Working in a Majority Context: A Structural Model of the Antecedents and Outcomes of Heterosexism in the Workplace

175 p.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1997.A majority of Americans consider homosexuality to be unacceptable, and empirical evidence demonstrates that negative social attitudes toward gay, lesbian, and bisexual people are widespread. In the current study, such views are posited to arise from heterosexism, a broad construct encompassing a variety of behavioral manifestations of anti-gay attitudes. Theoretical models are developed to examine the antecedents and outcomes of heterosexism in the workplace as well as the role of sexual orientation disclosure ("outness") to these experiences. Heterosexism is assessed via a new measure, the Workplace Heterosexist Experiences Questionnaire, which includes items addressing both direct (e.g., anti-gay jokes) and indirect experiences (e.g., assumptions of heterosexuality). Organizational climate for heterosexism is also measured with a new scale, the Organizational Tolerance for Heterosexism Inventory. The models test the minority stress theory, which posits that gay, lesbian, and bisexual people experience distress when their minority status is reinforced through experiences of prejudice events (i.e., expressions of heterosexism). Two community samples (N = 287) of gay, lesbian, and bisexual people were utilized to test the models. Results of structural equations modeling indicated that experiences of heterosexism were predicted by perceptions that the organization does not take it seriously (i.e, organizational climate); the absence of pro-gay policies and resources did not, however, directly predict heterosexism. The presence of more male coworkers predicted direct, but not indirect, heterosexism. With respect to outcomes, the analyses indicated that, as predicted, heterosexist experiences were strongly associated with a variety of negative job-related, psychological, and health outcomes. In addition, outness was positively related to experiences of direct heterosexism, but negatively related to indirect experiences. Implications for future research are discussed.U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD