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 Impact of Television in Bulgaria on the Electoral Process and Voting Behavior

After 45 years of communism, Bulgaria held its first democratic elections in May 1990, following an interparty coup that had ended the totalitarian rule in November 1989. A new Bulgarian Constitution was adopted in 1991. During the following years of transition to democracy, a normal political environment was gradually established. Among the major achievements during this period were that the country joined NATO in spring 2004 and entered the European Union in January 2007. During this period of transition to a democratic political system and marketplace economy, the processes of decentralization, liberalization, and privatization led to a completely new media landscape with strong social impact. The past two decades have witnessed five presidential (1992, 1996, 2001, 2006, and 2011), seven parliamentary (1990, 1991, 1994, 1997, 2001, 2005, and 2009), six local (1991, 1995, 1999, 2003, 2007, and 2011), and two European parliamentary elections (2007 and 2009) and the appointment of twelve governments in Bulgaria. The main objective of the proposed paper is to present the impact of media and, in particular, of television on the democratization developments in the country.     

Paths towards Consensus: Explaining Decision Making within the Swiss Global Justice Movement

We examine the conditions leading social movement organizations to adopt consensus in their internal decision making. To do so, we look at organizations of the Swiss global justice movement, which puts the search for consensus at center stage. Our findings show that the ways in which social movement organizations take decisions and their vision of democracy more generally are not simply a matter of free choice by their leaders and members, but depend on certain organizational characteristics. The most important one is a small organizational size, which is a crucial condition for the adoption of consensus in internal decision making. This condition combines with another one pertaining to the cultural tradition of contention represented by the social movement family to explain consensus. In addition, our findings show that small, transnational organizations following inclusive participatory practices are also more likely to adopt consensus when they make decisions.     

A model of unbalanced sectorial growth with application to transition economies

This paper studies the implications of a dynamic general equilibrium model with three production sectors, which are agriculture, industry and services. Due to the assumption of increasing returns, our model has multiple equilibria. There are two stable equilibria: one, in which a country produces only agricultural goods and converges to a steady state, and the other, in which a country operates all three sectors and has positive unbalanced long-run growth with contracting agriculture and expanding industry and services. These predictions agree well with the real-world development experiences of rich and poor countries. In the context of our model, we also investigate the evolution of the sectorial composition in the transition countries and find that such countries move to the rich rather than to the poor world.

Policing Gender at Work: Intersections of Harassment Based on Sex and Sexuality

Theorists have suggested that oppressions based on gender and sexual orientation are inherently linked. The present study aims to operationalize and test this proposition, by modeling relationships between sexual harassment and heterosexist harassment. Based on prior research in organizational and feminist psychology, we hypothesized a three-factor model of workplace harassment, comprising sexualized harassment, gender harassment, and heterosexist harassment. We then factor-analyzed data from 629 employees (both female and male, sexual minority and heterosexual) in higher education, finding this hypothesized model to be superior to three competing alternatives. Next came multiple-group analyses, which suggested this model to be invariant by gender, but not sexual orientation. Implications of these findings for research, theory, and practice are discussed.

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What's Gender Got to Do with It? Incivility in the Federal Courts

The current study examines experiences of interpersonal mistreatment in federal litigation among a random sample of 4,608 practicing attorneys. Using both quantitative and qualitative survey data, we documented the nature and interplay of general incivility, gender-related incivility, and unwanted sexual attention. Nearly 75% of female attorneys had experienced some form of this misconduct in the previous five years, compared to half of male attorneys. An in-depth examination of instigators revealed that not only fellow attorneys but also federal judges, court personnel, marshals, and court security officers instigated the inappropriate behavior. We further found that most attorneys responded to this mistreatment with avoidance and denial; few used or trusted existing reporting mechanisms. The current study surpassed simple prevalence estimates to document effects of interpersonal mistreatment on the professional well-being of targeted attorneys. We discuss implications of these results, drawing on theories of social dominance, sex-role spillover, cognitive stress, organizations, and intervention.     

Understanding the Judicial Role in Addressing Gender Bias: A View from the Eighth Circuit Federal Court System

The role of trial judges in the litigation process is frequently debated. Are judges to be dispassionate adjudicators, disengaged referees in a sport in which attorneys compete? Or are they charged with a more active role in promoting the substance, form, and process of justice? In the present paper, we explore the judicial role in addressing gender bias in federal litigation, using data gathered for the Eighth Circuit Gender Fairness Task Force. The federal judges of this circuit were surveyed about their experiences, observations, and opinions of gender-biased conduct. Results indicated that although judges viewed judicial intervention as an appropriate response to gender bias, they had little personal experience with intervention in such a situation. Fur thermore, when specific hypothetical scenarios were presented, they generally agreed that the described conduct was inappropriate but offered little consensus regarding the best course of action for an attorney or judge confronted with such behavior. The Eighth Circuit data thus provide the basis for expanded understanding of the conduct at issue, the options for action in response, and the persistent discrepancy in viewpoints on gender bias and the judicial role.