LATINA EXPERIENCES OF SEXUAL HARASSMENTCORTINA, FITZGERALD, DRASGOW Contextualizing Latina Experiences of Sexual Harassment: Preliminary Tests of a Structural Model

This study integrates findings from the Latin cultural literature and past sexual harassment re-search into a culturally relevant model of the sexual harassment process, framed by cognitive theories of stress and appraisal. Specifically, within a community sample of 184 harassed Latinas, we assessed both universal and culturally salient factors related to targets, perpetrators, harassing behaviors, and organizational contexts. Path analyses then suggested relations be-tween these factors and Latinas ’ phenomenological experiences of sexual harassment. Further, the more experientially severe the sexual harassment, the more that Latinas reported job dissat-isfaction, organizational withdrawal, psychosomatic symptoms, and life dissatisfaction. In sum, this project contextualized the sexual harassment process by identifying sociocultural de-terminants of its impact on Latina working women. Before one can begin to understand and address the phenom-enon of violence against women—in all its various forms—one must understand the context in which that phe-nomenon is allowed to occur. (APA Taskforce on Male Vio-lence Against Women, 1994, p. 3) Violence against women takes many forms and originates in sociocultural constructions of gender and power. Although in-dividuals perpetrate and endure this abuse, theory holds that cultural forcesplayaprominent role in its supportandperpetu-ation (e.g., APA Taskforce on Male Violence Against Women