The Reasonable Woman Standard: A Meta-Analytic Review of Gender Differences in Perceptions of Sexual Harassment

Courts and legislatures have begun to develop the reasonable woman standard (RWS) as a criterion for deciding sexual harassment trials. This standard rests on assumptions of a wide divergence between the perceptions of men and women when viewing social-sexual behavior that may be considered harassing. Narrative reviews of the literature on such perceptions have suggested that these assumptions are only minimally supported. To test these assumptions quantitatively, a meta-analytic review was conducted that assessed the size, stability, and moderators of gender differences in perceptions of sexual harassment. The effect of the actor's status relative to the target also was evaluated meta-analytically, as one alternative to the importance of gender effects. Results supported the claims of narrative reviews for a relatively small gender effect, and draw attention to the status effect. In discussing legal implications of the present findings, earlier claims are echoed suggesting caution in establishing the reasonable woman standard, and one alternative to the RWS, the reasonable victim standard, is discussed.     

Perceptions of Legitimacy: The Sex of the Legal Messenger and Reactions to Sexual Harassment Training

Research shows that exposure to sexual harassment policy sometimes activates traditional gender stereotypes. This article examines whether the sex of the legal messenger moderates reactions to the enforcement of sexual harassment laws. We employ a 2 × 2 experimental design in which we measure the effect of a sexual harassment policy intervention on male participants’ gender beliefs. The design varies whether the person communicating the policy information is male or female. We find that female policy trainers activate implicit gender stereotypes, but explicit gender egalitarian beliefs. Other than improving men's perceptions of women's considerateness, the policy has little effect on beliefs in the conditions with a male trainer. These results suggest that the effect of law on social change is contingent on characteristics of the legal messengers. Findings contribute to our understanding of gender inequality and legitimacy processes and have practical implications for implementing effective policy.     

The Reasonable Woman Standard: Effects on Sexual Harassment Court Decisions

Some federal courts have used a reasonable woman standard rather than the traditional reasonable man or reasonable person standard to determine whether hostile environment sexual harassment has occurred. The current research examined the impact of the reasonable woman standard on federal district court decisions, controlling for other factors found to affect sexual harassment court decisions. Results indicated that there was a weak relationship between whether a case followed a reasonable woman precedent-setting case and the likelihood that the court decision favored the plaintiff. The implications of our findings for individuals and organizations involved in sexual harassment claims are discussed.     

性骚扰的法律界定

我国修改后的《妇女权益保障法》首次明令禁止"性骚扰",但何谓"性骚扰"没有明确,而概念是理论上被抽象认知和实践中被切实遵从的前提,本文结合不同国家、地区的立法例,指出性骚扰行为应主要依据被骚扰者的主观状态、性骚扰行为的性质以及骚扰者的主观状态等加以判断.     

性骚扰法律规制问题研究

国内外法学界关于以何种法律规制性骚扰的争论,实际上是关于性骚扰本质的争论,而性骚扰在本质上是侵权行为,应利用侵权行为法来规制性骚扰行为,鉴于性骚扰自身的特殊性和复杂性,建议单独制定一部《反性骚扰法》。     

Legal Consciousness and Responses to Sexual Harassment

Studies of legal mobilization often focus on people who have perceived some wrong, but these studies rarely consider the process that selects them into the pool of potential "mobilizers." Similarly, studies of victimization or targeting rarely go on to consider what people do about the wrong, or why some targets come forward and others remain silent. We here integrate sociolegal, feminist, and criminological theories in a conceptual model that treats experiencing sexual harassment and mobilizing in response as interrelated processes. We then link these two processes by modeling them as jointly determined outcomes and examine their connections using interviews with a subset of our survey respondents. Our results suggest that targets of harassment are selected, in part, because they are least likely to tell others about the experience. We also discuss strategies that workers employ to cope with and confront harassment. We find that traditional formal/informal dichotomies of mobilization responses may not fully account for the range of ways that individuals respond to harassment, and we propose a preliminary typology of responses.     

性骚扰法律概念的比较探析

法律对性骚扰的回应与一个国家的文化传统、生活方式和固有制度结合在一起,因此,各国的性骚扰法律概念既有一般共识,又有诸多差别.     

性骚扰法律规制的主要问题

禁止性骚扰写入<妇女权益保障法>是性骚扰立法迈出的第一步,但对于规制性骚扰显然是不够的,如何构建规制性骚扰的法律体系成为目前迫切需要解决的问题.本文首先明确了性骚扰的概念、基本类型及价值基础.作者认为,性骚扰是一复杂的社会现象,构建全面综合的性骚扰法律规制体系是解决性骚扰问题的关键.文章对如何构建这一体系进行了探讨.     

