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Who Harasses Women Journalists?
A Qualitative Look at Sexual Harassment Among U.S. Newswomen
by
Kim Walsh-Childers
Associate Professor
Jean Chance
Associate Professor
Kristin Herzog
Assistant Professor
Department of Journalism
College of Journalism and Communications
University of Florida
Gainesville, FL 32611
Submitted to the Commission on the Status of Women March 29, 1996, for
presentation at the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass
Communication annual meeting in Anaheim, Calif., August 1996
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Special thanks to Naomi Rifkin for her work on the
survey and to Suzanne Ackerman for assisting in coding the interviews. The
authors also would like to thank Anita Kugler, Denise Prodigo, Erica Shepard,
Laura Smith, Heloiza Herscovitz, Roselyn Dailey and the other volunteer
interviewers for their assistance on this project.
Who Harasses Women Journalists?
A Qualitative Look at Sexual Harassment Among U.S. Newswomen
ABSTRACT
Kim Walsh-Childers [3044 Weimer Hall, (o) 904-392-3924, (h)
904-472-5087, [log in to unmask] or [log in to unmask]]
Jean Chance [3046 Weimer Hall, (o) 904-392-0450, (h) 904-462-5513,
[log in to unmask]]
Kristin Herzog [3049 Weimer Hall, (o) 904-392-8456, (h) 904-336-7300,
[log in to unmask]]
College of Journalism and Communications
University of Florida
Gainesville, FL 32611
This paper describes a qualitative analysis of answers to open-ended
questions in a survey of 227 female reporters, editors, photographers and
graphic artists working at daily newspapers in the United States. The analysis
showed that the most serious instances of sexual harassment respondents reported
involved harassment by a supervisor. Most of the incidents women described would
fall into the "hostile environment" category; few supervisors tried anything as
blatant as offering advancement to women in exchange for sexual favors or
threatening women who refused. Among women harassed by sources, the most
problematic group of contacts seemed to be those involved in law enforcement --
police officers, sheriffs and sheriff's deputies, state highway patrol officers,
and district attorneys. The female journalists participating in this study
responded to harassment either by confronting their harassers directly,
complaining to their own or their harasser's supervisor, or doing nothing. It
seems clear that women who dealt with the problem aggressively often got the
best results and felt more satisfied with the outcome. The majority of
respondents seemed to feel their newspapers had responded well to complaints
about sexual harassment. A significant number said they did not believe there
had been any such complaints in their workplace, although some of them felt
confident that their newspapers' managers would deal with the problems
satisfactorily. On the other hand, a substantial group of women indicated that
the male managers at their newspapers would "laugh off" complaints about sexual
harassment or talk to the person who complained but take not action against the
harasser.
Who Harasses Women Journalists?
A Qualitative Look at Sexual Harassment Among U.S. Newswomen
Submitted to the Commission on the Status of Women March 29, 1996, for
presentation at the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass
Communication annual meeting in Anaheim, Calif., August 1996
Who Harasses Women Journalists?
A Qualitative Look at Sexual Harassment Among U.S. Newswomen
ABSTRACT
This paper describes a qualitative analysis of answers to open-ended
questions in a survey of 227 female reporters, editors, photographers and
graphic artists working at daily newspapers in the United States. The analysis
showed that the most serious instances of sexual harassment respondents reported
involved harassment by a supervisor. Most of the incidents women described would
fall into the "hostile environment" category; few supervisors tried anything as
blatant as offering advancement to women in exchange for sexual favors or
threatening women who refused. Among women harassed by sources, the most
problematic group of contacts seemed to be those involved in law enforcement --
police officers, sheriffs and sheriff's deputies, state highway patrol officers,
and district attorneys. The female journalists participating in this study
responded to harassment either by confronting their harassers directly,
complaining to their own or their harasser's supervisor, or doing nothing. It
seems clear that women who dealt with the problem aggressively often got the
best results and felt more satisfied with the outcome. The majority of
respondents seemed to feel their newspapers had responded well to complaints
about sexual harassment. A significant number said they did not believe there
had been any such complaints in their workplace, although some of them felt
confident that their newspapers' managers would deal with the problems
satisfactorily. On the other hand, a substantial group of women indicated that
the male managers at their newspapers would "laugh off" complaints about sexual
harassment or talk to the person who complained but take not action against the
harasser.
_
Who Harasses Women Journalists?
