Department
Psychological Science
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
6-1-2025
Embargo Period
7-21-2025
Abstract
Victims of sexual harassment report facing barriers and retaliation for reporting their sexual harassment. The current study assessed one potential reason for these issues: perceptions of sexual harassment events. Participants (N = 427) read about different sexual harassment events and were told that the woman in the event worked with a masculine (e.g., EMT, school police officer, plumber) or feminine job (e.g., nurse, teacher, cleaning staff). Across three different sexual harassment claims (e.g., unwanted romantic attention, physical groping, being shown sexually explicit images), participants reported that women in masculine jobs were less prototypical women than women in feminine jobs. Furthermore, these perceptions of prototypicality impacted how participants viewed the victim’s sexual harassment event. The less a person views a victim as a typical woman, the less likely they are to label the victim’s experience as sexual harassment. The results suggest that perceptions of sexual harassment are directly impacted by how people view a victim. Implications around prototypes of women and sexual harassment claims are discussed.
Journal Title
Behavioral Sciences
Journal ISSN
2076-328X
Volume
15
Issue
6
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
10.3390/bs15060757
Comments
This article received funding through Kennesaw State University's Faculty Open Access Publishing Fund, supported by the KSU Libraries and KSU Office of Research.