Men's perceptions of ambiguous sexual harassment cases under gender hierarchy threat

Abstract

Men’s Perceptions of Ambiguous Sexual Harassment Cases Under Gender Hierarchy Threat In the patriarchal system, men’s higher status in the gender hierarchy is maintained by various practices and beliefs promoting women’s subordination. Previous studies have shown that men especially engage in threat-compensation strategies when their manhood status is threatened either at personal or societal level. Sexual harassment is another form of gender discrimination that reproduces male domination and often prone to be neglected. This thesis aims to investigate men’s perceptions of sexual harassment under a threat to their advantaged position. For that aim, I conducted an online experiment with a community sample, including 227 participants. Participants were randomly assigned either to the control condition or to the gender hierarchy threat condition. Participants in the gender hierarchy threat condition read an ostensible news article summarizing that women’s power is on the rise both at home and in business, while those in the control condition read an irrelevant article. I expected that men who were exposed to gender hierarchy threat would tend to downplay the ambiguous sexual harassment cases, while the effect of the manipulation would be even greater for participants who had stronger gender identification and were more threatened by the subordination to women. The results have shown that men’s perceptions of sexual harassment were not affected by the threat, controlling for participants’ age, religiosity, political orientation, hostile and benevolent sexism levels. However, participants’ explanations on their sexual harassment judgments provided a rich information. I discussed the study findings and future research directions in light of the literature.