In the Company of Men: Male Dominance and Sexual Harassment

by James E. Gruber, Phoebe Morgan

Overview

Despite over twenty years of discussion and study, sexual harassment remains a significant problem in the workplace. Current research focusing on organizational policy and women's career development often ignores the reality of male dominance, prevalent in areas such as the military, the police, and firefighting-occupations that see not only more frequent but also more severe harassment, even sexual assault. Meanwhile, new evidence points to the fact that men are largely responsible not only for the harassment of women but for most harassment of other men as well.

This landmark collection of original essays investigates the links between male dominance and sexual harassment in light of new research and more complex understandings of masculinity. Treated not merely as a matter of worker sex ratios but as an inherent element of workplace culture, male dominance is observed from a variety of quantitative and qualitative approaches ranging from criminology and sociology to psychology and gender studies. Integrating both men's and women's viewpoints, research across occupational groups, and studies from both the United States and Europe, the chapters provide an invaluable international perspective into two inextricably intertwined problems rooted in cultural constructions of gender and institutional roles and processes.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781555536374
Publisher:	Northeastern University Press
Publication date:	10/28/2004
Series:	Northeastern Series on Gender, Crime, and Law Series
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 1.10(d)

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IN THE COMPANY OF MEN

Male Dominance and Sexual Harassment

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Northeastern University Press

Copyright © 2005 James E. Gruber and Phoebe Morgan
All right reserved.
ISBN: 1-55553-637-9

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Chapter One

JUST MEN OUT OF CONTROL? Criminology and the Likelihood to Sexually Harass

Robert S. Done

Across various disciplines, research has consistently connected male dominance and sexual harassment. Sociologist Lin Farley (1978), for example, was one of the first to link sexual harassment with patriarchy. Organizational studies have discovered a correlation between sexual harassment prevalence and gender skew (i.e., settings in which a disproportionate number of workers are of one gender) (Gutek & Morasch 1982). Legal scholars argue that sexual harassment is both a cause and consequence of an androcentric justice system (MacKinnon 1979). And psychologists note a relationship between the acceptability of sexual harassment and the privileging of men's sexual desires (Fitzgerald & Weitzman 1990).

by highlighting the fact that sexual harassment is most often committed by men against women, feminist criminologists have compared sexual harassment to violent crimes against women like rape and battering (Morgan 2001), and critical criminologist James Messerschmidt (1986, 1993) has classified sexual harassment as a form of white-collar crime. With these exceptions, mainstream criminology has neglected its study. Even though the motivation to commit illegal behavior is a mainstay of criminological inquiry, criminologists have not used this research to understand why some men sexually harass while others do not. This chapter conceptualizes sexual harassment as crime and then draws upon the mainstream criminological understanding of internal factors affecting crime perpetration to analyze men's responses to a survey that measured their self-control and likelihood to sexually harass. The analysis reveals the extent to which self-control predicts the likelihood to sexually harass, as it does the likelihood to commit other crimes.

CONCEPTUALIZING SEXUAL HARASSMENT AS CRIME

Legally speaking, sexual harassment is a civil rights violation. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) officially recognizes sexual harassment as an actionable form of employment discrimination. As such, formal complaints become civil actions and are litigated accordingly. Initially, U.S. feminists and women's activists applauded the move to cast sexual harassment as a civil rights violation, because doing so recognizes institutional liability and affords victims substantial compensation for their losses (MacKinnon 1979). But more recently, feminists have noted the inability of civil action to hold accountable the individuals who commit sexual harassment (MacKinnon 1987). In fact, while the complaints themselves are civil in nature, the behaviors named in them are often violations of specific crime statutes (Morgan 1996). Most sexual harassment research relies upon the EEOC's definition of what constitutes sexual harassment. While such reliance has given us clear estimates of the problem as defined by civil law, it ignores the criminality of sexual harassment.

A review of official crime statistics makes clear that crime is a male-dominated institution. Even though men are disproportionately victims of crime, with few exceptions (e.g., shoplifting and prostitution), the perpetrators of crime are overwhelmingly male (Newburn & Stanko 1994). In fact, the gender skew is greatest in violent crime-the vast majority of scenarios involve men assaulting, harassing, or stalking women to whom they are intimately related or sexually attracted (Bachman 1998). The statistical profile of sexual harassment mirrors that of other forms of violence against women. Nearly 86 percent of its victims are women, while only 7 percent of the perpetrators are women (U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board 1995). For these reasons, this analysis places sexual harassment on the continuum of violent crime against women, and therefore considers it an appropriate subject of criminological analysis.

Until recently, criminological investigations of violence against women have focused disproportionately on the victims. The criminological literature is dominated by studies of how women experience violence such as rape, battering, and abuse. Much less has been published on the perpetrators of these crimes. Sexual harassment scholarship is similarly skewed; it focuses on the prevalence of victimization and the effects it has on women (for exceptions, see Pryor 1987 and Pryor & Stoller 1994). Although criminology has much research on crime motivation, this literature has been underutilized in the study of violence against women and has hardly been applied to analyses of the motivation to sexually harass.

