Women's perceptions and labeling of sexual harassment in academia before and after the Hill-Thomas hearings

Abstract

Two years before the Hill—Thomas sexual harassment hearings, Jaschik and Fretz (1991) had sixty female undergraduates view videotapes of a male teaching assistant sexually harassing a female undergraduate as he evaluated her term paper. Seventy percent of subjects were Caucasian, 8% were African-American, 20% were Asian-American, and 2% were identified as of another race. Following the videos, subjects completed measures of perceptions of the teaching assistant. To explore the effects of the hearings on women's perceptions of sexual harassment, this study replicated the earlier one. In this study, 81% of subjects were Caucasian, 10% were African-American, 6% were Asian-American, and 2% were identified as of another race. Using Fisher's Exact Probability Test, results indicated that while women in 1992 were as likely as women in 1989 to label behaviors as harassment when directly asked about it (p= .16), women in 1992 were significantly more likely to spontaneously label the behaviors as harassment (p= .02), suggesting that publicity from the hearings may have increased women's sensitivity to the issue of sexual harassment, although other possible explanations for the changes are also explored.