A Meta-Analytic Review of Gender Differences in Perceptions of Sexual Harassment

Research on gender differences in perceptions of sexual harassment informs an ongoing legal debate regarding the use of a reasonable person standard instead of a reasonable woman standard to evaluate sexual harassment claims. The authors report a meta-analysis of 62 studies of gender differences in harassment perceptions. An earlier quantitative review combined all types of social—sexual behaviors for a single meta-analysis; the purpose of this study was to investigate whether the magnitude of the female-male difference varies by type of behavior. An overall standardized mean difference of 0.30 was found, suggesting that women perceive a broader range of social-sexual behaviors as harassing. However, the meta-analysis also found that the female-male difference was larger for behaviors that involve hostile work environment harassment, derogatory attitudes toward women, dating pressure, or physical sexual contact than sexual propositions or sexual coercion. Since the 1980s, interest in defining sexual harassment has increased. An important issue that arises when trying to define sexual harassment is to identify which behaviors are harassing. However, before the field can reach consensus as to which behav-iors constitute sexual harassment, researchers need to obtain a full understanding of the degree to which individual differences affect perceptions of social-sexual behaviors. An individual characteris-tic that has received a great deal of attention in the literature is gender. Although research reports mixed results, when a gender difference exists, it suggests that women perceive a broader range of behaviors as harassing. In a series of narrative reviews (e.g.