From News-Medical.net:
Issues of power, workplace culture and the interpretation of verbal and non-verbal communication associated with sexual harassment were the focus of a study by Debbie Dougherty, assistant professor of communication in the College of Arts and Science at the University of Missouri-Columbia. Working with a large healthcare organization in the Midwest, Dougherty examined the question: why does sexual harassment occur?
“Power,” she said. “It was the common answer. It came up repeatedly. However, what I found were multiple definitions of power.”
Those definitions varied by gender. Dougherty’s assessment was based on the opinions and perceptions of 23 participants (11 women and 12 men) representing a range of hierarchical levels and job types within the healthcare organization. The average participant’s age was 38, and each participant had been employed by the company an average of seven years. None were doctors. After being placed in discussion groups, they openly discussed sexual harassment and confirmed what some researchers have argued – sexual harassment is more about power than sex, Dougherty said. In fact, moderators never asked participants to address the issue of power.
The findings indicate that:
- For men, power comes from formal authority, and they view sexual harassers as primarily managers and supervisors. “I have power, so I sexually harass,” Dougherty said, citing a reason for such actions. Men acknowledged that coworkers could sexually harass one another, but co-worker harassment was mainly seen as a “misunderstanding.”
- Women view power in a more complex manner; formal authority is but one dimension in male-dominated workplaces. Power to women is a negotiated process between the harasser and harassed. Dougherty said women often perceive all members of an organization as possible harassers – thinking it can be initiated by any person who is perceived as having power.
- There is a discrepancy regarding the types of actions, behavior and communication that men and women consider sexually offensive. They also differ in their views of how power in the workplace can contribute to sexual harassment. In the study, the participants never recognized that they defined power differently, Dougherty said.
“The fact that men and women were using the same word to describe different behaviors may contribute to the continued existence of sexual harassment,” she said. “So if a man thinks that sexual harassment only comes from a supervisor, he may feel free to make sexual comments to a female coworker. The female coworker is likely to see the sexual comments as a quest for power and label it as sexual harassment.”
The study, “Gendered Constructions of Power During Discourse About Sexual Harassment: Negotiating Competing Meanings,” was published in Sex Roles.
For a law school related take on sexual harassment, read this article by Linda Krieger. Here is an excerpt:
… By late last week, the public inquiry had shifted from the sordid details of the encounter to whether the situation was in some way symptomatic of deeper structural problems with Boalt’s approach to sex discrimination, sexual harassment and sexual assault. By week’s end, the chancellor’s office had publicly announced that it would review the effectiveness of Berkeley’s sexual harassment policies, procedures and educational programs for students, staff, faculty and administrators.
This is good. As one of the Boalt Hall faculty members in whom this young woman confided before she eventually filed her complaint, I vehemently disagree with those who claim that this incident demonstrates that “the process works.”
This is working? As a teacher who sat with this student in my office as she wept, who watched protectively from a distance as she barely made it through her law school graduation, as a member of a faculty that has just lost a talented dean and colleague, and as a sex-discrimination scholar and lawyer who last summer could not figure out, even after many phone calls and much Cal Web site searching, what I was legally required to do with this information if the student chose not to report, I have a really hard time viewing this as “the system working.”
As Justice Sandra Day O’Connor once observed, the primary objective of civil rights laws, including laws relating to sexual harassment, is not to provide redress after the fact, but to prevent harm from occurring in the first place. If prevention is the goal, “the system” failed miserably here. …
–Ann Bartow
