More Like this

1. Bystanders’ thresholds for intervention in Black vs. White women’s sexual harassment

   https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0296755  

   Schachtman, Rebecca; Kaiser, Cheryl R (February 2024, PLOS ONE)

   Olorunlana, Adetayo (Ed.)

   Black women’s sexual harassment is often overlooked and dismissed relative to White women’s harassment. In three pre-registered experiments, we test whether this neglect extends to bystander intervention in sexual harassment. Participants observed an ostensibly live job interview between a man manager and a Black or White woman job candidate. The manager’s questions were pre-programmed to grow increasingly harassing, and participants were asked to intervene if/when they found the interview inappropriate. A meta-analysis of the three studies (N= 1487), revealed that bystanders did not differ in their threshold for intervention when sexual harassment targeted the Black vs. White woman. Despite evidence for the relative neglect of Black women in responses to sexual harassment, these data suggest that bystanders may respond similarly for Black and White women. 

   more » « less
2. Gender Prototypes Shape Perceptions of and Responses to Sexual Harassment

   https://doi.org/10.1177/09637214221078592  

   Kaiser, Cheryl_R; Bandt-Law, Bryn; Cheek, Nathan_N; Schachtman, Rebecca (May 2022, Current Directions in Psychological Science)

   We provide a model describing how the narrow prototype of women as having conventionally feminine attributes and identities serves as a barrier to perceiving sexual harassment and appropriately responding to sexual-harassment claims when the victims of harassment do not resemble this prototype. We review research documenting that this narrow prototype of women overlaps with mental representations of sexual-harassment targets. The prototype of women harms women who diverge from this prototype: Their experiences with sexual harassment are less likely to be perceived as such, and they experience more negative interpersonal, organizational, and legal consequences when they experience harassment. Perceptions of sexual harassment are the catalyst by which sexual harassment is recognized and remedied. Thus, narrow gender prototypes may impede the promise and potential of civil rights laws and antiharassment policy. 

   more » « less
3. Disciplining bystanders: (anti)carcerality, ethics, and the docile subject in HarassMap’s “the harasser is a criminal” media campaign in Egypt

   https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2020.1785911  

   Abdelmonem, Angie (June 2020, Feminist Media Studies)

   Theorizing situates bystander intervention approaches to combat- ting street sexual harassment as either an anti-carceral mode of social justice concerned with citizen responsibility and reshaping community norms or a carceral practice that shifts forms and sites of penal power. This article examines the intersection and effect of carceral and anti-carceral framing techniques in the 2015 “The Harasser is a Criminal” media campaign deployed by the Egyptian anti-sexual harassment initiative HarassMap to promote bystander intervention. Situated within a sphere of Egyptian gender activism that is transnational, secular, and feminist-oriented, and operating within a militarized, authoritarian political context, HarassMap’s campaign complicates how bystander intervention is instrumentalized as a technology of power to shape subjective and intersubjective responses to Egypt’s street sexual harassment problem. Carceral and anti-carceral currents ow together in their campaign not to promote a reliance on police or juridical structures for redress, but to cultivate new ethical dispositions as a means of mobilizing individuals to act. Through the figure of the bystander, HarassMap is engaged in a biopolitical project which seeks to create new neoliberal subjects who police themselves and assume responsibility for their own behavior in public space. 

   more » « less
4. Leveraging Field-Campaign Networks to Identify Sexual Harassment in Atmospheric Science and Pilot Promising Interventions

   https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-19-0341.1  

   Fischer, Emily V.; Bloodhart, Brittany; Rasmussen, Kristen; Pollack, Ilana B.; Hastings, Meredith G.; Marin-Spiotta, Erika; Desai, Ankur R.; Schwarz, Joshua P.; Nesbitt, Stephen; Hence, Deanna (June 2021, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society)

   null (Ed.)

   Abstract Sexual harassment in field settings brings unique challenges for prevention and response, as field research occurs outside “typical” workplaces, often in remote locations that create additional safety concerns and new team dynamics. We report on a project that has 1) trained field project participants to recognize, report, and confront sexual harassment, and 2) investigated the perceptions, attitudes, and experiences of field researchers regarding sexual harassment. Pre-campaign surveys from four major, multi-institutional, domestic and international field projects indicate that the majority of sexual harassment reported prior to the field campaigns was hostile work environment harassment, and women were more likely to be the recipients, on average reporting 2-3 incidents each. The majority of those disclosing harassment indicated that they coped with past experiences by avoiding their harasser or downplaying incidents. Of the incidences reported (47) in post-campaign surveys of the four field teams, all fell under the category of hostile work environment and included incidents of verbal, visual, and physical harassment. Women’s harassment experiences were perpetrated by men 100% of the time, and the majority of the perpetrators were in more senior positions than the victims. Men’s harassment experiences were perpetrated by a mix of women and men, and the majority came from those at the same position of seniority. Post-project surveys indicate that the training programs (taking place before the field projects) helped participants come away with more positive than negative emotions and perceptions of the training, the leadership, and their overall experiences on the field campaign. 

   more » « less
5. From bystander to ally among faculty colleagues: construction and validation of the bystander intervention behavior scale

   https://doi.org/10.1108/EDI-02-2021-0050  

   Griffith, Jennifer; Malone, Mary Fran; Shea, Christine M. (September 2021, Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal)

   Purpose Bystander intervention mitigates the negative impact of bias incidents in the workplace. However, intervention tends to be viewed as binary: intervention occurred or it did not. Consequently, research has focused on conditions under which witnesses of bias incidents choose to intervene, and less is known about how witnesses may intervene. This paper elucidates the intervention behavior choices available to witnesses of bias incidents and develops a bystander intervention behavior (BIB) scale. Design/methodology/approach To develop the scale, the authors used the three-phased act frequency methodology. In phase I, the authors surveyed faculty who had both witnessed a bias incident and seen someone intervene to address it. The authors asked these faculties to list the observed bystander intervention behaviors they had personally observed. In Phase II, different survey respondents and subject matter experts assessed the prototypicality of each of the behaviors in relation to the concept of bystander intervention. In phase III, the authors tested the validity and reliability of the resulting 18-item scale and assessed the ability of bystander intervention behavior to mitigate the negative impact of bias incidents on the academic workplace. Findings The BIB scale consists of two theoretically derived, empirically validated and reliable dimensions; it can be used as a summary score to evaluate the extent to which colleagues intervene indirectly and directly when a bias incident occurs in the academic workplace. Originality/value This scale is valuable in advancing efforts to mitigate the negative effect of bias in the workplace and training colleagues to intervene in various ways when bias occurs. 

   more » « less