent develop-ments in theory and the current project.

LEGAL AAND SSOCIOLOGICAL UNDERSTANDINGS OOF SSEXUALHARASSMENT

DEFINITIONS OF SEXUAL HARASSMENT

U.S. sexual harassment law has been heavilyinfluenced by MacKinnon’s (1979) argumentthat sexual harassment constitutes sex discrim-ination under Title VII of the 1964 Civil RightsAct (see, e.g., Cahill 2001; Saguy 2003).Although we focus on her sociological modelrather than her legal arguments, the two areclosely intertwined. Since Meritor v. Vinson,

(477 U.S. 57 [1986]), the U.S. Supreme Courthas recognized hostile work environment sex-ual harassment, which occurs when unwelcomesexual advances or a wide range of verbal orphysical sexual conduct unreasonably interfereswith a person’s job or create an intimidating oroffensive work atmosphere.1 A “severe or per-vasive” legal standard applies to the definitionof a hostile work environment, such that harass-ment may be established by a single seriousincident or a pattern of less severe, but repeat-ed behaviors. Therefore, measures of sexualharassment must assess the overall pattern ofdiverse workplace behaviors as well as theirseverity.

As in other areas of law, interpretations ofsexual harassment are shaped by “legal con-sciousness” or the cultural schemas guiding theunderstanding and use of law (Merry 1990;Ewick and Silbey 1998). Because consciousnessof sexual harassment is likely to vary acrosssocial groups, a critical issue—for both legal andsociological purposes—is deciding whose per-spective should determine whether sexualharassment has occurred. In Harris v. ForkliftSystems, Inc., 510 U.S. 17 (1993), the SupremeCourt adopted a dual “objective/subjective”standard that takes into account both the specific“objective” behaviors that a “reasonable person”would find abusive, and the target’s “subjective”impressions of the experiences. Some lowercourts have held that such impressions of harass-ment depend on the gender of the intended tar-gets, rejecting the reasonable person standard infavor of a “reasonable woman” standard (Ellisonv. Brady, 924 F.2d 872 [9th Cir. 1991]).Similarly, some federal appellate courts haverecognized the concept of “gender stereotyping”in extending Title VII protections to males. Forexample, in Doe v. Belleville an adolescent malewas physically harassed and threatened withsexual assault by older males because hisappearance and behavior “did not conform to hisco-workers’ view of appropriate masculinebehavior” (119 F.3d 563 [7th Cir. 1997]).

Apart from legal definitions, social scien-tists have conceptualized and measured sexualharassment in a well-developed scholarly liter-

SEXUAL HHARASSMENT—–65


1 The Court also recognizes “quid pro quo” harass-ment in which sexual demands are made a conditionof employment or a basis for employment decisions(see Welsh 1999).



ature. As MacKinnon noted in the 1970s, “lack-ing a term to express it, sexual harassment wasliterally unspeakable, which made a general-ized, shared, and social definition of it inac-cessible” (1979:27). Though the term iscommon today, we are still without a generallyshared social definition that would help peoplewho are targets of sexual harassment to readi-ly identify such behavior. MacKinnon (1979:1)defined sexual harassment as “the unwantedimposition of sexual requirements in the contextof a relationship of unequal power.” PsychologistLouise Fitzgerald and colleagues later developedan influential Sexual Experiences Questionnaireto distinguish gender harassment, unwantedsexual attention, and sexual coercion (Fitzgeraldet al. 1988; Gelfand, Fitzgerald, and Drasgow1995). Others define sexual harassment morebroadly as “repetitive, unwelcomed, and inher-ently coercive” acts (Katz et al. 1996:35), as oneaspect of social sexual behavior (Gutek, Cohen,and Konrad 1990; Williams, Giuffre, andDellinger 1999), or as generalized workplaceabuse (Keashly 2001; Richman et al. 1999).

Recent sociological research in this area linksindividuals’ ideas about sexual harassment tobroader structural relations and cultural sys-tems (e.g., Kalof et al. 2001; Katz et al. 1996;Morgan 1999; Padavic and Orcutt 1997; Rogersand Henson 1997; Rospenda, Richman, andNawyn 1998). For example, Quinn (2002:389)attributes gender differences in interpreting sex-ual harassment to the acceptance of “normativeideas about women’s inscrutability and indi-rectness and men’s role as sexual aggressors.”Another trend in sexual harassment researchhas been the attempt to differentiate consensu-al forms of workplace sexuality from sexualharassment (Dellinger and Williams 2002;Quinn 2002; Williams et al. 1999). Schultz(2003) argues that employers are “sanitizing”workplaces in pursuit of organizational effi-ciency, rooting out benign sexual conduct butignoring sex segregation and inequality.

Despite differences across these literatures,most scholarly definitions of sexual harassmentspecify conduct that is “unwelcome or unso-licited, is sexual in nature, and is deliberate orrepeated” (Barr 1993:461). Although com-monalities exist, some argue that a “lack ofconceptual clarity and specificity” continuesto plague sexual harassment research (Fitzgeraldand Shullman 1993:19), suggesting the phe-nomenon is best conceptualized as a construct

of multiple related behaviors (Gelfand et al.1995) or as a process rather than an event (Quinn2002:400). There is also disagreement regard-ing which behaviors constitute harassment(Sever 1999), how gender affects perceptions(Kalof et al. 2001), and whether “subjective” or“objective” behavioral measures are most appro-priate (Welsh 1999; Welsh and Nierobisz 1997).2

FEMINIST PERSPECTIVES AND MACKINNON’SSEXUAL HARASSMENT MODEL

Feminist theories view sexual harassment asthe product of a gender system maintained bya dominant, normative form of masculinity. Inparticular, Connell (1987; 1992; 2002) positsthat gender-based inequalities and discrimina-tion are maintained and negotiated throughinterrelations among differently gendered (andtherefore differently privileged) subjects with-in a larger gender system. Connell’s con-structivist theory introduced the concept ofhegemonic masculinity—a gender system thatprivileges a singular vision of adult heterosex-ual masculinity over all forms of femininityand alternative masculinities.3 Connell’s theo-ry acknowledges multiple masculinities andfemininities (Martin 1998) and takes account ofthe subjective experience of gender and harass-ment within a larger gender system.

Major themes in Connell’s recent theory arecompatible with MacKinnon’s earlier sociocul-tural conceptualization of the gender systemand recent feminist scholarship that emphasizesthe performative, relational, and socially con-structed nature of gender (Butler 1990; Kimmel1994; West and Zimmerman 1987). ForMacKinnon, gender and sexuality are similar-ly identified as systems of power and domina-

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2 We should note that behavioral measures arealso subjective; they rely upon individuals to perceiveand record the behaviors (see Jaschik and Fretz 1991;Kalof et al. 2001).

3 The concept of hegemonic masculinity has beencriticized for its representation of the Gramsciannotion of hegemony (Demetriou 2001; Hall 2002;Jefferson 2002; see also Donaldson 1993; Lorber1998) but lauded for its representation of multiplemasculinities and femininities and its utility acrossresearch settings (Anderson 2002; Bird 1996;Donovan 1998; Gallagher and Smith 1999; Lee 2000;McGuffey and Rich 1999; Quinn 2002).



tion, with adult men wielding sexual power toassert and maintain dominance over women.MacKinnon thus locates cultural definitions ofdeviant and conforming sexual behavior in indi-vidual- and societal-level processes of gendersocialization (1979:154) and in the impositionof power derived from the material economicsphere upon the sexual sphere (1979:203,174).For MacKinnon, as for Connell, normative con-structions of masculinity disempower those whodo not adopt these norms, either because theirsex prevents them from doing so (e.g., for bio-logical females) or because they are men whodo not adhere to the privileged normative modelof heterosexual masculinity.

Therefore, men and women are likely to expe-rience and perceive sexually harassing behav-iors differently because of gender inequalityand culturally prescribed expressions of sexu-ality. As Estrich (1987) notes, men and womenare held to different standards of sexuality andthese standards work to maintain the existinggender order. Women may perceive sexuallyharassing behaviors as threatening, in part,because they are taught from an early age to beconcerned about their bodily safety and to pro-tect their sexuality (Burt and Estep 1981). Menare taught less about the possibility of sexualpredators than women and for good reason—tar-gets of sexual violence are overwhelminglyfemale and perpetrators are overwhelminglymale (U.S. Department of Justice 2002). Further,sexually harassing behaviors such as “girlwatching” are themselves born of the socialpractices of masculinity (Quinn 2002). Becauseof these differences, we expect that the under-lying meaning of a sexual joke or a touch is gen-der specif ic, and men may be unlikely toconsider themselves potential targets in a soci-ety that privileges masculinity (Kalof et al.2001; see also Nelson and Oliver 1998).MacKinnon’s attention to gender-based powerdifferentials thus provides some insight intowhich males may be targets of sexual harass-ment, as well as how they might make sense ofthese experiences.

Surprisingly few empirical studies have test-ed MacKinnon’s most basic proposition that“most sexually harassed people are women”(1979:193). While research consistently showsthat many adult women are sexually harassed atthe workplace (Fitzgerald and Shullman 1993;MacKinnon 1979; U.S. Merit SystemsProtection Board 1988), a handful of studies

have established lower but nontrivial rates ofmale-targeted harassment (Kalof et al. 2001;Kohlman 2003; Talbot 2002; Thacker 1996).The U.S. Equal Employment OpportunityCommission (2003) reports that males now file15 percent of all sexual harassment charges4

and that the number of such charges has dou-bled in the past decade.5

Although age clearly is linked to power andgender relations (Connell 2000; Thorne 1993),it has rarely been considered in studies of work-place sexual harassment (Gruber 1998). In fact,some have charged that a focus on gender-based,rather than age-based, power differentialsignores women’s agency and competence asadults (Patai 1998). For these critics, applyingthe same legal protections to adult females thatare normally extended to children smacks ofpaternalism (Schultz 1998) or even the “infan-



4 One such claim occurred in the U.S. SupremeCourt case establishing same-sex harassment as gen-der discrimination, in which Joseph Oncale testifiedto numerous sexual humiliations, attacks, and threatsof rape by coworkers (Oncale v. Sundowner OffshoreServices, 523 U.S. 75 [1998]). MacKinnon herselfwrote an amicus curiae brief in support of Oncale(1997), observing that “sexual abuse of men by menis a serious and neglected social problem inextrica-bly connected to sexual abuse of women by men.” Inthis brief, MacKinnon also tied sexual harassment toage-based power relations (Oncale was 21 years old),noting that adult men target those they have powerover in society, including children and younger malecoworkers. Nevertheless, the sexual harassment ofmen remains “understudied” (Welsh 1999:185;Berdahl, Magley, and Waldo 1996), while virtually“no attention” has been directed to the sexual harass-ment of adolescent workers (Fineran 2002:953).

5 As in landmark cases with female plaintiffs, suchas Meritor v. Vinson, (477 U.S. 57 [1986]; see, e.g.,Marshall 1998), the disturbing details of the Oncalecase establish the potential severity (though not thegenerality) of male-male sexual harassment. In addi-tion to frequent verbal harassment, Oncale was sex-ually attacked at work on multiple occasions,including an assault while showering. In Oncale’stestimony, he said that one coworker lifted him off theground while the other “grabs the bar of soap andrubbed it between the cheeks of my ass and tells me,you know, they’re fixing to fuck me.” After report-ing the incident to a supervisor, Oncale’s coworkersconfronted him and said, “You told your daddy, huh?Well, it ain’t going to do no good because I’m goingto fuck you anyway” (MacKinnon 1997:13).



tilization of adult women” (Patai 1998:xv, 69,170). Such observations acknowledge that ado-lescents require special assistance in recogniz-ing or responding to sexual harassment, butthere have been few studies of adolescent tar-gets outside the school setting (AAUW 2001;Fineran 2002; Kalof et al. 2001).

This omission is important because age struc-tures power relations in the workplace, andharassers may perceive young workers as vul-nerable or attractive targets (MacKinnon1979:29).6 Relative to adults, adolescent work-ers are concentrated in a small number of occu-pations and industries, typically in restaurantsand other service and retail settings (Mortimer2003; CHSICL 1998). These jobs may be char-acterized by pleasurable or tolerable sexualbehaviors, such as flirting and bantering, aswell as sexual harassment (Folgero and Fjeldstad1995; Giuffre and Williams 1994). In a study ofa fast food restaurant, Reiter describes greaterjostling, flirting, and teasing among adoles-cents than adult workers, noting that workerinteractions are “clearly marked by age andgender” (1991:155). The socialization of ado-lescents into adult work roles thus includeslearning the meaning and acceptability of var-ious workplace interactions (Mortimer 2003;Steinberg et al. 1981), including sexual harass-ment (see Schultz 2003). Younger workers maybe increasingly aware of sexual harassment asan abstraction, but less experienced in distin-guishing between acceptable and problematicworkplace conduct. To track these and otherage-graded changes in the structure and mean-ing of sexual harassment, a recent authorita-tive review calls for longitudinal or life coursestudies (Welsh 1999).7 Our conceptual model

and analysis explores the generality of sexualharassment and offers specific hypotheses aboutgender and consciousness of harassment overthe life course.

CONCEPTUAL MMODEL AND HHYPOTHESES

CONCEPTUAL MODEL

Figure 1 shows an integrated conceptual modelof power, masculinity, and sexual harassment,based on MacKinnon’s theory of sexual harass-ment, Connell’s theory of gender relations, andrecent work on legal consciousness. Powerarrangements—including the privileging of het-eronormative masculinity in the gendered work-place (Acker 1990) and age relations that giveadult men rights and power over adolescents(MacKinnon 1997)—affect the extent to whichindividuals experience particular harassingbehaviors. When these behaviors are severe orpervasive and concurrent in time and place,they constitute a syndrome of behavioral sexu-al harassment. The prevalence of the syndromeand even its constituent behaviors is likely tovary by gender and age, with power arrange-ments typically placing adult women at specialrisk.8

Although all adult women are culturally iden-tified as potential targets of sexual harassment,



6 Paradoxically, most adolescents have an impor-tant source of countervailing power: unlike mostadults, they need not work to support themselves ortheir families. In fact, employed adolescents comedisproportionately from middle-class families(CHSICL 1998). Although we expect adolescentworkers to experience high rates of harassing behav-iors (especially relative to the limited number ofhours that they work), these expectations are temperedby adolescents’ high rates of job satisfaction(Mortimer 2003:68) and their greater opportunitiesto exit potentially harassing workplaces.

7 In addition to gender and age, a line of empiri-cal research has linked sexual harassment with socialclass, race, and other factors (Cleveland and Kerst

1993; Kalof et al. 2001; Marshall 1998; Rospenda etal. 1998; Tangri et al. 1982; Vaux 1993). Researchershave identified particular dimensions of workplacepower that place employees at greater risk of sexualharassment, including occupational status (Raginsand Scandura 1995; Richman et al. 1999), supervi-sory authority (Rospenda et al. 1998), and organi-zational factors (DeCoster et al. 1999; Gutek andCohen 1987; Kohlman 2003; Mueller et al. 2001).

8 While adolescent females are doubly disadvan-taged by age and gender, adult women typically haveless power to leave unpleasant work situations andgenerally work longer hours than adolescents. In thedata to be analyzed, respondents worked far morehours as young adults than as high school students,although 93 percent of the sample worked for pay atsome point during high school. Among working ado-lescents between 9th and 12th grade, the medianhours worked per week rose from 8 to 20 hoursamong boys and from 10 to 20 hours among girls.However, by age 24–25 years, men were working anaverage of 37 hours per week and women an averageof 34 hours per week.



male targets are likely to be those “perceived notto conform to stereotyped gender roles”(MacKinnon 1997:2; 1979:178) or practicing“marginalized masculinities” (Connell 1995).Further, although Connell views masculinitiesas situation-specific “configurations of prac-tice” rather than fixed individual characteristics(1995:81), males who consistently practice mar-ginalized masculinities are likely to be consis-tent targets of sexual harassment throughoutthe life course.

Of course, individuals do not automaticallytranslate their experiences with harassing behav-iors into a global account of those experiencesas sexual harassment. Theories of legal con-sciousness suggest that both culturally avail-able schemas and individual resources areimportant in the process of labeling the complexof behaviors as sexual harassment (Ewick andSilbey 1998:53). Although men in less power-ful positions may be targets of sexually harass-ing behaviors at the workplace, they are unlikelyto interpret these behaviors as sexual harassmentbecause they generally lack a cultural referencepoint that would give meaning to them as a uni-fied construct or phenomenon. This is the casefor the “core markers” culturally associatedwith the sexual harassment of adult women,such as sexual touching and invasion of personal

space, as well as more ambiguous behaviors,such as physical assault or offensive jokes.Because heteronormative masculinity encour-ages men to conceive of themselves as preda-tors or protectors rather than targets (or“victims”) of such harassing behaviors, menwho experience the behavioral syndrome areless likely to identify it as sexual harassmentthan women who experience the behavioral syn-drome. Nevertheless, consciousness of sexualharassment is tied to consciousness of genderrelations, such that men with more egalitarianattitudes and behaviors in gender relationshipsare most likely to recognize these experiencesas sexual harassment.

SPECIFIC HYPOTHESES

We draw six hypotheses from this model, thefirst taken from MacKinnon’s basic proposi-tion that “most sexually harassed people arewomen” (1979:193; 1987:107).

Hypothesis 1, Gender Difference in HarassingBehaviors: More females than males willexperience specific sexually harassingbehaviors.

The second hypothesis specifies that a behav-ioral syndrome of sexual harassment will beobservable for males and adolescents as well as



Figure 1. A General Model of Power, Masculinity, and Legal Consciousness in Predicting Sexual Harassment



adult women, but that its form will vary foradult females, adolescent females, adult males,and adolescent males.

Hypothesis 2, Syndromal Clustering: Sexuallyharassing behaviors will cluster in a syn-drome or construct of behaviors for allgroups, but its structure will differ by ageand sex.

The next two hypotheses address legal con-sciousness and the subjective interpretation ofharassing behaviors. While sexual harassmentexists within the cultural repertoire of events thatmight occur at the workplace among women,men are less likely to consider themselves poten-tial targets and therefore are less likely to per-ceive the behavioral syndrome as sexualharassment.

Hypothesis 3, Gender Difference in SubjectiveAppraisal: More females than males willperceive that they have been sexuallyharassed, as measured by a “subjective”self-appraisal.

Hypothesis 4, Gender Difference in Associationbetween Behavioral and SubjectiveHarassment: General “subjective” percep-tions of sexual harassment will be moreclosely correlated with the behavioral sex-ual harassment syndrome for females thanfor males.

We similarly predict less continuity betweenadolescent and adult harassment experiencesfor females because all adult women are cul-turally identified as potential targets, whereasparticular males will be consistently targetedbased on their expressions of masculinity.

Hypothesis 5, Gender Difference in Life-CourseContinuity: The correlation between behav-ioral sexual harassment in adolescence andadulthood will be lower for females than formales.

Our final hypotheses address power and mas-culinity, the predicted mechanisms linking ageand sex to sexual harassment experiences.

Hypothesis 6a, Workplace Power: Men andwomen holding less workplace power aremore likely to be targeted than men andwomen holding greater workplace power.

Hypothesis 6b, Gender Relationships: Adultmen in more egalitarian gender relation-ships are more likely to perceive sexual

harassment than adult men in less egali-tarian gender relationships.

As summarized in Figure 1 and the hypothe-ses, we suggest that gendered power relationsresult in females being more frequent harass-ment targets than males, and adolescents to betargeted at high rates relative to the number ofhours they work. Because dominant culturalunderstandings of sexual harassment identifyadult women as the most likely targets, howev-er, the adult men and adolescent males andfemales will be less likely than adult women tointerpret their experiences as sexual harass-ment. Although our individual-level data can-not provide a critical test of the macro-levelpaths outlined in the figure, our analysis willoffer evidence bearing on each of the hypo-theses.

DATA, MMEASURES, AND SSTRATEGY OOF AANALYSIS

We adopt a quantitative survey approach, guid-ed by in-depth interviews undertaken with asubset of 33 survey respondents. Althoughmethodological choices are contested in sexu-al harassment research as elsewhere (Arvey andCavanaugh 1995; Gillespie and Leffler 1987;Smith 1994), our design is informed by anemerging measurement literature in the area: fol-lowing Fitzgerald and Shullman (1993), weinquire about a range of potentially harassingbehaviors, posing more subjective questionsabout sexual harassment separately from ques-tions about specif ic behaviors; followingGelfand et al. (1995:174), we conceptualizesexual harassment as “a construct, with multi-variate responses that are related” rather than asa simple event; and, following Welsh, we testharassment measures for multidimensionality(2000) and link survey data with intensive inter-views (1999).

