Deviating, but not Deviant: Conformity to Gender Norms and Sex-Based Harassment at Work.

Abstract

This dissertation expands our understanding of gender harassment in organizations by investigating how conformity to masculine gender norms affects risk of gender and heterosexist harassment for working women. In Studies 1 and 2, I explore the definition and dimensions of gender harassment by developing a multifaceted conceptualization and measurement instrument of gender harassment. In Study 3, I use the scale to explore how deviating from individual- and contextual-level dominant gender norms predicts women’s risk for being targeted with gender-based hostility. This challenges the common legal and organizational practice of privileging sexualized forms of sex-based harassment, while neglecting gender and heterosexist harassment. To address these questions, I use survey data of working women in Michigan who are diverse with respect to occupation, race, and sexual orientation. In Study 1, I convened a panel of subject matter experts to brainstorm behaviors covering the full content domain of gender harassment, which they later sorted into categories. To tap these categories, I combined survey items from the existing literature with new items. In Study 2, we administered these items to 425 working women. Principal components and confirmatory factor analyses of these data revealed an underlying five-factor structure, reflecting both new and extant themes from the literature. This work culminated in an 18-item scale, assessing five dimensions of gender harassment: sexist behavior, crude behavior, work/family policing, infantilization, and gender policing. This multidimensional conceptualization of gender harassment, coupled with the new measure, offers a more nuanced understanding of women’s harassment experiences in organizations In Study 3, I used the scale created in Studies 1 and 2 to explore how individual-level gender deviance (i.e., masculine appearance, masculine role conformity, and minority sexual orientation) and context-level gender deviance (i.e., job-gender context) relate to gender harassment and heterosexist harassment. Results were consistent with predictions. Conformity to masculine gender norms related positively to gender harassment. Minority sexual orientation was related more frequent experiences of heterosexist harassment. This study supports theories that workplace harassment of women is not rooted in sexual desire, attraction, or romance. Instead, these are behaviors used to penalize gender-nontraditional women, or those who are seen as “deviant.”