Early feminist criminology identified the primary motivation to commit any form of violence against women as the need to assert power and maintain control over them (Websdale & Chesney-Lind 1998). In a patriarchal society such as ours, men use violence against women because they can-in other words, they have the physical, social, and economic power to do so. In a patriarchal society, violence, or even the mere possibility of it, is an effective means to control unruly women and keep them in their place (Messerschmidt 1986). From this viewpoint, sexual harassment is a spillover of male dominance from the home to the workplace, from the private to the public sphere. Gutek and Morasch's (1982) study of sex-role spillover and sexual harassment draws striking parallels. As greater numbers of women have moved into the public world of work, violence against them has followed them there. At work, men sexually harass women to assert and maintain their dominance of specific workplaces, entire occupations, and simply wage labor in general (Farley 1978, MacKinnon 1979, Morgan 2001).

More recently, critical criminologists have built on feminist conceptualizations to argue that a primary motivator for the commission of most crimes-and especially violent crimes against women-is the need to construct a masculine identity (Messerschmidt 1986, 1993, Stanko 1994). This "doing gender" perspective asserts that in the absence of other more viable options, males commit crime to demonstrate their manliness (Hobbs 1994, Levi 1994), and a common strategy is the denigration of all things feminine-especially women (Connell 2000). Defining and preserving masculinity through sexual harassment are not only the provinces of criminals. Indeed, by observing criminal justice workers through this "doing gender" lens, Martin and Jurik (1996) show how sexual harassment works to preserve the male dominance of these occupations. In short, the "doing gender" lens sharpens our view of how the need to be masculine affects the likelihood to commit crime. It furthers our understanding of the motivation to dominate women and how crimes against women gratify the need to "be a man."

CRIMINOLOGY AND THE RISK OF CRIMINALITY

While most perpetrators of violence against women are men, the vast majority of men never commit such crime. This is true across all categories of violence against women, including sexual harassment. Clearly, there is variation in perpetration. Some men are more likely than others to sexually harass women. What increases this likelihood? Empirical research to date sheds considerable light on the social and structural conditions that produce violence against women in general and sexual harassment in particular. Such external factors as gender ratio (Gutek & Morasch 1982), social acceptability (Essed 1992), and power differential (Pryor 1987) have been found to be significant predictors of sexual harassment. But far less is known about the internal factors affecting the likelihood to commit sexual harassment. Fortunately, mainstream criminology offers the tools to explore this missing link.

Within this literature lies an extensive study of the internal drives and inhibitions influencing the motivation to commit crime. A particularly robust factor is self-control. Gottfredson and Hirschi (1990) find a variety of deviant behaviors-criminal and noncriminal-that provide immediate gratification. These behaviors are also exciting or risky, provide primarily short-term benefits, require little preparation, and often cause pain for the victim. Accordingly, criminals are those who seek immediate gratification, such as "sex without courtship" (p. 89), and they are insensitive to others. Those who engage in deviant behavior lack the self-control to delay the immediate gratification that deviance provides, without regard to the age, ethnicity, education, income, or employment history of the perpetrator.

Gottfredson and Hirschi's (1990) studies of self-control explain why some people commit crime while others do not. They observe that although a criminal act provides short-term gratification to the perpetrator, it can inflict long-term harm on the victim. Thus to achieve immediate gratification and to avoid hurting others would be the ideal goal. The factor differentiating the two is individual self-control. Self-control checks the temptation to trade on the welfare of others, and instead motivates one to be considerate of others. Those with less self-control are more likely than those with more of it to immediately gratify their desires at the expense of others. Self-control, then, checks the impulsive gratification of desire and delays gratification until it can be achieved through sanctioned channels.

A significant body of empirical research supports the significance of self-control as a factor affecting the likelihood to commit crime. The criminal behaviors studied in this empirical scrutiny have included crimes against property (e.g., theft) and people (e.g., assault) (Burton et al. 1998, Evans et al. 1997, Grasmick et al. 1993, Longshore 1998, Longshore & Turner 1998, Longshore, Turner, & Stein 1996, Wood, Pfefferbaum, & Arneklev 1993). The relationship between self-control and criminal behavior has been studied among high school students (Wood et al. 1993), college students (Gibbs & Giever 1995, Gibbs, Giever, & Martin 1998), and adults (Burton et al. 1998, Evans et al. 1997, Grasmick et al. 1993, Keane, Maxim, & Teevan 1993).

On the continuum of criminological orientation with mainstream theory at one end and critical theory at the other, the self-control theory of violent crime occupies the opposite pole of the structural emphasis of feminism. The most fundamental difference between the two is locus of action. Gottfredson and Hirschi (1990) consider crime to be a coincidental by-product of an individual's search for pleasure, whereas feminist criminologists consider crime to be an artifact of the dominant (i.e., patriarchal) social structure. Gottfredson and Hirschi focus their attention on internal factors, while feminist and critical criminologists study external ones.

