It hurts me too: Examining the relationship between male gender harassment and observers’ well-being, attitudes, and behaviors.

Abstract

The goal of this study was to examine the costs associated with witnessing the sexual harassment of a male colleague. More specifically, we investigate (a) whether observed male gender harassment is related to psychological and physical health, and negative and positive job-related behaviors and attitudes, and (b) the mediating roles of discrete negative emotions (anger, fear) and identity-based evaluations (collective self-esteem). We explore these questions in a sample of men and women employed in "blue collar" professions. Our results show that the relationships between observed male gender harassment and psychological and physical health symptoms, withdrawal and workplace deviance, and affective commitment, were indirect and mediated via witness anger. Moreover, witnessing the gender harassment of a male colleague was also indirectly related to workplace deviance via collective self-esteem among women. Implications for theory, research, and practice are considered. (PsycINFO Database Record

From #MeToo to #TimesUp: Identifying Next Steps in Sexual Harassment Research in the Organizational Sciences

“…In considering observers, past research has typically taken one of two approaches. First, scholars have adopted a "co-victimization" perspective-which contends that indirect exposure to violence (e.g., sexual harassment) is traumatizing in and of itself, causing the witness to also become a victim (Glomb, Richman, Hulin, Drasgow, Schneider, & Fitzgerald, 1997)-to examine the implications of observing sexual harassment (e.g., Dionisi & Barling, 2018). Supporting the co-victimization perspective, this work notes that observers of sexual harassment experience reduced well-being, resulting in greater job and work withdrawal.…”

“…As such, understanding the motives that lead to sexual harassment may also give greater insight into the incidence of same-sex harassment. Indeed, recent work suggests that women can often experience negative interpersonal mistreatment from other women (e.g., Gabriel, Butts, Yuan, Rosen, & Sliter, 2018) and that men can experience sexual harassment from other men (e.g., Dionisi & Barling, 2018). According to Sheppard and Aquino’s (2017: 696) model of intrasex conflict, women may experience greater conflict from other women due to both competitive threat (i.e., regarding “another individual as a formidable competitor for desired resources”) and collective threat (i.e., perceiving that “a fellow group member’s characteristics or behaviors reflect poorly on the group as a whole”).…”

“…The recent #MeToo and #TimesUp movements have elucidated the frequency with which women in particular experience sexual harassment at work. Broadly defined as “unwanted sex-related behavior at work that is appraised by the recipient as offensive, exceeding [their] resources, or threatening [their] well-being” (Fitzgerald, Swan, & Magley, 1997: 15), some estimates have suggested that nearly 1 in every 2 women is likely to experience sexual harassment during their employment (e.g., Fitzgerald et al, 1988), with men also being potential recipients of harassing treatment (Dionisi & Barling, 2018). 1 This is startling and problematic, given that experiences of sexual harassment in the workplace have critical implications for career (e.g., job satisfaction, work withdrawal), psychological (e.g., distress, well-being), and health outcomes (Fitzgerald, Drasgow, Hulin, Gelfand, & Magley, 1997; Willness, Steel, & Lee, 2007).…”

Isn’t high school bad enough already? Rates of gender harassment and institutional betrayal in high school and their association with trauma-related symptoms

“…This manifests in the studies’ designs in that only participants who reported experiencing a traumatic event were asked to report on their experience of institutional betrayal. Evidence of negative outcomes related to witnessing gender harassment and the normalization of sex-based harassment by schools suggests an alternative conceptualization of institutional betrayal [ 15 , 16 ]. As the foundational literature indicates, institutional betrayal can be incident-specific, but it also may occur at the climate level.…”

Gendered by Design: The Socialization of Women in Engineering School

“…For example, sexual minority men and women exposed to heterosexist events and attitudes display higher levels of psychological distress and poorer physical health (e.g., Szymanski, 2005;Waldo, 1999). Similarly, being vicariously exposed to sexist behavior negatively impacts the genderbased self-esteem of women (Dionisi & Barling, 2018).…”