A Survey of Sexual Harassment in the Workplace

Abstract

Although the topic of sexual harassment has received growing social attention in recent years, there are few empirical studies with psychological perspectives in Japan. The purpose of this survey was to investigate the incidence and the perception of sexual harassment from psychological point of view. A mail questionnaire survey was conducted for 565 female workers.In this study, sexual harassment concept was divided into gender harassment (GH) and sexual harassment (SH). The latter was further classified into attention and coercion. Major findings of this survey are summarized as follows.(1) Rates of women who received harassing behavior were considerably high (GH=90%, SH: attention=60%, SH: corecion=50%).(2) Some female workers offered harassing behavior toward others.(GH= 36%, SH: attention=6%, SH: corecion=2%).(3) Offensive feeling toward GH was differed among individuals.(4) Sexual harassment brought not only mental blows but also decreasing motivation toward their work.(5) There were few females who protested to harasser, and most of corporations took no steps against sexual harassment.(6) The perception and the experience of sexual harassment (offensive level, rate of damaging and being damaged) was influenced by the sex-discrimination level and female-male ratio in the workplace.(7) The women who are young, unmarried or being in low position in the workplace didn't do harassing behaviors so much.(8) The attitude toward equality between men and women influenced to perception and behavior of GH. The authors suggest that it is useful to study more on GH for understanding the issue of sexual harassment more comprehensively.