published in: Industrial and Labor Relations Review, 2004, 57(3), 443-461
This paper examines the changing nature of views towards and reports of sexual harassment
using unique data drawn from the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board (USMSPB) of the
U.S. Federal Government over the period from 1978-1994. Our results indicate that while
federal government employees reported only slightly more incidents of employment-related
unwanted sexual behavior in 1994 than in 1978, the willingness to define unwanted sexual
behavior as sexual harassment increased dramatically over this period. The increased
willingness of federal government employees to label certain behaviors as sexual
harassment does not appear to be driven by changes in the demographic, human capital and
job characteristics of federal government employees, rather the changes appear to be due to
structural changes in views (conditional on characteristics) of what constitutes sexual
harassment. At the same time, more of the change in the incidence of unwanted sexual
behavior on the job itself seems to be explained by changes in human capital and job
characteristics. Finally, we find that the qualitative nature of harassment in public-sector
employment has changed despite the fact that the incidence of unwanted sexual behavior
was relatively constant between 1978 and 1994.
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