A Qualitative Look at Sexual Harassment Among U.S. Newswomen
During the first half of the 1990s, U.S. newspapers and other media
devoted a significant amount of space to the issue of sexual harassment.
Coverage of Oklahoma law professor Anita Hill's allegations of sexual harassment
by then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, the Navy's Tailhook scandal and
Senator Bob Packwood's sexual misconduct brought the issue to the forefront of
national attention and to the front pages of most, if not all, of the nation's
daily newspapers.
For female journalists throughout the country, the issue of sexual
harassment was more than just a story, however; like Hill, the female Navy
officers and the women subjected to Packwood's unwanted advances, many
newswomen were confronting sexual harassment as a problem in their own
workplaces and in their relationships with sources and other professional
contacts. For instance, in 1992, an Associated Press Managing Editors' survey of
640 journalists in 19 small, medium and large newsrooms around the United States
revealed that although most men surveyed tended to say there was no sexual
harassment problem at their newspapers, women said it is a potential, if not
specific problem, and that it is neither reported nor punished in most instances
(Kossan, 1992). The survey also showed that:
*only 30 percent of the respondents said their newspaper had clear
guidelines for filing internal complaints about sexual harassment;
*95 percent of the victims of sexual harassment are women;
*2 percent of the men and 11 percent of the women said sexual
harassment or the fear of harassment has affected their daily work habits;
*half of those who said they had been sexually harassed said the
harassment was in the form of annoying or degrading comments about sex.
While the most prevalent form of harassment was annoying or degrading
comments about sex, followed by offensive pictures or posters and annoying or
degrading comments about women's bodies, the APME study found that women also
reported having male associates grab their breasts and buttocks or make "jokes"
to them about rape (Kossan, 1993).
Writing about the study in a membership newsletter, Pam Johnson, then
managing editor of The Phoenix Gazette and chairwoman of the APME Newsroom
Management Committee, observed:
Women in our newsrooms are impatient. They don't want to
get ogled. They don't want to receive sex-related messages in
their
computers; they don't want to be put in the place of laughing off
a
sexual joke or challenging it and then having to pay for being
forthright. And they definitely don't want to be fondled. But it's
clear many feel vulnerable to any or all of these situations
(Johnson,
1993, p. 11).
Flatow (1994) found that more than two-thirds of women working in the
newsrooms of Indiana daily newspapers had indeed found themselves "vulnerable"
to sexual harassment. In her survey of full-time editorial employees working at
26 Indiana dailies, Flatow (1994) found that 6.6 percent of the men had
experienced physical sexual harassment at some point during their careers, and
the same percentage of men reported experiencing verbal sexual harassment. Among
women, however, 22.4 percent had experienced physical sexual harassment and 61.8
percent reported experiencing verbal sexual harassment; nearly a third of the
women reported "non-verbal" sexual harassment, which included making sexual
gestures with hands or through body movements, giving personal gifts and other
inappropriate non-contact behaviors.
One recent study of women journalists in Washington, D.C., showed
that 60 percent of the women accredited to the Capitol press gallery reported
having been sexually harassed. The researchers, Katherine McAdams and Maurine
Beasley, surveyed 273 women journalists and received responses from 37 percent.
Of those who responded, 80 percent said they believe sexual harassment is a
problem for women journalists. McAdams and Beasley (1994) argue that the issue
of sexual harassment among women journalists needs to be investigated and
brought into the open so that individual women no longer have to deal with the
problem alone.
At the time of their study, Beasley and McAdams noted that they had
found only one previous newsroom survey about sexual harassment. That study,
conducted for the newspaper trade publication NewsInc., showed that 44 percent
of the 199 newswomen surveyed had experienced sexual harassment on the job. That
figure was twice the number of women in all fields reporting harassment in a
1991 Newsweek/Gallup Poll (McAdams & Beasley, 1994).
On the other hand, many researchers have found that sexual harassment
of women is widespread throughout academia (Adams, J.W., Kottke, J.L., &
Padgitt, J.S., 1983; Andsager, Nagy, & Bailey, 1994; Benson & Thomson, 1982;
Hughes & Sandler, 1986; Kreps, 1992; Wood, 1992), and other studies have
suggested that more than half of all working women have experienced some form of
sexual harassment in their careers (Farley, 1978; Fitzgerald & Schullman, 1993;
Fitzgerald, et al., 1988; Jaschik and Maypole, 1991; U.S. Merit Systems
Protection Board, 1981). Merit Systems Protection Board, 1981; Moynahan, 1993)
More recently, Bowen and Laurion (1994) studied sexual harassment
among mass communication professionals. Among their sample of 52 female and 44
male respondents, the authors found that 32 percent had experienced sexual
harassment as students, 49 percent had experienced sexual harassment as interns
in a mass communication organization, and 65 percent had experienced sexual
harassment during their professional careers.