DATA AND MEASURES

We analyze data from the Youth DevelopmentStudy (YDS), a prospective longitudinal inves-tigation that began in 1988 with a random sam-ple of 1,010 ninth graders in the St. Paul,Minnesota public school district. The annualsurvey was administered in school from 1988until 1991, with mail questionnaires used from1992 until 2000. To our knowledge, no other





data set contains a set of behavioral sexualharassment items for males and females in ado-lescence and adulthood. We placed these itemson the 11th survey wave in 1999, when respon-dents were 25–26 years old, and obtained datafrom 742 of the original 1,010 respondents(73.5 percent).9 We measure sexual harassmentwith six dichotomous behavioral indicators,ranging from sexual content in the workplace(such as offensive remarks about the respondent)to physical assault. We began with a set ofbehavioral indicators because of their demon-strated reliability and validity (Welsh andNierobisz 1997), using the high school periodas a “contextual cue” (Horney and Marshall1991) to help orient respondents. We askedwhether they had experienced each harassingbehavior while working in jobs since high school(the young adult period) and in jobs held duringtheir high school years (the adolescent period).

Research on sexual victimization suggeststhat providing such checklists of specific behav-iors helps elicit accurate self-reports of early,averse sexual experiences (Miller, Johnson, andJohnson 1991). Because dichotomous indicatorshave generally proven most reliable in such ret-rospective accounts, all of our behavioral meas-ures are dichotomous. Although there is somepotential for recall problems with the highschool items, researchers in other contexts reportimpressive stability in self-reports of delin-quency and victimization for periods of up to 8years (Hindelang, Hirschi, and Weis 1981:80).

Our measures were written to reflect thebreadth of harassment behaviors included inthe Inventory of Sexual Harassment (Gruber1992) and Sexual Experiences Questionnaire(SEQ) (Fitzgerald et al. 1988; Gelfand et al.1995). We follow the SEQ in asking first aboutspecific harassing behaviors (offensive jokes,remarks or gossip, intrusive questions, inva-sion of personal space, unwanted touching,offensive pictures or other materials, and phys-ical assault). Only then do we invoke the term“sexual harassment” using a more subjectiveglobal item (would you consider these experi-

ences sexual harassment?). This allows us toexamine hypotheses about gender differences inlegal consciousness as well as sexually harass-ing behaviors.

Because we sampled from populations whosesexual harassment experiences have rarely beenstudied (e.g., males and adolescents), our YDSindicators differ from those on the SEQ andother instruments developed for adult femalerespondents. Most importantly, we avoided age-and gender-specific language. For example, theSEQ includes “leering” and “attempts to strokeor fondle” which may be less recognized bymales, and “repeated requests for drinks or din-ner,” which may be less relevant to adolescents.Instead, we asked about general conduct, suchas “unwanted touching” and “invasion of per-sonal space,” to develop inclusive measures thatwould not immediately exclude ambiguousbehavior (such as a supervisor putting an armaround a subordinate) that may or may not indi-cate sexual harassment.

This approach may overstate the prevalenceof sexual harassment by including sexual behav-iors that are not harassing (such as some typesof sexual banter), as well as harassing behaviorsthat are not sexual (such as physical assault). Weaddress this potential danger in four ways: (1)by examining the interrelation between moreambiguous and less ambiguous “core” items; (2)by considering the interrelation between allbehavioral items and the global self-assessmentof whether the behaviors constituted sexualharassment; (3) by examining models thatexclude less serious items; and, (4) by con-ducting intensive interviews with a subset of sur-vey respondents, discussing the nature andcontext of their experiences with sexual harass-ment.

We selected YDS participants for intensiveinterviews based on their survey responses. Wesent letters to 98 males and 86 females whohad reported experiencing some form of harass-ing behavior at work, inviting them to discusstheir experiences in a 60- to 90-minute inter-view. A total of 28 men and 30 women expressedinterest in participating and we completed inter-views with 14 men and 19 women, who wereeach paid $40. The interviews took place at alocation of the participant’s choosing and weretaped for later transcription. Participants wereasked to describe their experiences in their ownwords and were not provided specific responsecategories. Our goal was to learn more about the



9 The sample well represents the St. Paul commu-nity (Finch et al. 1991; Mortimer 2003). About 74percent of the panel is white, 10 percent African-American, 5 percent Hispanic, and 4 percent Asian.For details on YDS sampling and panel retention, seeMortimer (2003:29-43).



context of potentially harassing experiences,participants’ own understandings of specificworkplace interactions, and their ideas aboutsexual harassment more generally (Giuffre andWilliams 1994; Stambaugh 1997). In choosingparticular excerpts for inclusion in this paper,we looked for patterns across the interviewsand selected those quotes that we thought bestrepresented these patterns.

Following the analysis of the indicators andinterviews described above, we examine theassociation between workplace power, genderrelations, and sexual harassment using surveydata from the YDS as well as the GeneralSocial Survey (GSS) (Davis, Smith, andMarsden 2003). To address concerns that theconcept of power is poorly articulated orunmeasured in sexual harassment research(Patai 1998), we assess it directly as financialinsecurity and supervisory authority. To meas-ure respondents’ beliefs in and adherence tonormative gender relations expectations, weconsider their career expectations for them-selves and their partners (Morgan 1999) andbehavioral indicators of these relationships,such as the share of housework they provide.Appendix 1 describes each of the measuresused in this portion of the analysis.

STRATEGY OF ANALYSIS

We will first present descriptive statistics andsimple t-tests to compare the rate of specificharassing behaviors across age and sex groupsin our YDS survey data. Analyzing these itemsindividually could obscure important infor-mation about their covariation, yet combiningthem in a summative scale could concealimportant group differences in the occurrenceof particular behaviors. Restricting the analy-sis to one or two core items is also problem-atic, as sexual harassment is defined in part byits pervasiveness. To overcome these difficul-ties, we use a latent class approach (Dayton1998; Lazarsfeld and Henry 1968;McCutcheon 1987) to examine these behaviorsin combination and to test for the presence ofa common syndrome of sexual harassment.Because there are several known indicatorsbut no criterion “gold standard” that estab-lishes sexual harassment with certainty, latentclass techniques are especially appropriate inthis context. These methods test whether thecovariation between each of the behavioral

harassment items is due to their mutual rela-tionship to an unobserved or latent sexualharassment construct. If so, then specificationof the latent sexual harassment variable shouldreduce this covariation among individual sur-vey items to the level of chance variation(McCutcheon 1987:5–6). Latent class analysisalso allows us to establish whether there aredistinct types of sexual harassment within ageand sex groups and to impose equality con-straints to test whether a latent sexual harass-ment syndrome varies across groups.10 Alllatent class models are estimated using theCDAS-MLLSA program (Eliason 1997).

For our purposes, the greatest advantage oflatent class analysis is that it helps reduce acomplex set of response patterns amongnumerous intercorrelated nominal indicators toa rigorous but tractable set of ideal types with-out imposing a set of a priori assumptionsabout what counts as sexual harassment. Thispermits us to test hypotheses bearing on fun-damental substantive questions about the gen-erality of sexual harassment: (1) whether wecan observe a syndrome of sexual harassmentamong men and adolescents; (2) whether thissyndrome is the same as or different than theone MacKinnon identif ied among adultwomen; (3) how subjective perceptions ofharassment are related to this behavioral syn-drome for different groups; and (4) whether thebehavioral syndrome is related to workplacepower and gender relations in the manner sug-gested by theories of sexual harassment. Inaddressing these questions, we also reportillustrative examples of the nature and contextof sexual harassment based on our intensiveinterviews with a subset of YDS respondents.

RESULTS

PREVALENCE OF SEXUAL HARASSMENT

Table 1 shows descriptive statistics and t-testsfor each sexual harassment item. The socialdistribution of harassing behaviors varies with



10 For example, adult females who report offensivematerials may also report unwanted touching, butteenage males may report offensive materials in iso-lation. If so, such materials may be less indicative ofsexual harassment for adolescent males than for adultfemales.



the type (and perhaps severity) of each indi-cator. During high school, fewer females thanmales report offensive jokes but more femalesreport invasion of personal space and unwant-ed touching than males. As adults, femalesface the highest rates of these core markers ofsexual harassment—almost one third reportunwanted touching or invasion of personalspace. Contrary to the adolescent period, adultwomen also experience offensive jokes,remarks, or gossip about them at rates com-parable to adult men. Clearly, many adolescentworkers experience these harassment behav-iors: 33 percent of females and 38 percent ofmales report at least 1 behavior, and 17 percentof females and 11 percent of males were sub-ject to at least 1 core marker. Although eachindividual behavioral item may tap somedegree of non-sexual or non-harassing behav-ior (see, e.g., Keashly 2001; Richman et al.1999), 33 percent of females and 14 percent ofmales reported that they considered their expe-riences with these behaviors to constitute sex-ual harassment.

Table 1 shows only partial support for ourfirst hypothesis, that more females than males

experience specific sexually harassing behav-iors.11 Consistent with expectations, femalesare more likely to face unwanted touching andviolations of personal space, and we find agreater gender gap among these core markersfor adults relative to adolescents. Yet malesreport similar rates of exposure to the otheritems. Adolescent males are somewhat morelikely to report offensive materials and phys-ical assault than adolescent females. Thesedifferences are unlikely to be explained bygender differences in labor force participa-tion, because participation rates are similar



Table 1. Percent Reporting Harassing Behaviors at Two Life Stages

Female Male t-value

At any job you have held during high school, have you experienced .|.|.—Offensive jokes, remarks, or gossip directed at you?** 22% 31% –2.814—Direct questioning about your private life? 22% 25% –.747—Staring or invasion of your personal space?† 15% 10% 1.771—Unwanted touching?* 07% 03% 2.399—Pictures, posters, or other materials you found offensive?† 04% 07% –1.819—Physical assault by a co-worker, boss, or supervisor?† 02% 04% –1.839Percent experiencing any of six behaviors 33% 38% –1.516Percent experiencing touching or space (core indicators)* 17% 11% 2.363At any job you have held since high school, have you experienced .|.|.—Offensive jokes, remarks, or gossip directed at you? 35% 37% –.504—Direct questioning about your private life? 42% 42% –.084—Staring or invasion of your personal space?** 29% 17% 3.971—Unwanted touching?** 13% 05% 3.547—Pictures, posters, or other materials you found offensive? 08% 07% .235—Physical assault by a co-worker, boss, or supervisor? 02% 03% –.911Percent experiencing any of six behaviors 60% 58% .576Percent experiencing touching or space (core indicatorsa)** 32% 18% 4.355Global Indicator—Would you consider any of the above experiences during 33% 14% 5.969— or since high school sexual harassment?**

