GENDER

Why Sexual Harassment Persists

and What Organizations Can Do
to Stop It
by Colleen Ammerman and Boris Groysberg
DECEMBER 21, 2017

BUBAONE/GETTY IMAGES

The sheer volume of sexual harassment allegations against public figures reveals just how
entrenched such abuses of power are. They’ve forced us to acknowledge that many men in
leadership roles marginalize and intimidate colleagues (usually, but not always, women) of lower
status both verbally and physically. Sexual harassment happens everywhere: in the most
lucrative industries and in minimum-wage jobs, in glamorous fields as well as the most ordinary.
Of course, none of this is new. The insidious ways harassment hurts not only the targets of
harassment, but the places they work, have long been documented. Multiple studies have found
that experiencing harassment drives women to leave their jobs , taking their ideas,
relationships, and potential out the door with them and creating the costly need to hire and train
new employees to fill the roles vacated. Their exit also erases any path to leadership they may
have been on. And with fewer women in senior management, bias and discrimination, including
harassment, are less likely to be acknowledged and addressed. There is also evidence that
harassment can hurt the cohesion and functioning of teams, with negative financial
consequences for productivity and employee turnover. Companies stand to lose capital—human
and more—if they don’t work to eliminate sexualized bullying. Sexual harassment is not a
women’s problem but a threat to companies’ health. And men most often have the power to
determine if an organization will prevent and treat it—or allow it to spread.

What’s Really Going On

To eliminate sexual harassment, we must first understand that it is a means of enforcing and
regulating social status, not a product of mismanaged sexual desire. Scholars have found in
psychology labs as well as in large datasets that men sexualize female coworkers as a way
to keep them “in their place,” especially when they feel that women are outperforming them in
traditionally masculine domains. And researchers have found that women who deviate
from gender norms by working in male-dominated industries, exhibiting traditionally masculine
personality characteristics, or simply being in supervisory roles, are especially likely to
experience harassment.

Why do some organizations allow sexual harassment to flourish? One reason can be found in
what researchers have termed “masculinity contests,” or sets of norms promoting a show-no-
weakness mentality that defines success as the display of power and control. If a team, division,
or company operates with this mindset, harassing behavior can be an effective way for employees
to marginalize and dominate others in order to shore up their own clout. In such contexts, sexual
harassment may, in fact, be one of many tactics deployed to assert and maintain authority. As
some of the latest allegations of harassment have revealed, sexualized language or contact can be
part of a larger pattern of bullying and intimidation. The best sensitivity trainings will not make a
real dent in a workplace where exaggerated displays of stereotypical masculinity are rewarded.

More to the point, high performance does not go hand-in-hand with interpersonal dysfunction.
In fact, research has shown that people whose workplaces operate as masculinity contests report
high rates of burnout—hardly a recipe for results. And people who buy in to the 24/7, win-at-all
costs mindset are actually worse mentors than their peers who take a more balanced approach to
their jobs. Again, it’s hard to see how encouraging “brilliant jerks” yields organizational health
over the long term.

The Leader’s Role

The consequences of tolerating such behavior are serious, so it would be wise for leaders to do
more than review and update harassment policies and trainings (though they should do that,
too). To take truly preventive measures, leaders must reflect on whether their company culture
thwarts harassers or enables them.

Minimizing or excusing sexual bullying by star employees affects the targets of their

harassment even more than the harassment itself, research has found, and it sends a clear
message about priorities. When sexual harassment isn’t taken seriously by managers and others
in positions of authority with the standing to discipline the offender, employees know that
speaking out is likely to carry more risk than reward. The result is a workplace where people
know they can get away with mistreating their coworkers. This demoralizes not only victims, but
witnesses and bystanders (including men), according to some studies.

Leaders should make clear that there is no organizational cover for harassment by implementing
clear and credible reporting structures, ensuring that investigations of harassment claims are
thorough, and fitting the punishment to the offense, rather than the status of the offender.

Sexual harassment is not a women’s issue but a leadership one. Women do not need to be
“protected” from the misbehavior of men in their workplaces. They need their managers to foster
cultures in which sexual bullying is treated as the threat to the organization it is.

Colleen Ammerman is the director of the Gender Initiative at Harvard Business School.
Boris Groysberg is the Richard P. Chapman Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School,
Faculty Afliate at the HBS Gender Initiative, and the coauthor, with Michael Slind, of Talk, Inc. (Harvard Business Review
Press, 2012). Twitter: @bgroysberg.

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Related Topics: PERSONNEL POLICIES | ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE

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CHETAN KUMAR 5 days ago

The recent revelations of sexual harassment at work places has proved that sexual harassment persists across all
industries and across all levels. We need to admit that men in general are guilty of sexual exploitation at some
point in their life - only the circumstance and degree of abuse varies. When men at power are the ones who
abuse, it makes it much harder for the victims to expect justice/ redressal.
A long term sustainable remedy to this problem is feasible only through individual awareness, cultural shifts and
change in mindsets.

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