Sexual harassment in the Chinese workplace. Attitudes toward and experiences of sexual harassment among workers in Taiwan.

Abstract

This study employed a questionnaire survey method to examine the characteristics of sexual harassment experiences and the dynamics of attitudes toward sexual harassment among male and female workers in Taipei. An occupationally representative sample of male and female workers was recruited to participate in the survey. The study found that 1 in 4 workers in Taipei experienced some sort of sexual harassment in the workplace: 36% (n = 493) of the surveyed women and 13% (n = 415) of the surveyed men reported experiencing workplace sexual harassment. The most frequently reported type of sexual harassment is unwanted sexual jokes/comments, followed by unwanted deliberate body contact, and unwanted requests/pressure for a date. The major source of sexual harassment came from coworkers of the opposite sex; the majority of the alleged victims attributed the sexual harassment incident to insensitivity of the initiator. The study considers three explanations of sexual harassment among Chinese workers: the victimblame/trivialization model, the natural/biological explanation, and the power/manipulation model. The study found no consistent relationship between the self-rated attitudes toward sexual harassment and the self-reported experiences of sexual harassment.