Why Many Sexually Harassed Women Remain Silent

By Marianne LaFrance

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Since a good deal of time has often transpired between the alleged sexual misconduct and a woman’s coming forward, a question frequently voiced in these cases is: “What took her so long?” Courts have denied the legitimacy of some claims of sexual harassment when too much time is thought to have passed between the alleged wrong and the filing of a case. The assumption is that a reasonable person with a credible charge would have acted sooner.

As a social psychologist, I know something about why there is a gap between how “reasonable” people believe they would respond to inappropriate sexual behavior and what people in the actual situation do. It stems from our very imperfect ability to appraise other people’s circumstances.

Some years ago, my research collaborator Julie Woodzicka and I developed an experimental scenario to demonstrate this gap. We published the results in the Journal of Social Issues back in 2001. We wanted to compare what women thought they would feel and do in response to sexual harassment with how they reacted to the real thing.

Our first group of subjects consisted of 197 undergraduate women. They were told to imagine themselves in a job interview for a research assistant position and were given a script to follow. A smaller group of subjects (25 women, ages 18 to 50) were interviewed by a man in his 30s in a person-to-person session, which they believed to be real.

Most of the questions in the identical interview scripts were of the usual sort, about past work experience and current aspirations. But the interview also included three other questions: “Do you have a boyfriend?” “Do people find you desirable?” “Do you think women should be required to wear bras at work?”

The respondents who were just imagining they were participating in the interview reported considerable anger and little fear. As to whether they would take action, more than two-thirds reported that they would refuse to answer at least one of the inappropriate questions. Sixteen of the 197 said they would get up and leave. Six said they would report the interviewer to a superior.

But something very different emerged with the 25 young women who experienced the harassment in person. Their predominant feeling in the actual situation was fear. Unlike some of the subjects in the imagined interview, no one in the actual interview refused to answer a question, left the interview midstream or tried to report the interviewer to his supervisor.

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Our research revealed an emotional chasm between what real participants experienced and what onlookers believed someone would feel. Anger is a reasonable and stock reaction to someone’s imagined bad behavior. In the actual situation, however, fear predominated because the interviewer’s all too real behavior was perplexing and potentially threatening.

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From the outside, dealing with harassment seems straightforward; from the inside it is trickier. It is easy to criticize women who are and were silent in response to sexual misconduct, but it turns out to be a lot harder and more complicated than we think to say or do something about it.

-- Dr. LaFrance is a professor of psychology at Yale University.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-many-sexually-harassed-women-remain-silent-1512156275