Speak Up! Blog

I stumbled across reports today at both MSNBC and Science Daily about the first ever longitudinal study of gender and sexual harassment. ((In case you are unfamiliar with the term, “longitudinal” means the study was done over a long period of time.) The study is called, “A Longitudinal Analysis of Gender, Power and Sexual Harassment in Young Adulthood.” It seems the researchers followed a group of over 1000 people from ninth grade til their 29th and 30th year birthdays. The researchers found, well, basically the same stuff that most of us have been saying: that women, gays, and feminine men are the ones most likely to be sexually harassed throughout their lives–that is, people who do not look or behave like a traditional white male (asshole).

What is new here is that the researchers found that women who become supervisors were the most likely of all to be targeted. They reported, “…nearly fifty percent of women supervisors, but only one-third of women who do not supervise others, reported sexual harassment in the workplace. In more conservative models with stringent statistical controls, women supervisors were 137 percent more likely to be sexually harassed than women who did not hold managerial roles. While supervisory status increased the likelihood of harassment among women, it did not significantly impact the likelihood for men.

“This study provides the strongest evidence to date supporting the theory that sexual harassment is less about sexual desire than about control and domination,” said Heather McLaughlin, a sociologist at the University of Minnesota and the study’s primary investigator. ‘Male co-workers, clients and supervisors seem to be using harassment as an equalizer against women in power.’” Source: Science Daily

One woman reported, “I was being harassed. I was being undermined,” she explains. “I think they were intimidated by me, and this was the only way to get power back.”

Another woman reported, “The higher you were, the more of a power trip it became for men, and sometimes I thought they were not even aware of what they said. Source:MSNBC

Basically, this means that as women move up the ladder in their companies, the men they work with simply can’t handle it, and work harder and harder to objectify and degrade them, to psychologically bring them back down below the glass ceiling where they belong. McLaughlin believe this study provides further proof that people are not accepting women in positions of power.

The MSNBC report is more in depth, but the Science Daily report has links to other interesting articles on gender and harassment. Check out both of them