Note: Sample sizes from 423 to 425 for females and from 314 to 318 for males.a Core indicators include unwanted touching and invasion of personal space.† p < .10; * p < .05; ** p < .01

11 To summarize and test the basic behavioral pat-terns shown in Table 1, we also pooled the data andconducted a logistic regression analysis on the 6harassment items, using age, sex, and their interac-tion as independent variables (table available fromauthors). In additive models, age is a positive pre-dictor of each behavior, and female gender has pos-itive effects on the two core items but negative effectson offensive jokes and physical assault. In interactivemodels, the product term only approaches statisticalsignificance for the offensive jokes, remarks, andgossip item (p < .1).



for adolescent males and females (U.S. CensusBureau 2000:403). Nevertheless, results forthe global indicator support our third hypoth-esis, showing that females are far more likelythan males to report that they considered theirexperiences to be sexual harassment.12

A CCOMMON SEXUAL HARASSMENT SYNDROME

OR CONSTRUCT

Our second hypothesis predicts that the sixindividual indicators will be clustered as asyndrome of behavioral sexual harassmentwithin each of the four sample groups (malesand females at each life course stage). Thefirst step in this analysis is to determine thenumber of latent classes needed to character-ize the harassment indicators. If a 2-classmodel accounts for the covariation among thebehaviors, for example, this may provide evi-dence of a coherent syndrome. If 3- or 4-classmodels are needed, this may suggest multipletypes of sexual harassment (see Fitzgerald etal. 1988; Gelfand et al. 1995). Summary sta-tistics for models specifying from 1 to 5 latentclasses are reported in Table 2: L2 is the like-lihood ratio chi-square test statistic relating



Table 2. Fit Statistics for Latent Class Models

Statistic One Class Two Class Three Class Four Class

Adolescent FemalesL2 359.31 44.13 40.63 23.41df 51 48 43p .741 .766 .994BIC –264.17 –249.53 –236.53ID .048 .044 .026

Adult FemalesL2 305.12 61.84 34.69 22.97df 51 44 41p .142 .841 .990BIC –245.85 –230.77 –224.38ID .094 .051 .035

Adolescent MalesL2 309.59 49.06 26.48 15.05df 51 47 45p .551 .993 1.0BIC –243.99 –243.59 –243.53ID .064 .044 .033

Adult MalesL2 190.66 54.38 29.03 20.08df 50 45 39p .311 .969 .995BIC –233.41 –229.98 –204.39ID .084 .047 .036

Note: L2: likelihood ratio chi-square statisticdf: degrees of freedomBIC: Bayesian Information Criterion statisticID: index of dissimilarity

12 Although it is possible that some respondentscould have read the global item as soliciting theiropinions about the behaviors referenced rather thantheir own experiences, this does not appear to be thecase. The global item followed immediately after the“have you experienced” items and immediately pre-ceded a question asking whether they had personal-ly consulted an attorney about these experiences.The rate of affirmative responses to the global itemis also in line with estimates from other studies (sum-marized in Welsh 1999). Therefore, we believe thatrespondents were referencing their own experiencesin answering this item.



the observed data to the latent model, theBayesian information criterion (BIC) statistichelps identify the best fitting model when mul-tiple models provide an adequate fit based onthe L2 criterion, and the index of dissimilari-ty (ID) between observed and estimatedexpected frequencies is the percentage of casesincorrectly classif ied by each model (seeDayton 1998; McCutcheon 1987).

The L2 values in Table 2 show the greatestimprovement in fit when comparing 1-class orindependence models (which assume no asso-ciation among the indicators) to 2-class mod-els. For adolescent females, for example, thesquared likelihood decreases from 359 to 44when a second class is added, but when a thirdclass is added, the squared likelihood decreas-es from 44 to 41. In general, a P-value greaterthan .10 and smaller BIC values indicate amore acceptable fit, so these statistics alsofavor a 2-class model: for each group, the 2-class model shows a P-value within the limitsof chance variation and the smallest BIC valuerelative to 3, 4, or 5-class models. As the num-ber of classes increases, the index of dissimi-larity shows that slightly fewer cases aremisallocated. Because these gains are mar-

ginal and the other statistics point to a 2-classsolution, we accept the 2-class models as pro-viding the best and most parsimonious fit to thedata for all groups.

Although two classes describe sexual harass-ment within each group, the syndrome itselfmay differ by age and sex. In fact, when malesand females are combined into a single sam-ple, we find that three adult classes and fouradolescent classes are needed to characterizethe data (tables available from authors). Thenature of the behavioral syndrome for eachgroup is more readily apparent from the latentclass probabilities and conditional probabili-ties reported in Table 3. Latent class probabil-ities show the relative size of each class.Conditional probabilities show the likelihoodof experiencing particular behaviors for indi-viduals within each class. The group-specificprobabilities for adolescents and adults areshown in Table 3. The final conditional prob-abilities offer a clear interpretation. For eachage/sex group the 64 possible response patternsamong the 6 dichotomous indicators are clear-ly summarized by two classes that can bedescribed as “high” and “low” sexual harass-ment, offering a parsimonious rendering of



Table 3. Estimates from Latent Class Models for Adolescence (N = 735) and adulthood (N = 733)

Male Female

Low High Low HighSH SH SH SH

Adolescence——Offensive jokes about you .130 .920 .020 .810——Questions about private life .060 .900 .040 .740——Invasion of personal space .000 .430 .020 .500——Unwanted touching .000 .140 .030 .200——Offensive materials .010 .280 .010 .140——Physical assault .020 .100 .000 .070—Latent Class Probabilities .329 .097 .429 .145—N 242 71 315 107—Conditional Latent Class Probabilities .773 .227 .747 .253Adulthood——Offensive jokes about you .170 .820 .150 .780——Questions about private life .190 .930 .230 .810——Invasion of personal space .050 .420 .080 .750——Unwanted touching .020 .140 .030 .350——Offensive materials .030 .160 .040 .150——Physical assault .010 .090 .000 .070—Latent Class Probabilities .299 .132 .391 .178—N 219 97 286 131—Conditional Latent Class Probabilities .693 .307 .687 .313

Query: All of the other ASA jounals we do want whole numbers, when appearing in a columnof decimals, to be centered rather than decimal aligned. Please confirm that the abovestyle is what you want as ASR’s standard.�



the observed data.13 Those in the high harass-ment classes have higher probabilities of expe-riencing every behavior. Although it may bedefensible to characterize these classes as mark-ing the presence or absence of sexual harass-ment, we label them “high” and “low” ratherthan “harassed” and “non-harassed” becausemany of those in the low classes have a non-zeroprobability of exposure to many of the behav-iors.

Among the adolescent females in Table 3, 107respondents (about 25 percent) are categorizedwithin the high harassment class. In adulthood,this number increases to 131 women (about 31percent). Female respondents in the high harass-ment classes in adolescence and in adulthoodhave a high probability (ranging from .50 to.81) of exposure to the first three behaviors,including offensive jokes, intrusive questions,and invasion of personal space. In addition, theseverity of harassment seems to increase overtime for females. As they enter adulthood, thosein the high harassment classes have a muchgreater probability of experiencing core sexu-al harassment markers, such as invasion of per-sonal space, where the probability increasesfrom .50 to .75, and unwanted touching, wherethe probability increases from .20 to .35.Although the overall number in the high harass-ment class increases, the probabilities of expe-riencing the other behaviors remain relativelystable from adolescence to adulthood.

Among the adolescent males in our surveydata, 71 respondents (about 23 percent) are inthe high harassment class, relative to 97 adultmales (about 31 percent). Similar to females,males in the high harassment classes have ahigh probability of experiencing offensive jokes,intrusive questions, and invasion of personalspace. Unlike females, however, the likelihoodof experiencing the classic markers—invasionof personal space and unwanted touching—does not increase in the high harassment classas males enter adulthood. Yet, for males andfemales in the low harassment classes, the prob-

ability of exposure to most behaviors increas-es in adulthood.

It is noteworthy that adults in the low harass-ment classes have a non-trivial probability ofexperiencing offensive jokes and unwantedquestions about their private lives (.15 and .23for females and .17 and .19 for males). Whilethese behaviors may indeed be unwelcome, theyoften prove insufficient to legally establish ahostile work environment sexual harassmentclaim (Vento 2001). Nevertheless, offensivejokes or intrusive questions are often taken asevidence of hostile work environment sexualharassment when they occur among a “pletho-ra of offensive incidents” (Hall v. GusConstruction, 842 F.2d 1015 [8th Cir. 1988]).We found a similar pattern in our interviews:several participants described work settings inwhich sexual joking and intrusive questionswere the norm but they did not consider thesebehaviors to constitute sexual harassment. Pam(names and other identif iers have beenchanged), who worked as a waitress during highschool and afterward, reported offensive jokes,intrusive questions, and invasion of personalspace on the job and was categorized in ourhigh harassment latent class. She told us the fol-lowing:

It was just kind of accepted. There, people feltfree to pretty much say whatever they wanted .|.|.I worked with a host, a male host, who was a lit-tle bit older and I got a lot of questions, he wouldask me a lot of questions. And looking back at it,it wasn’t appropriate.

When surveyed, Liz, a middle-class whitewoman, reported no harassing behaviors duringher adolescent period. When interviewed, how-ever, she discussed working as a lifeguard in asexually charged environment during this time:

There was tons of, lots of, lots of sexual talkthroughout everything. But everybody enjoyed itand joked about it. I don’t think anybody wasoffended, although it probably could have beenoffensive.

Though neither Pam nor Liz considered theseexperiences to be sexual harassment at the time,both suggest that, in retrospect, their experi-ences may have been problematic. This is con-sistent with research on the adolescentworkplace as a setting for learning about adultwork roles (Mortimer 2003). As Pam and Lizhave gained age and experience, they have per-haps developed a more nuanced sense for dis-



13 A combination of affirmative responses to threeindicators (jokes, remarks, and gossip about therespondent; intrusive questions; and invasion of per-sonal space) was the most common or second mostcommon response pattern assigned to the highharassment class for all four groups.



tinguishing problematic workplace conduct.While it is possible that Pam and Liz wouldstill not define these particular experiences assexual harassment, even if they happened today,the responses of both women indicate anincreased awareness about potentially prob-lematic workplace conduct that seems to havecome with age.

