Feminist Active Commitment and Sexual Harassment Perception among Chinese Women: The Moderating Roles of Targets ’ Gender Stereotypicality and Type of Harassment

AbstractIn recent years, sexual harassment has become more acknowledged in many developed countries. However, in East Asian culture, it is a sensitive and controversial topic upon which few scholars have focused. The current research aimed to explore whether the relationship between feminist identity and perception of sexual harassment was affected by target ’s traditional or nontraditional gender stereotypicality and types of sexual harassment (unwanted sexual attention or gender harassment) among Chinese working women. The participants were 424 heterosexual women, aged 18 to 71 years-old (mdn = 31), who completed surveys that assessed their feminist Active Commitment and perception of sexual harassment after reading a randomly assigned sexual harassment scenario. Women with higher scores on Active Commitment were more aware of both types of sexual harassment, and participants’ per ception of unwanted sexual attention was significantly stronger than their perception of gender harassment. In addition, the types of targets and types of sexual harassment moderated the relationship between Active Commitment and the perception of sexual harassment. Our findings highlight the import ance of feminist identity for the perception of sexual harassment and suggest that improving gender equality and feminist education is very important for enhancing the perception of sexual harassment.
Source: Sex Roles - Category: International Medicine & Public Health Source Type: research