Bringing Sexual Harassment Research In Line with the Service Economy: A Measure and Model of Sexual Harassment of Professional Women by their Clients

Abstract

Previous research on sexual harassment has focused almost exclusively on harassment by co-workers and supervisors, ignoring extra-organizational sources of harassment. Given that women are spending an increasing amount of time with clients, the current research does not adequately represent women’s experiences. This thesis expands harassment research in two ways. First, a measure of sexual harassment was created for the client context. The current measure of harassment, the Sexual Experiences Questionnaire, was adapted to measure client harassment. It was then administered to a sample of 346 professional women, and its structure determined. Second, a model of the antecedents and consequences of client harassment was tested. Antecedents and outcomes previously linked to harassment were examined in the client context, and found to be similarly related. By examining the structure of client harassment, and its antecedents and outcomes, this research has begun to address an important source of harassment for women in organizations.