Reporting, Tolerance, and Acceptance of Sexual Harassment in the Workplace

Abstract:

Approximately 50% of the women in the United States will experience sexual harassment in the workplace or school environment (Shupe, 2020). Also, gender norm acceptance influences the attitudes toward sexual harassment, as women perceive a wider range of actions as sexual harassment (Rothgerber et al., 2020). The study considered the acceptance/rejection of gender norms of individuals in workplaces in relation to the likelihood of reporting sexual harassment. Researchers hypothesized that those who were more likely to accept gender norms would be less likely to report sexual harassment, despite whether the harassment was a personal incident or witnessed firsthand. The study was conducted with introductory psychology students from a university in northwestern Pennsylvania and was also shared on social media platforms on whether participants accepted or rejected gender norms and whether they were likely to tolerate and report sexual harassment.  Results indicated that there was an inverse correlation between men’s gender norm acceptance and tolerance and reporting of sexual harassment. Additionally, the results indicated that there was an inverse correlation between women’s reporting of sexual harassment and gender norm acceptance, but not tolerance of harassment and gender norm acceptance.  Based on the current study, training for sexual harassment in the workplace would be beneficial to adapt two variations of the training based on whether the audience is male or female. Presentation of the research will be displayed via poster presentation to best outline the procedures and results that were discovered in the study.