We should also note that males who experi-ence offensive joking may in fact interpret thesejokes as a form of male bonding, or “doingmasculinity,” rather than harassment (Connell1995; Quinn 2002). Nevertheless, our latentclass results and interview data suggest that notall men experience offensive joking as an enjoy-able form of male bonding. Rick, who workedin a printing warehouse, reported sexual harass-ment on the survey and was classified in ourhigh harassment latent class. He explained thatmale coworkers regularly joked in a way thatmade him uncomfortable: “There were lots ofreally awful jokes—gay jokes, sex jokes.” Ricksaid his coworkers knew he was disturbed by thejoking: “Sometimes they would just do it just tobug me.” Rick said, “They wouldn’t quit. They’dtell jokes just ’cause they knew it irritated thecrap out of me.” Rick said he would haveprotested more about the joking but, “they has-sled me enough as it was and I think if I’d saidsomething it would have been even worse. So Ithink the reason I didn’t really ever say anythingwas ’cause I just knew they’d even lay into iteven more.” Rick handled the offensive jokingby listening to music all day with headphones.In Rick’s words, he “literally tuned out.” Rick’sstrategy of tuning out to avoid offensive inter-actions with coworkers suggests that the jokingwas not a bonding experience for him.Eventually, Rick quit his job out of concernthat he “was gonna get beat up” by the cowork-ers who participated in the offensive joking.

Although the harassment did not becomephysical in Rick’s case, other men reportedmore physical workplace conduct. Jerry is awhite male grouped into our latent behavioralclass after his survey responses indicated offen-sive jokes, intrusive questions, and invasion ofpersonal space. He did not report that he con-sidered these behaviors sexual harassment.Nevertheless, he described his shock at beinggroped by a male coworker while working in acorrectional facility:

[He] grabbed my butt. Like, not like a—likegrabbed my—And I—.|.|. I freaked. I’m like, “You

don’t—you know, you don’t do that.” You justdon’t [do] that. One, we’re at, this is the workplace.And two, you don’t, you don’t know me. You don’tknow anything about me. You don’t|.|.|. You don’tdo that. Well, I freaked out. And, you know, andlike, my friends, like, God they were on me.|.|. .

When asked whether he would call the expe-rience sexual harassment, Jerry told us this:

I would say yes, because it wasn’t like I was, Iwanted that grab. I wasn’t, like, advertising. Iwasn’t|.|.|. I don’t know. I guess my opinion is thatthe workplace should be the workplace. It shouldn’tbe .|.|. all the grab-assin’.

Like Rick, Jerry makes it clear that his expe-rience could not be described as consensualmale bonding. Instead, the incident called Jerry’smasculinity into question. Other male cowork-ers taunted him by saying (in a sing-song voice),“He likes you!” This response by Jerry’s cowork-ers suggests that hegemonic masculinity is priv-ileged at the correctional facility. For Jerry,being the subject of an unwanted grab was justthe first step in his harassment experience. Asa result of the grab, his own adherence to theprivileged model of masculinity was questioned.

TESTING SEX AND AGE DIFFERENCES IN THE

BEHAVIORAL SEXUAL HARASSMENT SYNDROME

Taken as a whole, Table 3 and our interviewssuggest potentially important gender differ-ences as well as similarities in the behavioralsexual harassment syndrome. We next consid-er whether these differences are statistically orpractically significant. We fit a series of simul-taneous latent class models to learn exactly howthe behavioral sexual harassment syndromevaries by sex and age, following McCutcheon(1987). After first imposing a single equalityconstraint on each item individually (tablesavailable from authors), we located group dif-ferences by successively adding constraints andexamining the fit of the models.

We first compare males with females in ado-lescence and adulthood in Tables 4a and 4b.For the adolescents, all items differ signifi-cantly by sex except intrusive questions andexposure to offensive materials. Adult men andwomen have similar harassment experiences,however, with the important exception of twocore indicators: invasion of personal space andunwanted touching. Women have greater expo-sure than men to these classic markers, even





after they have already been categorized intohigh and low harassment classes. These resultsestablish that the behavioral sexual harassmentsyndrome differs by sex and identify the behav-iors that distinguish the sexes. The final con-straint in the restricted complete homogeneitymodel provides a test of whether males andfemales are equally distributed across the two

classes. Contrary to our expectations, we findno gender difference in the probability of assign-ment to the high harassment class. A similar pro-portion of males and females thus experienceunwanted sexual content at work, but its char-acter differs by gender.

Tables 4c and 4d offer similar tests of across-age equality for females and males, respec-



Table 4. Nested Latent Class Models Testing Sex and Age Equality in Sexual Harassment

df L2

L2 df Difference Difference

a. Male/female differences in adolescence—Unrestricted, Heterogeneous Model 093.23 102—Partial Homogeneity Models——Questions about private life 097.05 104 2 3.82——Offensive materials 100.92 106 2 3.87——Invasion of personal space 106.02 107 1 5.10*——Physical assault 112.80 109 2 6.78*——Unwanted touching 124.23 110 1 11.43***——Offensive jokes about you 139.59 112 2 15.36***—Restricted, Complete Homogeneity Model 140.24 114 2 .65b. Male/female differences in adulthood—Unrestricted, Heterogeneous Model 116.19 101—Partial Homogeneity Models——Offensive jokes about you 116.47 103 2 .28——Questions about private life 119.10 105 2 2.63——Offensive materials 119.47 107 2 .37——Physical assault 122.87 108 1 3.40——Invasion of personal space 146.76 110 2 23.89***——Unwanted touching 156.96 112 2 10.20*—Restricted, Complete Homogeneity Model 158.81 114 2 1.85c. Adolescent/adult differences for females—Unrestricted, Heterogeneous Model 105.95 102—Partial Homogeneity Models——Physical assault 105.96 103 1 0——Unwanted touching 111.29 105 2 5.33——Offensive materials 115.88 107 2 4.59——Invasion of personal space 125.73 108 1 9.85**——Offensive jokes about you 135.49 110 2 9.76**——Questions about private life 154.72 112 2 19.23***—Restricted, Complete Homogeneity Model 187.14 115 3 32.42***d. Adolescent/adult differences for males—Unrestricted, Heterogeneous Model 103.42 101—Partial Homogeneity Models——Physical assault 104.25 103 2 .83——Offensive jokes about you 107.26 105 2 3.01——Offensive materials 110.71 107 2 3.45——Unwanted touching 115.56 108 1 4.85*——Invasion of personal space 121.98 110 2 6.42*——Questions about private life 139.42 112 2 17.44***—Restricted, Complete Homogeneity Model 150.61 114 2 11.19**

* p < .05; ** p < .01; *** p < .001



tively. We find significant differences betweenadolescence and adulthood in the probabilityof intrusive questions and invasion of person-al space, and the probabilities increase mostprecipitously for females. Unlike males,females differ across life course stage in theconditional probability of exposure to offensivejokes (with the probability rising for those inthe low harassment class). Perhaps most impor-tantly, the final tests show significant increas-es in the probability of assignment to the highharassment class between adolescence andadulthood.

To summarize the results thus far, we iden-tify a coherent sexual harassment syndromewithin all 4 groups, as indicated by the supe-rior fit of the 2-class models. Nevertheless,we find that this syndrome varies by age andsex, with females and adults more likely thanmales and adolescents to report core markers.Of course, these behavioral indicators cannotspeak to our hypotheses about legal con-sciousness and the association between sub-jective and behavioral harassment. Ourinterviews suggest that some degree of work-place sexuality is common, though the extentto which it is understood as enjoyable or prob-lematic varies. Therefore, we next considerhow our subjective sexual harassment itemmaps onto the statistical latent classes.

BEHAVIORAL SYNDROME AND SUBJECTIVE

HARASSMENT

Table 5 cross classifies respondents’perceptionsof sexual harassment with their statistical assign-ment to the behavioral latent classes. Theseresults are not intended to establish the criteri-on validity of the latent syndrome, but ratherthey are meant to test hypotheses about genderdifferences in consciousness of sexual harass-ment. If men experience behavioral sexualharassment but do not count themselves amongthose eligible to name such experiences sexualharassment, this should be reflected in a lowercorrelation between the behavioral syndromeand the subjective harassment item for men rel-ative to women. As Table 5 shows, fewer thanhalf of the respondents in either class definedtheir experiences as sexual harassment. About41 percent of those in the high harassment classsaid that they would consider their experiencesto be sexual harassment, relative to 14 percentin the low harassment class.14 Table 5 elaborates



Table 5. Appraisal of Sexual Harassment by Latent Sexual Harassment Syndrome

Self-appraisal ofLow Sexual High Sexual

HarassmentHarassment Harassment Total

n (%) n (%) n (%)

Overall*—Was Not Sexual Harassment 375 (86%)0 170 (59%)0 545 (76%)0—Was Sexual Harassment 059 (14%)0 117 (41%)0 176 (24%)0—Total 434 (100%) 287 (100%) 721 (100%)Female**—Was Not Sexual Harassment 195 (84%)0 085 (47%)0 280 (68%)0—Was Sexual Harassment 037 (16%)0 095 (53%)0 132 (32%)0—Total 232 (100%) 180 (100%) 412 (100%)Male***—Was Not Sexual Harassment 180 (89%)0 085 (79%)0 265 (86%)0—Was Sexual Harassment 022 (11%)0 022 (21%)0 044 (14%)0—Total 202 (100%) 107 (100%) 309 (100%)

*** chi square: 69.126 (1 df); gamma: .63*** chi square: 63.142 (1 df); gamma: .71*** chi square: 05.356 (1 df); gamma: .36

14 We also conducted a supplementary analysisdefining behavioral harassment solely in terms of thetwo core indicators. This yielded a similar degree ofassociation between subjective harassment and thesecore items (G = .6). Relative to the latent classapproach, however, this stricter behavioral standardplaced 47 percent more people in the low harassmentcategory who told us in their surveys that they hadbeen sexually harassed.



this table by sex to test hypotheses 3 and 4regarding sex differences in legal conscious-ness and perceived harassment. Consistent withour third hypothesis, females in both latentclasses are more likely than males to report thatthey have been sexually harassed. Amongfemales experiencing the behavioral syndrome,53 percent reported they were sexually harassed,relative to 21 percent of males who experiencedthe behavioral syndrome. The large gammacoefficient for females (.71, compared to .36 formales) indicates that their perceptions fit mostclosely with our statistical class assignments,consistent with legal consciousness arguments(Ewick and Silbey 1998) and our fourth hypoth-esis.

