Are people quick to adopt status beliefs about a social difference that lead them to treat others unequally? In a test of status construction theory, two experiments show that men and women form equally strong status beliefs from only two encounters with others. Men act powerfully on these new beliefs in their next encounters with others but women do not, possibly because women face greater social risks for acting on ambiguous status advantages. Women are just as likely as men, however, to treat someone unequally on the basis of an established status distinction. This suggests that men are first movers in the emergence of status distinctions, but women eventually adopt the distinctions as well. Our results show that people readily transform social differences into status distinctions-distinctions that act as formidable forces of inequality.
Unwelcome touching, groping, and kissing are illegal, but widely tolerated in public drinking settings. This contingency in the law's response means that patrons routinely negotiate the moral boundaries of nonconsensual sexual contact. We use 197 interviews with college‐age individuals to examine the discursive strategies young people employ when negotiating those boundaries. We find that most interviewees have experiences with sexual aggression, do not categorize it as aggression, but advocate for stronger legal punishments against offenders. In accounting for this paradox, they draw on contradictory legal and cultural narratives that both normalize and condemn men's sexual aggression. We build on legal consciousness theories and gender theories by highlighting the complex ways that gender stereotypes enshrined in law are implicated in the construction of a social problem. We also contribute to the sociology of culture by explicating the often unconscious link between culture and action revealed in young people's narratives about sexual aggression.
Most people in the United States believe that sexual harassment should be illegal and that enforcement is necessary. In spite of such widespread support for antiharassment regulations, sexual harassment policy training provokes backlash and has been shown to activate traditional gender stereotypes. Using in‐depth interviews and participant observations of sexual harassment policy training sessions, this study uncovers the micro‐level mechanisms that underlie ambivalence about the enforcement of sexual harassment law. I find that while the different locations of men and women in the status hierarchy lead to different manifestations of resistance, gender stereotypes are used to buttress perceptions that sexual harassment laws threaten norms of interaction and status positions that men and women have an interest in maintaining. The research has implications for understanding the role of law in social change, legal compliance, and the potential/limits of law for reducing inequality.
ince the legal recognition that sexual harassment is a form of sex-based discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, more than 90% of large organizations have adopted a sexual harassment policy (Dobbin and Kelly 2007). With the Supreme Court holding that employers can mitigate liability by providing evidence of sexual harassment procedures (Faragher v. City of Boca Raton, 524 U.S. 775 (1998), organizations have increasingly protected themselves from lawsuits by training employees and employers on the harassment policies and their implications for appropriate behavior in the workplace. While organizations may enforce sexual harassment policies in large part to avoid legal liability (Dobbin and Kelly 2007), a primary function of equal employment opportunity laws such as Title VII is to promote equality. While research indicates that policy training and enforcement has reduced the incidence of sexual harassment in the workplace (U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board 1995), whether such regulation can effectively promote gender equality between men and women as status peers remains untested. Likewise, while past studies have examined people's attitudes and reactions toward sexual harassment policy (U.S. Merit
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