Finally, earlier analysis of data from the study described in this
paper demonstrated that sexual harassment is indeed a problem for the majority
of women journalists at U.S. daily newspapers. About 60 percent of the women
included in this national survey said sexual harassment is at least somewhat a
problem for women journalists (reporters, photographers, editors and graphic
artists), and more than one in 10 (11.5 percent) said sexual harassment is a
significant or very serious problem for women journalists. Lower percentages
reported having substantial trouble with sexual harassment in their own careers;
nonetheless, more than one-third (36.1 percent) said sexual harassment had been
at least somewhat a problem for them personally, and 17 women (7.5 percent)
reported having had significant or serious problems with sexual harassment
during their careers.
Respondents also were asked to indicate how often they personally had
been subjected to two types of sexual harassment - harassment that did not
involve physical contact (sexual comments, jokes, leering, etc.) and harassment
that did involve physical contact (unwanted touching, etc.) - from a variety of
types of professional contacts.[1]
When harassment by specific categories of professional contacts was
analyzed, the results indicated that news sources were the most likely to harass
women journalists both physically and without making physical contact. More than
44 percent of the women reported that sources at least sometimes subjected them
to non-physical sexual harassment, and about 6 percent reported physical sexual
harassment by sources at least sometimes. More than one-fourth of the women ever
had experienced physical sexual harassment by a news source, and more than 70
percent of the women had experienced non-physical sexual harassment by a source.
[2]
Overall, at least one-fourth of the women said they experienced
non-physical sexual harassment at least sometimes from their supervisors or
others in positions of authority over them (25.1 percent) and from co-workers at
their same level (29.1 percent), and nearly one-fourth experienced such
harassment from subordinates (23.6 percent) or in other professional settings
(22.5 percent). Almost 5 percent had been physically harassed at least sometimes
by their supervisors and same-level peers.
While these results give us a general indication of which types of
professional contacts are most likely to sexually harass women journalists, it
seems useful as well to know more specifics about the perpetrators of harassment
and their behaviors. For instance, what types of news sources are most likely to
have harassed women journalists? Or, when newsroom co-workers harass women
journalists, is the harassment normally what the courts have labelled "quid pro
quo harassment"Dthat is, threats of punishment or offers of advantages linked to
providing sexual favorsDor does the harassment more commonly reflect a "hostile
environment?"
Another important issue is how women journalists react to harassment;
do they ignore it, confront the harasser directly, file a formal complaint with
their employer, or take some other approach? And when women do complain about
harassment in the newsroom or by sources, how do newspaper managers respond? Are
female journalists satisfied that their employers pay serious attention to the
issue of sexual harassment, or are charges of harassment dismissed as
hypersensitivity?
The purpose of this paper, then, is to explore sexual harassment of
women journalists in more depth; we reason that the more newspaper managers
understand about how harassment occurs, the better able they will be to deal
with instances of harassment when they arise.
Through qualitative analysis of women's answers to open-ended
questions about their experiences with sexual harassment, this paper seeks
answers to the following research questions:
1. What kinds of supervisors, co-workers and news sources sexually
harass women journalists? In particular, are reporters and photographers more
likely to experience harassment in certain "beat" areas?
2. How do women typically respond to harassment, and does their
response to the harassment (i.e. direct confrontation versus ignoring the
incident) influence their feelings about the outcome of the incident?
3. When women journalists complain about sexual harassment by
co-workers or by news sources, how do newspaper managers typically respond?
Methods
Female reporters, photographers, editors and graphic artists were
randomly selected for participation in the survey using a multi-level stratified
sampling procedure. First, the researchers drew separate samples of small,
medium and large newspapers (72 small, 32 medium and 16 large newspapers). We
then contacted a newsroom manager (usually the managing editor) at each
newspaper included in the samples and asked him or her to send us a list of all
the female reporters, editors, photographers and graphic artists on the
newspaper's staff, including those working at bureaus. After obtaining these
lists, the lists were arranged in random order, and we then randomly selected
names from the lists. This procedure ultimately produced a final sample of 208
women from small newspapers (daily circulation less than 25,000), 184 women from
mid-sized newspapers (daily circulation of 25,001-100,000) and 190 women from
large newspapers (daily circulation greater than 100,000).