Some would argue that the differences between them are irreconcilable. Despite these differences, there is convergence on one important point: regardless of whether the pressure comes from within or without, violence against women is the outcome of desire. Both self-control and social control impact men's motivations to dominate.

Currently, our knowledge about the types of men likely to commit sexual harassment is more descriptive than proscriptive. Knowing what kinds of men are most likely to sexually harass is important, but identifying the internal motivations of those individuals is equally essential to understanding this type of behavior. Thus, in this chapter I conceptualize self-control as a significant but underappreciated link connecting male domination and sexual harassment. To test this link, statistical data are examined to reveal the significance of self-control as a predictor of the likelihood to sexually harass. The primary hypothesis examined here is that men who have low self-control are more likely to sexually harass women than men with high self-control. Second, my analysis will explore the extent to which this relationship is affected by structural or external factors such as age, ethnicity, education, committed relationship status, income, or work status.

The data used to conduct these tests are the responses of 164 men to a survey questionnaire. The questionnaire contained items that measured the respondents' self-control (independent variable) and the likelihood that they would sexually harass a woman (dependent variable). In addition, responses to a set of questions provided the demographic data needed to examine how social structure affects the relationship between self-control and the likelihood to sexually harass.

MEASURING THE LIKELIHOOD TO SEXUALLY HARASS

Within mainstream criminology, the likelihood to commit crime is a common focus of empirical study. In contrast, relatively little effort has been made to measure the likelihood to commit sexual harassment. Pryor's (1987) Likelihood to Sexually Harass Scale (LSHS) is the most widely used scale today. The LSHS is a questionnaire consisting of ten different vignettes, each describing men in positions of control over employment benefits for a woman. Following each vignette, the respondent answers the same set of questions. The first asks if the respondent would provide the thing or opportunity to the woman, the second asks if the respondent would provide the thing or opportunity to the woman in exchange for sexual favors, and the third asks if the respondent would ask the woman to meet later for dinner to discuss the thing or opportunity.

Consistently, applications of the LSHS find it to be a reliable and valid measure. The LSHS has been used to test relationships between the likelihood to sexually harass and the likelihood to rape (Malamuth 1981), sexual attitudes (Burt 1980, White et al. 1977), authoritarianism (Berkowitz & Wolkon 1964), machiavellianism (Christie & Geiss 1970), and measures of dominance (Berkowitz & Wolkon 1964). Pryor and Stoller (1994) report that scores on the LSHS significantly predict confidence in recognizing dominance and sexuality. Bargh et al. (1995) find that the LSHS significantly predicts the cognitive association between power and sex. Rudman and Borgida (1995) report that those who score high on the LSHS are more likely to ask sexist questions in a staged employment interview than those who score low on the scale. Finally, in a behavioral study of undergraduate men (Pryor 1987), scores on the LSHS significantly predicted a female research confederate's interpretation of respondent behavior as being sexual or not. Thus, the LSHS is a consistent and valid measure of the likelihood to sexually harass.

MEASURING SELF-CONTROL

Because self-control has been a focus of mainstream criminology for some time, a variety of reliable and valid self-control measures exist. Those most visible to the general public are the subsets of questions within psychometric inventories such as the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory and the California Psychological Inventory.

Continues...

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Table of Contents

	Tables	vii
	Preface	ix
	Editors and Authors	xvii
Part I	Men, Domination, and Sexual Harassment	1
1	Just Men Out of Control? Criminology and the Likelihood to Sexually Harass	3
2	Toward a Criminology of Sexual Harassment	26
3	Fitting In: The Conflation of Firefighting, Male Domination, and Harassment	45
4	Sexualization of Work Roles Among Men Miners: Structural and Gender-Based Origins of "Harazzment"	65
5	Recognition Processes in Sexual Harassment, Bullying, and Violence at Work: The Move to Organization Violations	92
6	The Sexual Harassment of Men: Articulating the Approach-Rejection Theory of Sexual Harassment	117
7	The "Reasonable Woman" and Unreasonable Men: Gendered Discourses in Sexual Harassment Litigation	143
Part II	Dominance, Harassment, and Women	167
8	The Impact of Male Domination on the Prevalence of Sexual Harassment: An Analysis of European Union Surveys	170
9	Sexual Harassment and Violence Toward Policewomen in Finland	195
10	A Missing Link: Institutional Homophobia and Sexual Harassment in the U.S. Military	215
11	Blue-Collar Feminism: The Link Between Male Domination and Sexual Harassment	243
12	The Architecture of Sexual Harassment	271
13	The Nexus of Race and Gender Domination: Racialized Sexual Harassment of African American Women	294
	Index	321