Explaining Sexual Harassment Judgments: Looking Beyond Gender of the Rater

Law and Human Behavior - In two decades of research on sexual harassment, one finding that appears repeatedly is that gender of the rater influences judgments about sexual harassment such that...     

Attitudes toward Wife Abuse of Police Officers and Judiciary Members in Turkey: Profession,Gender, Ambivalent Sexism and Sex Roles

This study examined the attitudes of police officers and judiciary members toward wife abuse in Turkey and the relation between these attitudes and profession, ambivalent sexism (hostile/benevolent sexism), gender, and gender roles. The following instruments were used for the analyses: The Attitudes Toward Wife Abuse Scale (AWAS), the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory (ASI), and the Bem Sex Role Inventory. The participants were 300 police officers and 150 judiciary members selected from different regions of Turkey. Results showed that compared to judiciary members, police officers are more tolerant of physical and verbal abuse of women in marriage, but less tolerant of the idea of the victim leaving an abusive marriage partner. Similarly, men were more tolerant than women of those husbands who physically and verbally abuse their wives, but less supportive of the wife leaving the abusive partner. Profession and ambivalent sexism (hostile/benevolent sexism) were found to be the strongest predictors of attitudes toward wife abuse.     

Ambivalent Legal Mobilization: Perceptions of Justice and the Use of the Tutela in Colombia

This article explores the relationship between legal consciousness and legal mobilization in the context of constitutional rights in Colombia. Citizens report extremely low confidence in the state and the judiciary, yet hundreds of thousands of Colombians make constitutional rights claims through the acción de tutela procedure each year. Why does profound skepticism of the ability of the judiciary to provide justice and fair treatment seem to coexist with high levels of use of the legal system? How do perspectives on rights and the legal system relate to observed mobilization of the law? Drawing on 74 interviews and an original 310‐person survey, this article develops legal consciousness theory, identifying the specific beliefs that encourage or discourage individuals to turn to the courts to make claims to their rights. In the Colombian case, understandings of law and the state encourage the use of the tutela procedure, not due to the realizable promise of the state to protect rights or the majestic power of the law, but because the tutela is understood to be the only mechanism through which citizens can access their rights. In other words, citizens turn to the courts because there is no other alternative.     

Changing Perceptions of Sexual Harassment in the Federal Workforce, 1987–94

Recent criticisms of sexual harassment law and workplace training policies contend that they have "sanitized" the workplace through their stigmatization of sexual expression that does not amount to actual discrimination. This study assesses some of the empirical foundations for those normative arguments. Using data from the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board's 1987 and 1994 surveys, we examine differences over time in federal workers' perceptions of what types of behavior constitute sexual harassment. The article draws on a sociolegal theory of the endogenous nature of law as well as research on perceptions of sexual harassment. We hypothesize that, because of increased attention to sexual harassment, and to the hostile environment theory specifically, by scholars, judges, and the news media, and related policy changes in workplace training programs, federal workers likely came to view a wider range of sexual conduct as constituting harassment during this time period. The results support our expectations. We also find that sexual harassment training in their agency increased workers' likelihood of viewing both hostile environment behavior and quid pro quo behavior as harassment.     

"People Are Too Quick to Take Offense": The Effects of Legal Information and Beliefs on Definitions of Sexual Harassment

Using data from a nationwide study of sexual harassment in the United States' federal workplace, this article investigates how legal understanding, opinions about the regulation of sexual harassment, and social status affect whether people define uninvited sexual jokes or remarks as harassment. The results indicate that how people define sexual harassment is directly related to the extent to which they view sexual harassment rules as ambiguous and threatening to workplace norms. Moreover, results show that while women generally define sexual harassment more broadly than men, they actually resist defining sexual jokes or remarks as harassment. Finally, knowledge of the workplace sexual harassment policy moderates the effect of beliefs on definitions of sexual harassment. These findings suggest a complexity in the way people reconcile their knowledge of the law with their personal views about power and social interaction in the workplace.     

