Date of Award
Spring 2008
Document Type
Dissertation - Restricted
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Communication
First Advisor
Turner, Lynn H.
Second Advisor
Garner, Ana C.
Third Advisor
Maranto, Cheryl L.
Abstract
I was drawn to the study of sexual harassment very early in my doctoral career. I am happy to say that after completing this dissertation, my interest in studying sexual harassment has not faded. But it is at times, a difficult subject to study. I believe most social research does in some way contribute to improving human relations, and the research on sexual harassment is obviously designed to reduce this very real, and costly, workplace problem. As such, the research is often highly informative and applicable. In truth, I wanted to contribute to the burgeoning body of research on sexual harassment because I see the research as profoundly worthwhile. But being submersed in reading the literature on sexual harassment, and then conducting my own research, while exciting, was also at times a bit depressing. The participants in this study were quite candid with me. They explained their perspectives of gender and sexual harassment, but they also came with stories of sexually harassing incidents. Many of these incidents were recent not harassment that occurred years before most sexual harassment laws and policies were written. Indeed, after collecting all the data I counted the number of incidents that the participants could either recollect happening in their presence or to them personally. I counted approximately 50 incidents of sexual harassment. While this gave me a rich pool of data to analyze, it did seem that sexual harassment was alive and well in the participants' workplaces. However, even though I could identify many cases of individuals involved in sexual harassment, I do not consider sexual harassment is an "individual" problem...