After all the names had been chosen, we sent each sample member a
letter describing our project and requesting her cooperation.[3] The letter
also informed sample members that only female students or faculty members would
be conducting the study interviews and assured them that, in reports of the
research, we would identify individuals only in very general terms, such as "a
reporter from a mid-sized Southeastern newspaper." Interviewers first called
each sample member to arrange an appropriate time and place to complete the
interview; any woman who did not feel comfortable discussing the subject in her
work environment was asked for a home telephone number and called at home. The
first part of each interview was conducted using a computer-assisted telephone
interviewing program. Interviewers subsequently asked each participant for more
details about her experiences, using a schedule of open-ended questions; all
participants provided answers to the open-ended questions as well as the
computer-assisted section of the survey.
Our goal had been to include about 100 women from each size of
newspapers in the final survey, and we had anticipated that we would need
approximately twice as many women in the initial sample to account for refusals
to participate, ineligible respondents, sample members who never could be
reached, etc. The most serious difficulty we encountered turned out to be
contacting sample members, particularly those from the large and mid-sized
newspapers, before they left their jobs, often for employment outside
newspapers. Once we had contacted sample members, refusals to participate in the
survey were quite rare. Of the 582 women included in the original sample, we
ultimately made some type of contact with 396, although in 85 cases, we only
learned that the woman no longer worked at that newspaper. Of the 311 women our
interviewers did speak with, only 33 refused to participate, for an unusually
low refusal rate of 10.6 percent. Eighty-four other women were contacted and
agreed to participate, but could not be interviewed because of scheduling
difficulties or some other problem.
Not surprisingly, the largest number of respondents were reporters
(39 percent). Eleven percent of the respondents were copy editors, 15 percent
were section editors (i.e. editors of features, business or sports sections),
and 4 percent were city editors or assistant city editors. Fourteen respondents
(6.2 percent) were news editors, and an equal number described themselves as
editors[4]. Six of the repondents (2.6 percent) held managing editor or
assistant managing editor positions, and another six were photographers. The
remainder of the sample were graphic artists (4.4 percent), photo editors (1.8
percent), editorial writers or columnists (1.8 percent), held some other
position (1.8 percent) or gave no title (3.5 percent).
To answer the research questions, two independent coders read through
all respondents' answers to the open-ended questions. They then met to compare
impressions about the themes that emerged from the interviews in relation to
each of the research questions listed above.
Results
The first research question was aimed at discovering more
specifically which kinds of professional contacts were most likely to harass
female reporters, photographers, editors and graphic artists. The answer was
derived from analysis of women's responses to two questions. Women who indicated
that they had experienced sexual harassment during their newspaper careers were
asked to "describe briefly the most serious or most disturbing instance of
sexual harassment." In addition, all women were asked if they wanted to describe
any other instance of sexual harassment involving themselves personally or other
co-workers.
As noted earlier, the quantitative analysis revealed that women were
most likely to have experienced harassment by news sources; more than 44 percent
of the women reported that sources at least sometimes subjected them to
non-physical sexual harassment, and about 6 percent reported physical sexual
harassment by sources at least sometimes. In contrast, about one-fourth of the
women experienced non-physical sexual harassment at least sometimes from their
supervisors or others in positions of authority over them (25.1 percent), from
co-workers at their same level (29.1 percent), and from subordinates (23.6
percent). Almost 5 percent had been physically harassed at least sometimes by
their supervisors and same-level peers.
However, when asked to describe the most disturbing instance of
sexual harassment they had experienced, the respondents most commonly described
instances of harassment involving co-workers inside the newsroom. Often these
incidents were described only in general terms; women noted that "co-workers"
often told offensive sexual jokes or made other sex-oriented comments to them.