Building on these results, our interviews alsosuggest that many men lack a cultural catego-ry or reference point from which to understandtheir experiences with harassing behaviors. Mentended to talk around sexual harassment, oper-ating within a restrictive discourse of “accept-able” masculinity (Lee 2000). For example,rather than directly referencing sexual harass-ment, they often described the harassment ingeneral terms, such as “socially unacceptable”and “a situation,” or they described specificbehaviors such as “grab-assin.” In contrast, mostwomen we interviewed understood individualharassing experiences as part of a broader com-plex of events or as indicative of a larger phe-nomenon having to do with gender and agerelations.

Laurie, a white woman who worked as a wait-ress while attending high school, respondedaffirmatively to the core sexual harassmentitems in the survey as well as the subjectivereport of harassment. She attributed some prob-lems with older men to “generational” differ-ences in interaction, but she clearly identifiedother contact as sexual harassment:

There was physical contact, but it was part of theservice, part of being hospitable, that—and thereare just some that would pat, or want to grab yourcheek, and your face, and that type of—or touchyour hand over and over again. So sometimes it wasjust generational, sometimes it was just sexualharassment. [emphasis added]

The nonchalance with which Laurieexplained that “sometimes it was just sexualharassment” parallels that of other female inter-view participants who tended to describe harass-ment as just another obstacle that they routinelyconfront in their workplaces. Although femaleparticipants were not discounting their own orothers’ actual harassment experiences, most ofthem were cognizant that sexual harassment ispervasive and were comfortable directly refer-encing it.

To test the statistical significance of the gen-der differences observed in the survey data, weestimated logistic regression equations to modelthe interaction of sex and class assignment. Inmodel 1 of Table 6, women are more likely thanmen to perceive that they have been sexuallyharassed. Under the interaction coding, however,women in the low harassment class are no morelikely than men in the low harassment class toview their experiences as sexual harassment,as shown by the non-significant female effectin model 3. The significant product term in thismodel indicates sex differences in the effect ofthe behavioral syndrome on the likelihood ofperceiving sexual harassment. This pattern ofresults is consistent with the idea that maleslack a clear cultural reference point to translatethe constellation of behaviors they report intoa perception of sexual harassment.

An alternative explanation of these findings,however, is that the behavioral syndrome meas-ures something other than sexual harassment.Given the disjuncture between male rates ofperceived harassment (14 percent) and theprevalence of the behavioral syndrome (23 per-



Table 6. Logistic Regression Estimates Predicting Subjective Sexual Harassment (N = 721)

Model 1 Model 2 Model 3

B SE B SE B SE

Female 1.084** .193 0.997** .202 0.440 .288Latent Behavioral Syndrome 1.445** .188 0.750* .329Female*Latent Syndrome 1.023* .403Constant –1.810** .163 –2.470** .201 –2.102** .226

* p < .05; ** p < .01



cent and 31 percent in adolescence and adult-hood, respectively), there is some danger that ourlatent classes may capture non-sexual forms ofharassment or sexual behavior that is not harass-ing. Therefore, we reestimated all models, leav-ing out the two most prevalent, but perhapsleast serious, verbal behaviors—offensive jokes,remarks, or gossip directed at you, and directquestioning about your private life. Overall, ourfindings are robust: the 2-class model providesthe best fit for all four of our groups, and thoseclasses reveal a syndrome of sexual harassment(tables available from authors). Fewer peopleexhibit the behavioral syndrome in these mod-els (8 percent of adolescent males, 9 percent ofadolescent females, 11 percent of adult males,and 16 percent of adult females), which tapmore egregious sexual harassment: for example,the probability of unwanted touching was morethan .4 for all groups and .7 for adult females.Yet the 4-item construct (or an exclusive relianceon the core touching and space indicators) over-looks instances where severe or persistent ver-bal harassment interferes with respondents’ jobsor creates an intimidating atmosphere. Notealso that these latent class probabilities are sig-nif icantly lower than respondents’ ownappraisals of their situations. Nonetheless, withor without these items, the superior fit of the 2-class model suggests that a coherent sexualharassment construct emerges for men and ado-lescents as well as adult women.15

To help assess whether the behavior report-ed on the surveys was explicitly sexual, werelied on our intensive interviews. Male inter-view subjects told us about clients or cowork-ers attempting to kiss them, grab their buttocks,

or touch them in other ways that made themuncomfortable, and telling sexually explicit,misogynistic, or anti-gay jokes. The women weinterviewed similarly described coworkers andmanagers grabbing their buttocks or breasts,“wandering hands” on their knees and innerthighs, attempts to unsnap their bras, kiss, or rubagainst them, persistent questions about their sexhabits and preferences, and other unwanted sex-ual behaviors. In one case, a female workerdescribed regular parties hosted by the compa-ny chief executive officer (CEO) that involvedstrip poker, nude hot-tubbing, and eroticdancers.

In some instances, the interviews suggestedthat workers were themselves unsure whetherspecific workplace interactions were “sexualenough” to count as sexual harassment. James,a white man who has held a variety of blue col-lar jobs, told us his ambivalence in respondingaffirmatively to the survey question about “inva-sion of personal space” but not to the global itemasking about sexual harassment. He thendescribed situations when coworkers and boss-es made him uncomfortable by getting too phys-ically close to him, touching him on the arm orshoulder, or putting an arm around him. Erin,a working class white woman, reported a widerange of harassing behaviors on the surveysand was classified in the high harassment classin both adolescence and adulthood. Shedescribed a situation in which she was initiallyambivalent about a fellow custodian’s behaviortoward her (which included hugs and massages)but came to understand it as sexual harassmentas it started “getting kinda creepy” and heignored her requests to stop. The behavior con-tinued even after a supervisor’s warning:

He [the male custodian] said he was sorry and allthat and then a couple days later or weeks later hetouched me again and I was like, all right. So I told[my boss] again about it. And there was even twooccasions where he actually unsnapped my brawhile we were at work. Yeah, and I was like, allright, that’s it, no more! .|.|. He would laugh aboutit and say, “Ha ha, lookit, I can unsnap your brawith one finger.” I said, “I don’t care how many fin-gers it takes, don’t do it. Don’t ever do it again.”

Our survey data and latent class models thuscomplement the interviews, each revealing howa range of potentially harassing behaviors clus-ters into a syndrome of sexual harassment.



15 As an alternative to our latent class approach, ananonymous reviewer proposed estimating a logisticregression equation predicting the overall self-appraisal of harassment using the individual harass-ing behaviors as predictors. Although the individualbehaviors are very closely correlated, this approachrevealed some interesting patterns that mirror someof the gender differences in the behavioral syndromereported in Table 5. For females, offensive jokes,invasion of personal space, unwanted touching, andoffensive materials are all statistically significantpositive predictors of subjective harassment. Formales, offensive pictures and physical assault aresignificant positive predictors, and invasion of per-sonal space and unwanted touching are statisticallysignificant at p < .1.



SEXUAL HARASSMENT IN ADOLESCENCE AND

ADULTHOOD

Table 7 tests our fifth hypothesis regarding gen-der differences in the continuity of harassmentduring the life course. The table shows a strongassociation between sexual harassment at thetwo stages of the life course: 72 percent ofrespondents who experienced the behavioralsyndrome in adolescence also experienced itas adults. Table 7 shows a correlation betweenbehavioral harassment in adolescence and adult-hood that is stronger for males than for females.The same males are thus targeted at two stagesof the life course, whereas more females are tar-geted for the first time at the adult stage. A full43 percent of females experienced the syndromeat some point ((72 + 71 +35)/415 = .43)—afigure in line with estimates from previous stud-ies (Benson and Thomson 1982; Welsh 1999)—relative to 35 percent of males ((39 + 56 +14)/312=.35).

To test the statistical significance of thesedifferences, we again estimated logistic regres-sion equations, modeling the interactionbetween sex and adolescent class assignmentwith a product term in Table 8. Model 1 showsno significant sex differences in the likelihoodof behavioral harassment in the adult stage.Model 2 shows that the odds of harassment inthe adult stage are ten times higher (e2.326 =10.2) for adolescents who experienced thebehavioral syndrome than for adolescents who

did not. Finally, consistent with hypothesis five,model 3 shows significant sex differences in theeffect of adolescent class assignment on adultclass assignment. The positive female effect inmodel 3 indicates that, among those not target-ed in adolescence, women are more likely thanmen to be targeted as adults. Men who areharassed as adolescents, however, are at greatrisk for harassment as adults: the odds for malesin the high adolescent class to be in the highadult class are 20 times higher (e3.036 = 20.8)than the odds for males in the low adolescentclass. The corresponding odds are lower amongfemales, in part because there are many morenew adult female targets. All adult women areat some risk of sexual harassment and morefemales than males in our sample were target-ed at some point in their lives.

MASCULINITY AND WORKPLACE POWER

Although our individual-level survey data can-not speak to macro-level relationships betweenpower, masculinity, and the cultural meaning ofsexual harassment, we can bring some evidenceto bear on these relationships by examining pat-terns of association between measures of work-place power, gender relations, and sexualharassment. Tables 9 and 10 address our finalhypotheses regarding power and masculinity,reporting logistic regression equations predict-ing the behavioral syndrome and subjectiveharassment. We consider perceived financial



Table 7. Adult Sexual Harassment Syndrome by Adolescent Sexual Harassment Syndrome

Adolescent

Low Sexual High SexualHarassment Harassment Total

n (%) n (%) n (%)

General, Adulta—Low Sexual Harassment 440 (80%)0 049 (28%)0 489 (67%)0.—High Sexual Harassment 111 (20%)0 127 (72%)0 238 (33%)0.—Total 551 (100%) 176 (100%) 727 (100%).Female, Adultb—Low Sexual Harassment 237 (77%)0 035 (33%)0 272 (65.5%).—High Sexual Harassment 072 (23%)0 071 (67%)0 143 (34.5%)—Total 309 (100%) 106 (100%) 415 (100%).Male, Adultc—Low Sexual Harassment 203 (84%)0 014 (20%)0 217 (70%)0.—High Sexual Harassment 039 (16%)0 056 (80%)0 095 (30%)0.—Total 242 (100%) 070 (100%) 312 (100%).

a chi square: 163.890 (1 df); gamma: .82b chi square: 066.677 (1 df); gamma: .74c chi square: 104.634 (1 df); gamma: .91



control and supervisory authority as dimen-sions of workplace power (Appendix 1 showsthe wording of questions and the descriptivestatistics for these items). Consistent with ourmodel, those reporting less financial security aremost likely to experience the behavioral syn-drome, although the positive effect of supervi-sory authority in model 2 is counter to ourexpectations.

