Organizational context and sexual harassment: A question of power, gender, or rights consciousness

This study looks at two key issues relating to sexual harassment. First, the factors which lead to increased risk for being targeted for sexual harassment, and second, the employer reporting on rates of sexual harassment. While a focal concern of sexual harassment law and legal reasoning has been the work context and employers, these concepts have received limited attention in the scholarly literature on sexual harassment. I improve on the handful of earlier studies that in fact incorporate organizational contexts in to their explanatory models in several ways. Unlike these studies, I use a nationally representative sample of US-based organizations and a sample of adult Americans. I also use several contemporary theoretical constructs to explain sexual harassment occurrence and employer reactions. I contend that the gendered character of contemporary bureaucratic organizations, the civil rights consciousness of corporate officials, and management imperative to protect the organization from liability affect employer perceptions of sexual harassment. I also contend that gendered organizations and a work environment that is not conducive to legal consciousness increase employees' risk for sexual harassment. I use data from the 2002 National Organizations Survey and the 2002 General Social Survey to examine these issues. The findings of the study generally confirm the usefulness of gender theory and the legal consciousness model for understanding sexual harassment. While the study failed to support several of the hypotheses on sexual harassment occurrence that were based on the existing sexual harassment theories, the results proved the usefulness of the more recent gender theory to explain sexual harassment occurrence. The study also suggests that power theory may be a more useful tool for understanding sexual harassment occurrence than the legal consciousness model. The findings also suggest that corporate officials in gendered organizations may be more likely to underreport sexual harassment. The findings also indicate that worker empowerment schemes and employer commitment to affirmative action mandates and due process protections may lead to increased legal consciousness among corporate officials which may in turn encourage them to view sexual harassment as a serious problem.