Abstract
The rise of research on workplace mistreatment in the past twenty years can be attributed to the realization that workplace mistreatment is associated with a host of deleterious outcomes for both the individual targets of the mistreatment and the organizations in which they work. However, the extant literature is failing to capture the full range of sex-based mistreatment that people may experience through a tendency to focus solely on sexual harassment and sex discrimination, which are very specific types of behavior based on one’s sex and gender stereotypes. This study introduces the construct of Not Woman Enough Harassment, or the extent to which women perceive that they are treated unfavorably because they do not meet traditionally held stereotypes of femininity. A scale was developed and validated in order to measure this type of harassment. Results demonstrated that not woman enough harassment was experienced by approximately 32.5% of the sample. The scale showed good psychometric properties, with two distinct factors of harassment based on physical and non-physical traits. Not woman enough harassment was demonstrated to be distinct from other forms of sexual and workplace harassment.
Highlights
In the past several decades, there has been a growing interest in interpersonal forms of mistreatment in the workplace
This study was designed to address the gap in the extant literature on workplace sex-based harassment that fails to capture mistreatment based on deviation from gender stereotypes for women
In order to measure this construct, the Not Woman Enough Harassment Scale was created, in which two types of not woman enough harassment emerged: harassment based on physical characteristics and harassment based on non-physical characteristics
Summary
In the past several decades, there has been a growing interest in interpersonal forms of mistreatment in the workplace. A Google Scholar search of the extant literature on mistreatment at work between 1900 and 1980 yields merely 5,410 results, while a search between 1980 and 2021 yields 57,000 results This increase in interest can be attributed to the realization that experiencing workplace mistreatment leads to a plethora of deleterious outcomes for both the individual target of the mistreatment and the organization in which the mistreatment is occurring. In 2012, Mercy General Hospital in Sacramento, California was required to pay 168 million dollars to Ani Chopourian for a hostile environment sexual harassment claim [4]. This is an extreme case, it demonstrates the potential financial costs associated with workplace mistreatment. Given that there were 125,905 sexual harassment charges filed between 2010 and 2019 [5], the cumulative cost for organizations with sexual
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