Abstract
Sexual harassment may be perceived by different individuals differently depending on their circumstances and the other parties involved. This experiment aimed at determining the effect of the status of the harasser on the perception of sexual harassment by the victim.
The experiment was carried out in an academic setting where it involved professors, teaching assistants and students as participants in the study. The circumstances under which sexual harassment occurred as perceived by the victim were particularly analyzed. The study was based on the hypothesis that the perception that sexual harassment had occurred increased as the status of the harasser increased.
Introduction
Most organizations have sexual harassment policies that are defined in terms of the behaviors that constitute sexual harassment. It is important to understand if variables other than the behavior of the harasser influence people’s perceptions of sexual harassment. Tata (1993) found that several factors including harasser status affected perceptions of sexual harassment in a work setting.
The purpose of the present experiment was to investigate the effect of the status of the harasser on perceptions of sexual harassment in an academic setting. I hypothesized that as the status of the harasser increases, so is the perception that sexual harassment has occurred.
Method
The experiments to determine the effect of the status of the harasser on the perceptions of sexual harassment was done in an academic setting involving students, teaching assistants and professors. The age, the number of times the harassment had occurred and the likely reason of sexual harassment were recorded from various participants in the study.
In all the studies, sixty three participants from each of the three categories of participants were studied. The study particularly considered the gender and the race of the participants and the effect the two had on sexual harassment of the victims.
After collecting data using questionnaires and direct interviews from the various participants in the study, the data was then analyzed using well known methods of data analysis. The results were then tabulated the analyses presented in form of graphs that were easy to interpret.
Results
The frequencies of sexual harassment based on gender indicated that more females encountered sexual harassment compared to their male counterparts. The frequencies of sexual harassment based on race indicated that Hispanics had experienced the most incidents of sexual harassment, followed by Asians, Native Americans then blacks in that order.
Lowest incidences of sexual harassment were recorded among the whites. These results were consistent for all the three categories of participants. Descriptive statistics for all the three categories of the participants in the study indicated the largest deviation among professors, followed by the teaching assistants then lastly the students.
The results were then analyzed and presented using graphs. The first category of graph analyzed the sexually harassed individuals against their status, that is, whether they are students, teaching assistants or professors. The results of the analysis indicated that more proffesors had been sexually harassed, followed by teaching assistants then students.
The second category of graph analyzed the reasons that led to the sexual harassment against the status of the individual participants. The results still indicated that for each of reason leading to sexual harassment, more professors had been victims of sexual harassment, followed by teaching assistants then lastly students.
Discussion
From the experiment, the professor category was found to have experienced the most incidences of sexual harassment, followed by teaching assistants, then students. This was mainly due to the age factor. Professors were of a more advanced age, followed by the teaching assistants then finally the students.
Having lived for longer meant they had been through more circumstances that warranted sexual harassment. The fact that the professors have experienced more sexual harassment can also be explained by the change in times. During the earlier days, societies were very conservative and hence the cases of harassment were rare.
The behavior that was portrayed by the people of the yesteryears was not as aggressive as that we see today. The images, actions and the behavior of the generations today tend to be very sexually oriented. Therefore, the older people might misunderstand the actions of some of the younger people as amounting to sexual harassment.
The same case is true as the age brackets differ. Younger generations, having been exposed to too much sex from a young age may not realize that some actions towards them actually amount to sexual harassment. This is because the line between flirtation and sexual harassment has become thinner.
Considering the gender, more women reported sexual harassment compared to men. This was mainly because; women are more susceptible to sexual harassment than men. In some cases, women may consider accidental contact with men as sexual harassment, a situation that a man would not actually consider as sexual harassment.
Finally, the race of the participants also determined whether they were sexually harassed or not. The issue of race was quite sensitive in the study since some races would feel discriminated, therefore considering sexual harassment in more circumstances than other races. Generally, Hispanics reported more harassment both by members of their own race and by members of the other races.
Hispanics were reportedly the most frequent harassers against all the other races. There was a general perception by members of given races to consider sexual harassment more from members of other races than their own. Hispanics and blacks in America have a culture that is against “snitching”.
This is reporting what another person has done to the authorities even if it was a crime. This culture has caused many cases of violent crime to be unreported to the police and thus, the commission of these crimes continues to proliferate. Experts have drawn a line between commission of violent crimes and rape.
They have promoted the theory that these crimes are about the assertion of power, thus a violent person is very likely to commit a rape. This fact may be the reason why Hispanics report the largest number of sexual harassment cases as they usually go unreported and thus unpunished hence ensuring the repetition of the crimes over and over again and in turn incurring more victims.
Reference
Tata, J. (1993). The structure and phenomenon of sexual harassment: Impact of category of sexually harassing behavior, gender and hierarchical level. United Kingdom: Blackwell Publishing.