In some cases, women mentioned co-workersDparticularly those in composing room
or production areasDkeeping sex-oriented calendars or posters on their walls,
making lewd remarks to women who came into their work areas or engaging in other
kinds of harassment. One woman, for instance, described a continuing problem she
had had at another newspaper, earlier in her career. The newsroom was on the
second floor of the building, and whenever she was walking up the stairs, the
composing room foreman would rush over to the stairs to look up her dress. Two
other specific problem areas seemed to be the photography darkroom and the
sports department. One woman noted that members of the sports department "keep
up a constant chatter of sexual innuendoes and real sexual talk;" she added that
these co-workers always speak loudly to ensure that women in the news section
can hear their comments. A night editor from a small paper reported that the
newspaper's sports editor regularly comes by her desk and rubs her shoulders and
touches her hair. When she finishes her work, she said, she sometimes asks if
there's anything she can help him with because he has to deal with more
late-breaking news. Her offer to help is greeted with more harassment: "He
alwaysDevery single dayDsays, 'Yes, there is something you can do,'" and then
laughs.
One woman woman noted that when she was an intern, one of the
newspaper's photographers would follow her into the darkroom and show her
"girlie" pictures. Another respondent said that at her newspaper, "when a woman
and a man go into the darkroom, the men make oohs and aahs like something is
going to happen."
The most serious incidents of sexual harassment often seemed to
involve supervisors. For instance, one woman recalled that when she first began
her current job, her supervisor, a married man, kept hinting that he wanted to
go out with her. Several women mentioned being harassed by their supervisors at
office parties; one editor invited a group of women from his newspaper to the
managing editor's home and then suggested they all go "skinny-dipping" in the
pool. One part-time reporter said her editor frequently made comments about a
beauty contestant's breast size or the cut of her dress, commented on the
breasts or legs of other women who came into the newsroom, told her she'd have
to shave her legs to be hired full-time, and told another co-worker that the
rape victim in a wire story "probably deserved it."
A journalist from a Southeastern newspaper reported that her manager
once had called her at home and asked her to meet him at a lounge to discuss
something work-related. "When I got there, he was really drunk, and he said,
'You want it, and you know you do.' I went out the fire escape to get out of
there. When I left, I was fearful I had lost my job. But I think he was so drunk
he didn't even remember doing it."
A reporter from a mid-sized newspaper in the Northeast had a similar
experience with her newspaper's former chief editor. She and a male friend had
run into the editor at a social event, and the editor had invited them back to a
party at his apartment. The reporter and her friend decided to go, knowing that
other co-workers would be there, and the editor offered to let the reporter
drive his expensive sports car to the apartment, while her friend followed in
his own car. "This man had always been very kind to me," she recalled. "I had no
reason to expect anything." But after she got into the driver's seat, the editor
began telling her that "the things he would like to do with me and to me would
make him lose his job. He kept saying he was disturbed about the thoughts he was
having about me." She got out of the car and didn't go to the party.
Another woman, now a managing editor, had the same kind of experience
when she was a reporter. The man who was then managing editor took her to lunch
to discuss changes in the office. He insisted on driving her in his car, and on
the way back to the office, he took an indirect route so that he could tell her
about the feelings he had for her. Both she and the managing editor were
married, and both had children. "I was very uneasy about that," she said. "I
thought that was extremely inappropriate. It made for a strained working
relationship for a long time."
Yet another woman had a higher-level manager who was not her direct
supervisor try to pressure her into having sex with him. "He point blank said to
me that if I had an affair with him, I could get off night shift," she recalled.
Although the majority of respondents who discussed specific incidents
of sexual harassment had had problems with newsroom co-workers, a number of
women had had their worst experiences with news sources. News source problems
seemed to occur most frequently among women covering the police beat or courts,
although politicians, real estate salesmen, doctors, and other businessmen were
mentioned, too. One reporter from a Texas daily said she often has to contend
with crude comments from the county deputies, city marshals, or "other law
enforcement or cowboy types." She was not surprised by this treatment; by way of
explanation, she asked the interviewer, "Have you ever been to Texas?"
Another reporter said that before she married a well-known state
trooper, her police beat sources, particularly the local sheriff, would make
advances to her, often implying that she'd have greater access to information if
she went out with them or spent time with them. A photographer had to fend off
sexual advances while riding with the fire chief for a photo assignment. A
police beat reporter for a small daily had been harassed by the assistant
district attorney and by a police detective who tried to get her barred from
coming into the detective division to do interviews after she refused to date
him.
One police beat reporter from a small newspaper in a Mid-Atlantic
state recounted two instances in which she went to a district attorney's office
to conduct interviews and found him playing confiscated X-rated videotapes. He
continued to watch them during the interviews, telling her, "We just got these
tapes in, and I have to look at them." Not surprisingly, the woman found the
experience unnerving.