The Effects of Prior Workplace Behavior on Subsequent Sexual Harassment Judgments

A dual processing model of sexual harassment judgments predicted that the behavior of a complainant in a prior case would influence evaluations in an unrelated subsequent case. In the first of two experimental scenarios depicting social-sexual conduct at work, the female complainant's conduct was manipulated to be aggressive, submissive, ambiguous, or neutral. Half of the participants were asked to reflect upon the first scenario after reading it and before answering responsibility questions. The other half simply reviewed the scenario and answered the questions. When the complainant acted aggressively, her behavior in the first scenario caused men who reflected on the fact pattern to find less evidence of harassment. Most interestingly, an aggressive complainant observed in the first scenario caused participants (especially women) to rate lower the likelihood that a neutral complainant in a second independent case was the victim of gender discrimination. Across cases, men found less evidence of harassment than did women.     

Gender Harassment: Broadening Our Understanding of Sex-Based Harassment at Work

This study challenges the common legal and organizational practice of privileging sexual advance forms of sex-based harassment, while neglecting gender harassment. Survey data came from women working in two male-dominated contexts: the military and the legal profession. Their responses to the Sexual Experiences Questionnaire (SEQ) revealed five typical profiles of harassment: low victimization, gender harassment, gender harassment with unwanted sexual attention, moderate victimization, and high victimization. The vast majority of harassment victims fell into one of the first two groups, which described virtually no unwanted sexual advances. When compared to non-victims, gender-harassed women showed significant decrements in professional and psychological well-being. These findings underscore the seriousness of gender harassment, which merits greater attention by both law and social science.     

The Homophobic Sexual Harassment Claim and Sexuality Discrimination

In sexual harassment law scholarship, it is often argued that the reasonable person standard should give way to a reasonable victim (woman) standard. Yet, this latter standard may unintentionally invite homophobic employees to attempt to use a reasonable homophobe standard to charge gay supervisors with harassment merely for being openly gay at work. In response, I argue that we currently act on an unjustifiable distinction whereby we treat sexuality behavior (behavior that indicates one's sexuality) as necessarily sexualized only for GLBTQ behavior. By disallowing this discriminatory treatment, we can preserve the reasonable victim standard and undermine the homophobe's warrantless charges.     

民法典时代工作场所性骚扰的法律规制

我国《民法典》第1010条对性骚扰行为和用人单位防治性骚扰行为的规范,确立了工作场所性骚扰双阶段两行为的制度架构,架设了通往其他部门法的桥梁。工作场所性骚扰的法律规制应采用双阶行为理论,这一法律现象中包含着人格侵权和工作利益损害两个阶段,对应着工作场所性骚扰行为和用人单位防治性骚扰行为,形成了多元化、多层次的法律规制。工作场所性骚扰的法律规制经历过原初形态的就业歧视模式、发展变态的结合论模式、趋势定态的分离论模式的演变历程,已从单一行为裂变为工作场所性骚扰行为与用人单位防治性骚扰行为。工作场所性骚扰行为从就业性别歧视发展到人格侵权,受到多元化法律规制,应由行为人承担法律责任。用人单位防治性骚扰行为从工作场所性骚扰行为中独立开来,从依附于性骚扰行为的抗辩事由转变为法定独立义务,受到多层次的法律规制,用人单位从旁观者变成了行动者。     

Chivalry and the Moderating Effect of Ambivalent Sexism: Individual Differences in Crime Seriousness Judgments

Previous studies have shown that female offenders frequently receive more lenient judgments than equivalent males. Chivalry theories argue that such leniency is the result of paternalistic, benevolent attitudes toward women, in particular toward those who fulfill stereotypical female roles. Yet to date, studies have not examined whether such leniency is indeed associated with paternalistic societal attitudes toward women. The present study goes beyond the investigation of demographics and employs Glick and Fiske's (1996) concepts of hostile and benevolent sexism. We use these concepts to highlight the role of individual differences in attitudes toward women as a key to our understanding of lenient attitudes toward female offenders. Eight hundred forty respondents from a national sample of Israeli residents evaluated the seriousness of hypothetical crime scenarios with (traditional and nontraditional) female and male offenders. As hypothesized, hostile and benevolent sexism moderate the effect of women's "traditionality" on respondents' crime seriousness judgments and on the severity of sentences assigned.     

性骚扰的法律要素和认定标准

一、问题由来 我国《妇女权益保障法》的修正案规定：“禁止对妇女实施性骚扰”。这一规定说明：性骚扰在我国仅是作为男性对妇女权益侵害的一种违法行为,其立法基础是性别歧视。随着同性性骚扰行为在司法实践中被认定为侵权行为被追究民事责任的案例出现,这一法律规则被我国的司法实践所突破。同时,由于对性骚扰的认定标准、证据适用规则、处罚措施等方面规范的欠缺,使得该规定的效力和可操作性受到公众和法律界人士的质疑,