Holly, a white woman who was the first andonly female manager at her company, helpedexplain why female supervisors reported highlevels of harassment in our survey. She notedthat her male coworkers had specific expecta-tions about women’s workplace roles. Shedescribes her firm as follows: “[It is] an old-school company. It’s mostly males. Part of theold boys’ club.” Holly also describes how malesubordinates respond to her as a female man-ager:

They joke periodically about this is the first timea woman’s been in a management position theredirectly under the owner and they’ll joke and say,“If we had somebody with balls in this positionwe’d be getting things done.”

A woman’s authority does not immunize herfrom sexual harassment, at least within a culturalcontext in which males hold greater power andauthority. Although Holly reports a range ofharassing behaviors and is classified among thehigh-harassment group in our statistical mod-els, she did not report in the survey that she wassexually harassed.

Apart from workplace power, the attitudesand behaviors regarding gender relations revealone facet of the “marginalized masculinities”(Connell 1995:81) hypothesized to affect per-ceived harassment. As an attitudinal indicator,the survey asked the high school seniors todescribe their beliefs about their spouse work-ing outside the home after they have children.As a behavioral measure, we also indexed theamount of indoor housework that a respondent

does each week during the young adult period.Model 3 presents results from the additivemodel, and model 4 includes the hypothesizedgender relations interactions and an interactionbetween supervisory authority and gender.Model 4 shows that women in supervisory posi-tions and men who do more housework are like-ly to experience the behavioral harassmentsyndrome.

In models predicting subjective harassment,we also include indicators of the two core behav-ioral harassment items. This helps isolate theindependent effects of workplace power andgender relations on perceived harassment fromthe effects of exposure to the behaviors mostcommonly associated with sexual harassment.As noted above, heteronormative masculinityimplies a construction of sex and gender inwhich males are predators or protectors ratherthan targets, which may partially account for lowmale perceptions of sexual harassment.Although the pattern is somewhat weaker inthese models, the results suggest that men withmore egalitarian attitudes toward their spouse’swork patterns may have a broader frame or cul-tural reference point that gives meaning to theirown harassment experiences as a unified con-struct.

To test the robustness and generalizabilityof these findings on an item that more explic-itly references sexual conduct, we report resultsof our General Social Survey (GSS) analysis inTable 10. Sexual harassment is measured in theGSS with a complex single item referencingsexual advances, physical contact, and sexualconversations (see Table 10). This item is use-ful for testing the robustness of YDS resultsbecause it is unlikely to tap nonsexual workplaceconduct and because it was asked of a nation-ally representative adult sample. About 43 per-cent of women and 26 percent of men reportedharassment on this GSS item. These numbers are



Table 8. Logistic Regression Estimates Predicting Sexual Harassment Syndrome in Adulthood (N=727)

Model 1 Model 2 Model 3

B SE B SE B SE

Female 0.190 .160 0.141 .182 0.458* .221Adolescent Latent Syndrome 2.326** .199 3.036** .346Female* Adolescent Syndrome –1.137** .435Constant –0.829** .122 –1.458** .150 –1.649** .175

* p < .05; ** p < .01



somewhat higher than for our YDS global per-ceptions indicator and our latent classes.

The GSS models include an additional sta-tistical control for age because the age range ofrespondents is far wider than the YDS cohortstudy. Younger respondents were more likely toreport harassment in all models despite theirmore limited work histories and reduced expo-sure time, suggesting that younger cohorts mayhave greater consciousness of sexual harass-ment. Otherwise, the GSS results generally par-allel those from the YDS. With regard toworkplace power, people more vulnerable finan-cially and those with more egalitarian viewswere most likely to report harassment. Withregard to behavior in gender relationships, menwho do more housework were again most like-ly to report harassment. These findings lendsome support to the argument that men whobehave in a way that does not match culturalexpectations of heteronormative masculinitymay be targets of harassment. In sum, the sup-plementary GSS analysis bolsters our confi-dence in findings based on YDS data and refinesconclusions about how sexual harassment isrelated to workplace power and gender relations.

TAKING SSTOCK OOF MMACKINNON’SSOCIOCULTURAL MMODEL

The foregoing results suggest that power andmasculinity are linked to harassing behaviorsand perceived sexual harassment. MacKinnon(1979) posits that sexual harassment derives itsmeaning from the social context of power rela-tions in the workplace and in society. Though heranalysis spurred important and credible work,sexual harassment research has been criticizedfor a lack of conceptual clarity (Fitzgerald andShullman 1993; Foulis and McCabe 1997; Patai1998) and methodological rigor (Welsh 1999).Building on MacKinnon’s theory and recentwork on gender and legal consciousness, weformulated and partially tested a general modelof sexual harassment to explain both behav-ioral harassment and subjective perceptions ofharassment. Our results suggest that difficultiesin precisely defining sexual harassment arisebecause the structure and meaning of sexualharassment vary with age and gender. Thoughsexual harassment emerges as a clear behavioralsyndrome across age and gender groups, wefind important differences in the specific behav-iors that each group experiences.

MacKinnon’s theory and more recent femi-nist work suggest that power and masculinityexplain the social distribution of harassmentexperiences. We therefore tested her most basicprediction that females would experience moreharassment than males, extended this model toconsider age-based relations of power, andhypothesized that few males would define theirharassment experiences as sexual harassment.Although male reports of harassment were high-er than we anticipated, we found general supportfor these hypotheses. The female rates of harass-ing behaviors increase in the transition to adult-hood, and male rates are comparatively stable.In fact, for males in the high harassment class-es, the likelihood of facing the classic markersactually declines in adulthood. This finding isconsistent with our prediction that adolescentsare often targeted, in part, because of their rel-ative lack of power in the workplace and thelarger society.

Our GSS results and intensive interviewslend further support to this life course finding.Rachel, a working-class woman of color whoworked in restaurants during high school, con-sulted an attorney after being harassed by anolder male coworker:

He [the supervisor] came for me while I was stand-ing at the drive-through window and he came frombehind and grabbed me. And rubbed up against me.

When asked why she thought her supervisortargeted her, Rachel said the following:

Well, for one I was young. And I was a youngmother. My supervisor seemed to think, “You mustbe a freak or something because you have a childat a young age.”

Age, race, class, and gender are interlockingdimensions of power that produce unequal socialrelationships and interactions (West andFenstermaker 1995). As a young mother andworking-class woman of color, Rachel’s relativelack of power in the workplace, and in societymore generally, may help explain her experienceof sexual harassment. In fact, Rachel herselfpoints to her status as a young mother as expla-nation for the harassment. Her supervisor feltfree to harass her because as an adolescent anda mother she did not adhere to cultural expec-tations for females her age. She continued toexperience harassing behaviors from older malesupervisors after high school, when she workedas a telephone sales representative:







Tab

le 9

.W

orkp

lace

Pow

er, G

ende

r R

elat

ions

, and

Sex

ual H

aras

smen

t (19

99 Y

DS

Dat

a): L

ogis

tic

Reg

ress

ion

Mod

els

Pre

dict

ing

Beh

avio

ral S

yndr

ome

and

Sub

ject

ive

App

rais

al o

fS

exua

l Har

assm

ent

Lat

ent B

ehav

iora

l Syn

drom

e (N

= 5

27)

Sub

ject

ive

Har

assm

ent (

N =

522

)

Mod

el 1

Mod

el 2

Mod

el 3

Mod

el 4

Mod

el 1

Mod

el 2

Mod

el 3

Mod

el 4

Fem

ale

.155

.153

–.06

1–.

717

1.13

3**

1.18

4**

1.03

3**

.662

x(.

191)

(.19

4)(.

226)

(.61

8)(.

251)

(.25

4)(.

283)

(.77

6)C

ore

Beh

avio

ral I

tem

s—

Inva

sion

of

Pers

onal

Spa

ce1.

024*

*1.

008*

*1.

046*

*1.

040*

*x

(.24

6)(.

248)

(.25

1)(.

252)

—U

nwan

ted

Touc

hing

1.16

2**

1.19

7**

1.23

0**

1.24

1**

x(.

343)

(.34

7)(.

350)

(.35

2)W

orkp

lace

Pow

er—

Perc

eive

d fi

nanc

ial c

ontr

ol–.

325*

–.31

4*–.

324*

.142

.139

.136

x(.

129)

(.13

0)(.

131)

(.15

3)(.

153)

(.15

4)—

Sup

ervi

sory

aut

hori

ty.4

06*

.360

†–.

071

.401

†.4

17†

.211

x(.

204)

(.20

6)(.

325)

(.24

1)(.

243)

(.46

0)

Gen

der

Rel

atio

ns a

nd I

nter

acti

on T

erm

s—

Hou

sew

ork

by r

espo

nden

t (10

+ h

ours

).5

05*

.754

*–.

146

.588

x(.

199)

(.34

1)(.

234)

(.47

8)—

Spo

use

shou

ld n

ot w

ork

afte

r ki

ds–.

158

–.28

2–.

428

–.64

6†

x(.

200)

(.23

7)(.

271)

(.37

5)—

Fem

ale*

Sup

ervi

sory

aut

hori

ty.7

34†

.256

x(.

423)

(.54

4)—

Fem

ale*

Hou

sew

ork

–.35

0–.

933†

x(.

421)

(.54

5)—

Fem

ale*

Spo

use

shou

ld n

ot w

ork

.436

.454

x(.

439)

(.54

1)C

onst

ant

–.84

3**

–.04

7.0

54.3

61–2

.329

**–2

.887

**–2

.202

**–1

.997

**x

(.14

8)(.

401)

(.51

6)(.

561)

(.22

9)(.

518)

(.65

4)(.

770)

†p

< .1

0; *

p<

.05;

**

p<

.01



He [the supervisor] would make comments like‘Oh I’d love to see you at Playthings [a local stripclub]’or just little smart comments regarding see-ing me in the nude.

Other interview participants described expe-riences that show how age is tied to workplacepower dynamics. Erin, who also worked inrestaurants during high school, was cornered bya male coworker who was “way older”:

He asked me to go in the freezer and get himsomething. So I went in there and grabbed it andwhen I turned around with the box he was there andhe tried to kiss me. And I was like, “Whoa! Youcan’t kiss me! I don’t like you! I’m only 14!” .|.|.I told him, I said, “No!” (Quotes indicate Erin’sstatements to her coworker.)

Erin explained that her reaction would beeven stronger if the same thing happened today,now that she is in her mid 20s:

I think I’d probably smack the guy in his facemaybe. And say, “Hey!” Being the age that I am.But then I didn’t know any better. I mean, when

you’re 14 and there’s an older man trying to kissyou, you’re kind of flattered. You’re like, “Whoa!He thinks I’m an older woman or something.” Buttoday I’d probably smack him in his face.