"It just didn't make sense that he would put them in the
tape player. They're (videotape characters) having sex, totally
nude,
on TV. It was disturbing and uncomfortable."
The second research question concerned how women respond to
harassment and whether their responses influence their satisfaction with the
outcome. Because we had not asked a specific question about how women responded
to their harassers, many respondents did not provide any information about their
responses. However, among those women who did discuss their responses, there
seemed to be three main campsDa direct confrontation with the harasser,
complaining to the harasser's supervisor, or no response at all.
Women who confronted their harassers directly reported a number of
different approaches. For instance, one reporter described an incident in which
the governor's deputy press secretary jokingly invited two state troopers to
strip-search her. After discussing the incident with her supervisor, she printed
the press secretary's comments in a story. Another woman, who works for a large
Midwestern newspaper, also dealt assertively with a bond trader who, while
showing her a computer program he used, kept brushing his knee against her leg
in a way she interpreted as suggestive; she also noted that, as staff members
left the office about 5 p.m., each seemed to make a point of letting her know
they were leaving. She, too, discussed the incident with her editor. With her
editor's backing, she then called the bond trader to tell him that because of
his inappropriate behavior, she would not use the interview in her story, nor
would the newspaper ever use him as a source again.
Other women used less direct approaches to confronting their
harassers. For instance, one woman whose married supervisor kept hinting he
wanted to date her told him she was working on a story about sexual harassment
in the workplace and asked if he knew what sexual harassment was. The same woman
dealt with harassment by her newspaper's circulation director by waiting until
he made a comment with the newspaper's owner standing nearby. She then told the
circulation director that a married man like him shouldn't be saying such things
because it could get him in trouble. After that, she had no further problems
with him.
Women who confronted their harassers directly often seemed most
satisfied with the outcome, and in some cases, those who complained to a
supervisor had equal success. For instance, a woman from a mid-sized New England
newspaper reported that her male co-workers once put up a poster showing a woman
surrounded by 10 men, with the headline, "Put an end to rape. Say Yes."
The poster was up for about five seconds, and I marched
into the managing editor's office and asked him if he had seen it.
He
went back and took one look at it and immediately told them to
take it
down. In dealing with this stuff, the best thing to do is just go
get a
man with a brain in his head, as opposed to one of the ones with
his
brain between his legs.
Sometimes women acted together to deal with their harassers. For
instance, the woman whose editor constantly made comments about women's breasts
and legs joined with other women to complain to the newspaper publisher, who
fired the editor. Another woman initially said nothing about the upper-level
manager who had tried to persuade her to trade sex with him for better working
hours, but later, after another employee filed a harassment complaint about the
manager, the respondent was forced to tell her editor about her experiences. As
a result, the harassing manager was dismissed.
Many women, however, said that they had done nothing to confront
their harassers directly. In some cases, particularly in dealing with sources,
they said they wished they had complained or believed they should have
complained but felt powerless to do so. For instance, a police beat reporter who
had a detective throw a pair of panties in her face and ask her what color
underwear she was wearing said she just grabbed the panties and held them,
saying nothing. "I believe a lot of women reporters seem to take the sexual
harassing comments rather than alienating a source, like my situation with the
detective. I did not confront him; to report it would have made it worse."
Another woman expressed the same feelings of helplessness in regard
to harassment by co-workers, particularly supervisors. "When your job is on the
line, you're powerless to do anything about it. And I'm not sure if you cried
sexual harassment that you would have a job where I am."
Often women reported simply trying to avoid co-workers who harassed
them. One woman noted that she came in to work at 5 a.m. to avoid having to work
late with a city editor who kept pornographic magazines in a suitcase at his
desk. She said female reporters often were accused of being late for deadlines
because they would not work late with this editor. Other women changed their
style of dress in an attempt to discourage co-workers' leering or suggestive
comments.
In many cases, women who did not confront their harassers or file
formal complaints seemed to regret their handling of the situations. For
instance, the reporter who had to interview the district attorney while he was
watching pornographic videotapes said she just kept asking questions, despite
her discomfort. "I just ignored it. I probably should have asked him to turn it
off, but I didn't. He's a pretty intimidating man anyway," she said.
Another woman said her supervisor at a previous newspaper often made
unwanted comments to her, and when she asked him to stop, he laughed and told
her she was too sensitive. She said she never complained to upper management
about him but now wishes she had. Instead, she simply found another job.
