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Part 1: An Overview of Human Resource Management

claimed to be harassed by his co-workers and supervi

sor on an offshore oil rig was indeed the victim of sexual

harassment.

Several recent cases involving same-sex

harassment have focused new attention on this form of

sexual harassment.

Regardless of the pattern, however,

the same rules apply: Sexual harassment is illegal, and it is

the organization’s responsibility to control it.

In 2011, everyone in the United States was reminded

of exactly how troubling charges of sexual harassment

can be. Herman Cain, a retired executive running for the

in the

21st

Century

Recent research shows that more

than 30 percent of female workers

in the United States have been harassed at work, virtually all of

them by men. Forty-three percent identified the male harasser

as a supervisor, 27 percent as an employee senior to them, and

19 percent as a coworker at the same level. In 2012 (the last year

for which there are complete data), nearly 13,000 charges of

sexual harassment were filed with the U.S. Equal Employment

Opportunity Commission (EEOC), 84 percent of them by women.

Why does sexual harassment (mostly of women) occur in

the workplace? “Power,” says researcher Debbie Dougherty,

who conducted a study in conjunction with a large midwestern

health-care organization. “It was the common answer. It came

up repeatedly,” says Dougherty, a specialist in communications

and power in organizations. She also found that men and women

understand the idea of power differently, and that difference in

understanding, she reports, may play an important part in the

persistence of harassing behavior in the workplace:

■

For most men, power is something that belongs to superiors—

managers and supervisors—who can harass because they

possess the power to do so. By definition, a male coworker

cannot harass a female coworker who is at the same level

because he doesn’t possess sufficient power over her.

■

Women, on the other hand, see power as something that can

be introduced into a relationship as it develops; it’s something

more than the mere formal authority built into the superior’s

job description. Harassment can be initiated by anyone who is

able to create the perception of power.

According to Dougherty, gender differences in the perception

of power may account, at least in part, for gender differences in

perceptions of behavior. “If a man,” she suggests, “thinks that

sexual harassment only comes from a supervisor, he may feel

free to make sexual comments to a female coworker,” reasoning

that because he holds no power over her, she won’t perceive the

behavior as harassment. She, however, probably regards power

as something that can be sought and gained in a relationship and

may therefore “see the sexual comments as a quest for power and

label it as sexual harassment.”

The findings of another recent study tend to support

Dougherty’s conclusions. Researchers from the University of

Minnesota discovered that women in supervisory positions

were 137 percent more likely to be harassed than women in

nonsupervisory roles. Although many of the harassers were men

in superior positions, a large number were coworkers in equivalent

positions. It would seem, then, that male coworkers felt free to

behave in a harassing manner because they believed that their

female targets would not perceive their behavior as efforts to

exert power. As Dougherty predicts, however, they were wrong:

The women perceived the harassing behaviors as power plays.

“This study,” says researcher Heather McLaughlin, “provides the

strongest evidence to date supporting the theory that sexual

harassment is less about sexual desire than about control and

domination...

. Male coworkers ... and supervisors seem to be

using harassment as an equalizer against women in power.”