Men and women often respond differently when they witness sexual harassment in the workplace. Women consistently reported higher empathy toward workplace sexual harassment targets than men, and this greater empathy led to more frequent intervention behaviors as well as a decreased likelihood of ignoring or silencing victims. Importantly, this gender gap was not observed in organizations with strong intolerance of sexual harassment.
This is according to a study — “Observers’ gender and behavioral responses to workplace sexual harassment via empathy: The moderating role of organizational intolerance”, co-written by Sohee Kim, YoungAh Park, and Yijue Liang — that was published in the Journal of Applied Psychology.
The study explored how an observer’s gender influences their behavioral responses to workplace sexual harassment and examines the mediating role of empathy as well as the moderating role of organizational intolerance toward sexual harassment.
“Organizations play a huge role in setting the tone and the expectation level for how much sexual harassment behaviors are tolerated within an organization, and that influences how people behave at work,” Kim said.
The researchers used a multimethod approach across three studies, incorporating both actual experiences and hypothetical workplace sexual harassment scenarios, to ask respondents to report their empathy toward the target, their behavioral intentions and their actual behaviors.
Women consistently exhibited higher empathy toward targets than men, regardless of gender of the targets and harassers. Empathy was the key driver of intervention behaviors and the central mechanism explaining gender differences in bystander intervention, the researchers said.
“In multiple data sets, we found over and over again this robust gender difference between men and women and their empathy for the targets of workplace sexual harassment,” Kim said.
Women also engaged less frequently in “not hearing” behaviors, such as invalidating or ignoring complaints, and reported lower intentions of “not hearing” and “silencing targets.” “Silencing” included discouraging others from speaking up.
“This gendered pattern emerged only in organizations that were perceived as tolerant of sexual harassment,” Kim said.
But in organizations that were perceived as highly intolerant of workplace sexual harassment, both men and women reported greater empathy for targets. They also intervened more and exhibited less silence toward victims, thereby eliminating the gender gap, the researchers said.
“The biggest finding is that in organizations that were perceived as highly intolerant of sexual harassment, both men and women reported higher empathy for victims or those targeted for harassment,” Park said. “So it shows a real practical effect of when organizations take the right actions, conduct a thorough investigation and penalize the harassers, that both men and women are on the same page in terms of their response to workplace sexual harassment.”
“We know that women are more frequently the targets of sexual harassment but, surprisingly, we know little about how the gender of the observers and what influences how they respond when they observe sexual harassment at work,” Liang said. “Considering that sexual harassment is more normalized in masculine work environments, the role of male observers becomes particularly important because their actions or reactions can create the workplace culture — and it can influence their co-workers’ reactions.”
The implications of the research point to creating training programs that not only focus on legal compliance but also on building empathy and intolerance of workplace sexual harassment across the workforce, the authors said.
“Strengthening organizational intolerance policies can close gender gaps and create a safer environment for all employees,” Kim said.