The third research question concerned how respondents felt their
newspaper's managers had responded to complaints about sexual harassment. Again,
most responses seemed to fall into one of three campsDthose who felt their
newspapers responded well, those who felt their newspapers did not take the
complaints seriously, and those who said they knew of no complaints.
Not surprisingly, women who knew of specific incidents in which a
harasser had been reprimanded or even dismissed or who believed harassment would
not be tolerated seemed most satisfied with their managers' responses. For
instance, one woman, a manager herself, said that complaints about sexual
harassment are "handled swiftly and correctly. A woman who worked for me told me
of a (harassment) situation, and they handled it just like that." Other women
said their supervisors would "take a very strong stand against it" or that
management had "taken immediate action about complaints." One woman at a larger
newspaper noted that, at her newspaper, complaints about harassment are taken
seriously "because there is support from top management above the newsroom
level." Yet another woman said a co-worker who pinched her on the buttocks
"didn't last very long here. The management here has always been very strict
about any blatant stuff. . . The policy is basically that it's just not
tolerated."
Respondents sometimes attributed the satisfactory handling of sexual
harassment complaints to the fact that women were in charge or in positions of
authority. One respondent noted that her newspaper's female managing editor
handles all complaints. "They have pretty much pounced on it," she said. Another
said that if complaints were made, they'd be taken seriously by the publisher, a
black woman. In fact, at least two women said the response to complaints about
sexual harassment would depend on whether the supervisor was male or female. "If
you go to one of the female supervisors, I think they listen, but I think the
male supervisors blow it off as a woman's issue that is not really that
important, that we're just complaining." Another respondent said women take
their complaints to the personnel department instead of newsroom supervisors
because the personnel director is female.
Perhaps a third of the women said their managers did not take
seriously complaints about sexual harassment. The woman who was offended by the
loud sexual jokes and comments from her newspaper's sports department, for
instance, said she and her female co-workers complained to their boss, but he
did nothing.
Another woman noted that no one in her newsroom is willing to
complain to higher management because it's the publisher who makes offensive
comments. One woman noted that after women in her newsroom complained about the
editor, his behavior improved slightly, but he didn't stop making off-color
jokes. "Now he's leaving to be editor at another paper within the same company."
One respondent said that at her newspaper, complaints about
harassment "are pushed aside as personality conflicts. There is no policy
visible." Another said her editor would listen to complaints about either
sources or co-workers but then do nothing about them. "You can talk to the
editor, and most of the time nothing is ever done," she said. "The editor does
show concern, but he's the type of person who doesn't really seem to follow
through." Another woman echoed those comments. "You can talk to management about
it. They're real good about listening. After that, it seems like nothing's
done."
These respondents sometimes felt that complaints about news source
harassment would be equally likely to be ignored. One woman from a small
newspaper said female reporters and photographers in her newsroom never would
complain about harassment by sources because the supervisor to whom they'd have
to complain "is the one person who makes women most uncomfortable in the
newsroom." Another woman said complaining about source harassment actually could
cause the reporter or photographer more trouble. "Management would be more
worried about alienating the source than about helping the reporter," she said.
In many cases, women said they didn't know how their newspapers would
respond to complaints about sexual harassment because as far as they knew, there
had been no such complaints. Often these women seemed to have interpreted the
term "complaint" to mean some sort of formal grievance or charge, rather than
simply an employee's request for assistance with a problem.
Discussion
In summary, then, the most serious instances of sexual harassment
respondents reported involved harassment by a supervisor. Most of the incidents
women described would fall into the "hostile environment" category; few
supervisors tried anything as blatant as offering advancement to women in
exchange for sexual favors or threatening women who refused.
Although women also reported harassment by same-level or lower-level
co-workers and by news sources, many seemed most unnerved when the harasser was
a supervisor. This is hardly surprising; harassing co-workers and news sources
may make the working environment uncomfortable and less productive, but women
are not likely to perceive co-workers or sources as having as much power over
them and their careers.
