Tolerance of Sexual Harassment: An Examination of Gender Differences, Ambivalent Sexism, Social Dominance, and Gender Roles

In this study we examined the effects of gender, gender roles (masculinity and femininity), ambivalent sexism, and social dominance orientation with regard to tolerance of sexual harassment. It was predicted that women would be less tolerant than men of sexual harassment, however, men and women who were tolerant of sexual harassment would share ambivalence and hostility toward women, and they would exhibit higher levels of social dominance and masculinity. Results partially supported the hypotheses. Women were significantly less tolerant of harassment than men were, however, regression analyses showed that ambivalent sexism and hostility toward women accounted for the majority of total variance (35%), followed by gender (5%), social dominance (1%), femininity (0.7%), and nonsexism (0.6%). Masculinity and benevolent sexism were not significant predictors. Results suggest that ambivalence and hostility toward women are much greater predictors of tolerance of sexual harassment than is gender alone.

[1]  Susan T. Fiske,et al.  The Ambivalence Toward Men Inventory , 1999 .

[2]  How do people evaluate social sexual conduct at work? A psycholegal model. , 2000 .

[3]  M. Rotundo,et al.  A meta-analytic review of gender differences in perceptions of sexual harassment. , 2001, The Journal of applied psychology.

[4]  K. Larntz,et al.  The influence of individual characteristics and severity of harassing behavior on reactions to sexual harassment , 1990 .

[5]  L. Rubin,et al.  Sexual harassment in universities during the 1980s , 1990 .

[6]  G. Cowan.  Women's Hostility Toward Women and Rape and Sexual Harassment Myths , 2000 .

[7]  John B. Pryor,et al.  A typology of sexual harassment: Characteristics of harassers and the social circumstances under which sexual harassment occurs. , 1997 .

[8]  P. Poppen,et al.  The influence of sex and sex role orientation on sexual coercion , 1988 .

[9]  Eugene D. Hahn,et al.  The Attitudes Toward Women Scale and Attitude Change in College Students , 1997 .

[10]  A. Eagly,et al.  Are People Prejudiced Against Women? Some Answers From Research on Attitudes, Gender Stereotypes, and Judgments of Competence , 1994 .

[11]  R. Tindale,et al.  Perceptions of Sexual Harassment in the Workplace , 1992 .

[12]  M. Crawford,et al.  Women and Gender: A Feminist Psychology , 1992 .

[13]  J. Pryor,et al.  Sexual Cognition Processes in Men High in the Likelihood to Sexually Harass , 1994 .

[14]  John B. Pryor,et al.  Sexual harassment proclivities in men , 1987 .

[15]  B. Malle,et al.  Social dominance orientation: A personality variable predicting social and political attitudes. , 1994 .

[16]  E. Maccoby,et al.  Gender as a social category. , 1988 .

[17]  S. Fiske,et al.  What's so special about sex? Gender stereotyping and discrimination. , 1993 .

[18]  L E Hurt,et al.  Gender differences in evaluating social-sexual conduct in the workplace. , 1999, Behavioral sciences & the law.

[19]  J. N. Cleveland,et al.  Sexual harassment and perceptions of power: An under-articulated relationship. , 1993 .

[20]  I. Frieze,et al.  Predictors of Dating Violence: A Multivariate Analysis , 1992, Violence and Victims.

[21]  H. Tajfel,et al.  The Social Identity Theory of Intergroup Behavior. , 2004 .

[22]  D. B. Mazer,et al.  Ideology or experience? The relationships among perceptions, attitudes, and experiences of sexual harassment in university students , 1989 .

[23]  Susan T. Fiske,et al.  The Ambivalent Sexism Inventory: Differentiating hostile and benevolent sexism. , 1996 .

[24]  G. Powell.  Effects of sex role identity and sex on definitions of sexual harassment , 1986 .

[25]  B. Gutek,et al.  The Empirical Basis for the Reasonable Woman Standard , 1995 .

[26]  Barbara A. Gutek,et al.  Sex and the workplace , 1987 .

[27]  K. Bursik.  Perceptions of sexual harassment in an academic context , 1992 .

[28]  G. Barnes,et al.  Using the confluence model of sexual aggression to predict men's conflict with women: a 10-year follow-up study. , 1995, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[29]  R. Helmreich,et al.  Masculinity & femininity: Their psychological dimensions, correlates, and antecedents , 1978 .

[30]  T. Jones,et al.  Sources of variability in perceptions of and responses to sexual harassment , 1992 .

[31]  J. Pryor,et al.  A Social Psychological Analysis of Sexual Harassment: The Person/Situation Interaction , 1993 .

[32]  L. Fitzgerald,et al.  Attitudinal antecedents of rape myth acceptance: A theoretical and empirical reexamination. , 1995 .

[33]  M. Burt.  Cultural myths and supports for rape. , 1980, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[34]  S. Fiske,et al.  Hostile and Benevolent Sexism , 1997 .

[35]  Janet K. Swim,et al.  Overt, Covert, And Subtle Sexism , 1997 .

[36]  L. Scherer,et al.  The Unexpected Effects of a Sexual Harassment Educational Program , 2001 .

[37]  Jeffrey S. Sinn,et al.  The predictive and discriminant validity of masculinity ideology. , 1997 .

[38]  John B. Pryor,et al.  A Social Psychological Model for Predicting Sexual Harassment , 1995 .