AVOIDING DISCRIMINATION AND HARASSMENT

Avoiding Discrimination and Harassment

Avoiding Discrimination and Harassment

Introduction

American women's challenges to the notion of the all-male workplace developed along with organized women's rights activism itself. As early as the Seneca Falls convention of 1848, Lucretia Mott urged the necessity of “securing to woman an equal participation with men in the various trades, professions, and commerce”. Women's growing presence in the workforce during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, particularly as a result of the expansion of the service sector, raised concerns over workplace equality and conduct (Fitzgerald, 2007).

At an individual level, discrimination is behavior that benefits a majority group or group member or disadvantages a target group or group member. Such behavior, also referred to as differential treatment, is often typed as overt or subtle. Overt discrimination is intentional and explicit and has become less acceptable today than it was prior to the passage of Civil Rights legislation (Dipboye, 2008). However, this old-fashioned type continues to exist and includes a range of behaviors such as denial of employment to a person with a disability, hostile verbal harassment directed to an ethnic minority person, or physically assaulting a gay man. Associated with beliefs in the superiority of one's own social group, overt discrimination is behavior aimed at maintaining power over a social group or individual from a group that is regarded as inferior (Dansky, 2007).

Discussion

The majority of outcome research on gender-based discrimination has focused on the consequences of sexual harassment, a form of sexual discrimination. A large body of research links sexual harassment to negative and costly outcomes for both individuals and organizations (Croteau, 2006). It is associated with psychological and health outcomes such as alcohol abuse, increased risk of eating disorders, health problems, distress, posttraumatic stress disorder, and symptoms of other mood and anxiety disorders. Job-related consequences, such as decreased job satisfaction and organizational commitment, increased job and work withdrawal, and job turnover, are also well documented (Crocker, 2007).

Although much of the research focuses on harmful consequences to targets, sexual harassment is also damaging to employers. Job turnover and the subsequent need to recruit, hire, and train new personnel are costly to organizations as are increased usage of health care and employee absences.

Disclosure of sexual identity is linked to workplace harassment and discrimination, with some scholars hypothesizing a direct link between disclosure and ensuing experiences of harassment and discrimination while others suggest that perceptions of discrimination drive whether one conceals or discloses. However, research is clear that the discrimination itself is associated with harm to physical and mental health, including increased alcohol and drug usage, psychological symptoms, distress, and perceptions of poor health (Clark, 2009). Likewise, hate crime victimization outside of the workplace is associated with decreased physical and psychological well-being.

Subtle discrimination, the more common type, is covert and is often unintentional behavior that can operate at an unconscious level. An example is a male manager who regularly invites his male colleagues and subordinates to golf outings after work because he feels he has a lot in common with ...