Why Women don't report Sexual Harassment?

Posted on February 23, 2017

Photo: flickr

Published in the Journal of Social Issues, Julie Woodzicka and Marianne LaFrance conducted an experiment to see what women would do in a situation where they are sexually harassed. The scenario, however, is a situation where the harasser is in a position of authority as a job interviewer. The women are participants that did not know they were in an experiment when they were recruited for the interview. The harassing questions included ones like "Do you have a boyfriend?" and "Do people find you desirable?"

These woman had reported that they would either tell the interview that the questions were appropriate or ask him why it was asked (62%), refuse to answer (68%) or even more drastically, leave the interview or rudely confront the interviewer (28%). However, in reality, nobody refused to answer and all the participants answered all three questions. In addition, only a handful of participants responded with any confrontation. These contrasting results show that there is a gap between how women report they would behave and how they actually behave.

Buy why? Woodzicka and LaFrance explain that fear will almost always replace anger when a woman is faced with sexual harassment. More interestingly, facial recognition coding found that the women harassed smiled more! This is thought to be done to appease the harasser out of fear.


Source material from Mind Hacks