Though Erin is clear that she perceived thesituation described above as inappropriate atthe time, and would today as well, her descrip-tion indicates that her youth played a role in theevent. Several of the males we interviewed alsotied age to workplace power dynamics. Cam, anAsian man now in his twenties, noted invasionof personal space and subjective harassment inhis survey responses. Cam was visibly upset(he had never discussed the incident before)when describing how an older female client ini-tiated sexual contact with him several yearsbefore:

She asked me to direct her to stop someplace andtalk|.|.|. And I didn’t know what to do. So I stopped[the car] and, I mean, she intended to have a sex-ual relationship with me. She touched me [indi-cates by touching mouth, chest, and inner thigh],



Table 10. Workplace Power, Gender Relations, and Sexual Harassment (1996 GSS Data): Logistic RegressionModels Predicting Reported Sexual Harassment

Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4

Gender .896** .898** .814** 1.670**x (.124) (.124) (.130) (.573)Age in years –.014** –.012** –.009* –.009*x (.004) (.004) (.004) (.004)Workplace Power—Satisfaction with financial situation –.270** –.271** –.275**x (.081) (.081) (.081)—Supervisory authority .248† .223 .041x (.148) (.149) (.234)Gender Relations—Share of housework done by respondent .052 .167*x (.055) (.082)—Wife should help husband’s career rather than her own –.254** –.186x (.087) (.153)—Female*Supervisory authority .303x (.305)—Female*Housework –.204†

x (.110)—Female*Wife should help husband’s career –.093x (.183)Constant –.616** –.247 –.004 –.483x (.186) (.234) (.336) (.485)

Note: The item is worded as follows: “Sometimes at work people find themselves the object of sexual advances,propositions, or unwanted sexual discussions from co-workers or supervisors. The advances sometimes involvephysical contact and sometimes just involve sexual conversations. Has this ever happened to you?”† p < .10; * p < .05; ** p < .01



she asked me if I would kiss, and I said, “No. No,I don’t want to do it because you are a marriedwoman.” And she said she didn’t care because shehas an older husband and she wants someone whois young and who takes chances. I told her, “No.I don’t want to do that. It’s wrong.” .|.|. And she lit-erally scolded me. She said, “Well, you are a veryintelligent person in some ways, and very smart,but you’re still dumb. You’re a very dumb per-son.”

Other interview participants reported ado-lescent work settings in which sexual joking,physical horseplay, and more serious harassingbehaviors were common. As Rachel’s case illus-trates, some adolescents pursue legal remedieswhen they identify such conduct as sexualharassment.

Although we observed sexual harassmentamong adolescents and males, we confirmedMacKinnon’s prediction that adult women aremost often targeted. Today, prevailing culturalunderstandings of sexual harassment point toadult women as the primary targets, and wefound this group most likely to interpret harass-ing behaviors as sexual harassment. Thoughfemales experiencing harassment in adoles-cence were also quite likely to be targeted inadulthood, this pattern is even stronger formales. Men experiencing harassment appear tohave less powerful workplace positions andmore egalitarian gender relationships than othermales, but further research is needed to under-stand whether the males who are targeted con-form to dominant cultural constructions ofmasculinity. Our GSS analysis and interviewdata suggest that Connell’s conception of “mar-ginal masculinities” may prove useful in eluci-dating these relationships. For example, maleinterview participants discussed sexual orien-tation in relation to sexual harassment across avariety of contexts.

Our application of a latent class approach tothe measurement of sexual harassment pursuedLazarsfeld and Henry’s (1968:3) classic ques-tion: “whether the patterns of covariation weobserve may not tell us something about thedefining nature of a concept.” Our analysisshowed that sexual harassment experiences arebest described by simple 2-class models thatappear to identify a behavioral syndrome. About25 percent of adolescents and 30 percent ofadults were statistically assigned to the highsexual harassment classes in our 6-item models,with about 8 to 16 percent assigned to the high

harassment class in the more restrictive 4-itemmodels. Many others experience at least somedegree of unwanted sexual behavior at work; forno group did we find a “non-harassed” latentclass. We also observed that invasive behav-iors, such as unwanted touching, usually occurwith more common workplace problems suchas offensive jokes. Although males and femalesboth experience sexual harassment, we findimportant differences in the latent structure ofthe behavioral syndrome. Moreover, the behav-ioral syndrome is itself more closely correlat-ed with “subjective” perceptions for femalesthan for males.

Although MacKinnon initially suggested thatharassment of males would be unlikely (1979),her observations led to the general propositionthat expressions of gender connote differentamounts of power in the social production ofsexual harassment. Our interviews provide someimportant clues in this regard, though furtherqualitative work is needed to show how domi-nant expressions of gender, such as heteronor-mative masculinity, may be privileged in theworkplace (Lee 2000; Quinn 2002).Nevertheless, our analysis resolves some of thetension in debates about whether men andwomen experience sexual harassment as a sim-ilarly cohesive behavioral syndrome andwhether they are subject to similar forms ofsexual harassment. Indeed, more women appearto experience a virulent form of sexual harass-ment than men, as indicated by their greaterlikelihood of facing unwanted touching andviolations of personal space, the classic mark-ers of sexual harassment. Yet, for those maleswho were targeted in adolescence, we also founda high degree of life course continuity and repeatharassment in adulthood.

CONCLUSION

Today, sexual harassment occupies a peculiarplace in American culture. On the one hand,sexual harassment laws and policies representthe “great success story of contemporary fem-inism,” forever altering workplace relationsbetween the sexes and providing tangible insti-tutions for redressing grievances (Patai 1998:4).On the other, an undercurrent of patronizingskepticism often pervades discussions of thephenomenon. In private conversations and pub-lic discourse, some are asking whether regula-tion of workplace sexual conduct has “gone too





far” and whether the “whole paradigm of sex-ual harassment” should be reconsidered (Talbot2002:95). Moreover, many feminist legal schol-ars are now challenging the very foundations ofsexual harassment law and policy (Abrams1998; Ehrenreich 1999; Schultz 1998, 2003).

We suggest that the public skepticism, main-stream scientific neglect (Sever 1996), and legaldilemmas posed by the phenomenon are causedpartly by untested assumptions about genderand power. We test some of these assumptionswith an analysis of age and gender differencesin the structure and meaning of harassmentexperiences and find evidence largely consistentwith feminist models. We generalizeMacKinnon’s (1979) theory of the sexualharassment of working women to hypothesizethat dominant constructions of heteronorma-tive masculinity also shape the harassment expe-riences of other workers. These expectationsare largely supported, although more evidenceis needed on several key points, particularlythose relating to legal consciousness of sexualharassment.

In general, we found it difficult to tap men’sexperiences with sexual harassment, whetherusing intensive interviews or survey methods.In some instances in which sexual touchingoccurred, the men said that they had never dis-cussed these incidents with anyone prior to ourinterview. These men seem uncomfortable usingexisting cultural categories or vocabulary indiscussing their experiences with harassingbehaviors. We need better measures to learnhow the workplace is gendered for men andwomen and to test whether men who do not

adhere to dominant constructions of masculin-ity are more vulnerable to harassment.

In conclusion, the evidence supportsMacKinnon’s basic propositions that sexualharassment derives from power and masculin-ity—for males and adolescents as well as foradult women. Moreover, the high adolescentrates and clear harassment syndromes weobserve across age and sex groups indicate thatsexual harassment could be a general socialphenomenon. Nevertheless, differences in expe-riences remain, and adult women are most sub-ject to classic markers. A model of workplacepower and gender stereotyping appears mostconsistent with the social distribution of harass-ing behaviors as well as the age and sex differ-ences observed in their meaning to targets.

Christopher Uggen is Associate Professor ofSociology, Life Course Center affiliate, and McKnightPresidential Fellow at the University of Minnesota(www.soc.umn.edu/~uggen). He studies the sociolo-gy of crime, law, and deviance, and his current proj-ects involve studies of felon voting rights, sexualharassment, and the work, family, and civic life of for-mer criminal offenders. With Jeff Manza, he is coau-thor of Locked Out: Felon Disenfranchisement andAmerican Democracy (Oxford University Press,forthcoming).

Amy Blackstone is Assistant Professor of Sociologyat the University of Maine. Her research interestsinclude sociology of gender, social movements, andactivism and other forms of civic participation. Inaddition to her work on the current project withChristopher Uggen on sexual harassment, herresearch includes a study of the social constructionof gender and politics in the breast cancer and anti-rape movements.



APPENDIX

Table 1. Variable Descriptions and Descriptive Statistics for Youth Development Study and General SocialSurvey Workplace Power and Gender Relations Items

XVariable

Youth Development Study—Workplace Power——Perceived financial control

——Supervisory authority

xDescription

I feel I am in control of myfinancial situation.

Do you supervise other work-ers on your job?

Mean(s.d.)

2.78(.76).29

(.46)

xCoding

1 = Strongly disagree4 = Strongly agree0 = No1 = Yes

(Continued on next page)





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—Gender Relations——Spouse should not work after kids

——Housework by respondent (10+ hours)

General Social Survey—Workplace Power——Satisfaction with financial situation

.——Supervisory authority

——Age—Gender Relations——Wife should help husband’s career rather ———than her own

——Share of housework done by respondent

If you have children, do youthink that your spouse willwork outside the home?

Hours per week spent onindoor household chores

So far as you and your familyare concerned, would yousay that you are pretty wellsatisfied with your presentfinancial situation, more orless satisfied, or not satis-fied at all?

In your job, do you superviseanyone who is directlyresponsible to you?

Respondent’s age

It is more important for a wifeto help her husband’s careerthan to have one herself.

How much of the workaround your home do youdo (including cooking,grocery shopping, anddoing little repair jobs)?

1.34(.56)

41%

2.01(.74)

20%

45.38(16.97)

2.01(.74)

3.66(1.18)

1 = Yes2 = Maybe3 = No0 = Fewer than 101 = 10 or more

1 = Not satisfied at all2 = More or less —satisfied3 = Pretty well —satisfied

1 = No2 = Yes

in years

1 = Strongly disagree4 = Strongly agree

1 = Very little or none5 = All

Table 1. (Continued).

X MeanVariable Description Coding (s.d.)



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Sexual HHarassment as aa GGendered EExpression oof PPowerusers.cla.umn.edu/~uggen/Uggen_Blackstone_ASR_04.pdf · MacKinnon notes that men’s victimization of women “is sufficiently

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