Nonetheless, co-workers and news sources often were mentioned as
having sexually harassed women journalists. Again, most of these incidents could
be classified as "hostile environment" harassment, but in a few instances, women
reported that sources offered to trade information for sexual favors. Among
women harassed by sources, the most problematic group of contacts seemed to be
those involved in law enforcement or the judicial systemDpolice officers,
sheriffs and sheriff's deputies, state highway patrol officers, and district
attorneys. This result probably is not surprising for any journalist who ever
has worked around law enforcement officers. Indeed, some studies have indicated
that male managers in certain kinds of workplacesDincluding police stations and
law firmsDview their workplaces as "unique environments, where sexual harassment
can be excused" (Kossan, p. 3). Women who want to work in these traditionally
male environments are expected to play by the boys' rules or not play at all.
The female journalists participating in this study responded to
harassment either by confronting their harassers directly, complaining to their
own or their harasser's supervisor, or doing nothing. Women who dealt with the
problem aggressively often got the best results and felt more satisfied with the
outcome. However, it is important to note that this finding does not mean that
all female journalists who confront harassment directly will have satisfactory
outcomes. In many cases, the women who did nothing to confront their harassers
may have judged quite accurately that neither complaining to the harasser nor
complaining to a supervisor would have helped at all. Indeed, many of the women
who did complain noted that their supervisors did not take accusations of sexual
harassment seriously or that they listened to the women's complaints but did
nothing to end the harassment.
On the other hand, when asked how their newspaper's management
responded to complaints about sexual harassment, the majority of respondents
seemed to feel their newspapers had responded well. Many said they did not
believe there had been any such complaints in their workplace, although some of
them felt confident that their newspapers' managers would deal with the problems
satisfactorily. On the other hand, other women indicated that the male managers
at their newspapers would "laugh off" complaints about sexual harassment or talk
to the person who complained but take no action against the harasser.
One explanation for the seeming discrepancy between the high
percentage of women reporting sexual harassment experiences and the relatively
high degree of satisfaction with newspapers' handling of the incidents may stem
from the way the questions were asked. The respondents were asked to describe
the "most serious or most disturbing" instance of sexual harassment they had
experienced, allowing them to recall incidents that had occurred earlier in
their careers; however, the question about management's response to harassment
directed their attention to the policies of their current employer. Often women
reported instances of sexual harassment that had occurred while they were
working at other newspapers; in fact, some noted that sexual harassment
contributed to their decision to leave previous employers. Thus it seems likely
that fewer women would have reported harassment if they had been asked only
about incidents at their current newspapers; similarly, had they been asked to
evaluate the handling of sexual harassment incidents at previous newspapers,
some may have been less satisfied.
However, it also is important to note that among women who had been
harassed, how managers dealt with harassment complaints was crucial in
determining respondents' satisfaction with their work environments. For
instance, one woman from a large newspaper noted: "There's always room for
improvement, and the philosophy here has been trying to work toward that. The
fact that there have been these incidents is not a condemnationDit depends on
what the company does with them."
Regardless of who's responsible for the harassment, it seems clear
that sexual harassment is an issue newspaper managers must confront if they want
to maintain the most productive working atmosphere. Indeed, Brown and Flatow
(1995) concluded from an analysis of sexual harassment among Indiana journalists
that workplace factors, including the open structure of most newsrooms and the
high ratio of male to female workers, may facilitate harassing conduct. Judging
from the comments of many of our respondents, it appears that one of the best
ways to ensure that harassment is confrontedDand that women perceive that their
managers take a strong stand against itDis to move women into positions of
authority. Although some respondents praised their male supervisors' efforts to
eliminate sexual harassment, a number of women made specific mention of the fact
that when women are in positions of power, sexual harassment is less likely to
be tolerated.
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[1] Women were asked about harassment by supervisors or others in
positions of authority, same-level co-workers, lower-level co-workers, news
sources, employees of news sources, and any other professional contacts. For
each type of contact, women were asked whether they had experienced physical and
non-physical harassment never, rarely, sometimes, often, or nearly always or
always.
[2] The first figure reflects women who indicated that sources
harassed them sometimes, often or nearly always or always. The second set of
percentages includes those who selected "rarely" as the answer to the question
about source harassment.
[3] 3Because we wished to complete the survey within groups (small,
medium and large), we delayed mailing the study description letters to women
until we were ready to begin interviewing women from that group. Women from
small newspapers began receiving letters during the summer of 1993. Due to
difficulties mustering enough volunteers to complete the interviews, we were
unable to begin surveying women from the mid-sized and larger newspapers until
the Spring of 1994.
[4] 4Some of these women may have been copy editors rather than the
highest-ranking editor on the staff.
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