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Sexual harassment is historically understood as being more about power than about sex. Most of the #MeToo cases that have made the news follow a power dynamic that fits this model of understanding: a man who’s higher up in the organizational hierarchy wielding their power in an inappropriate manner over a woman who either directly or indirectly works under that man.
According to a new study, when the roles are reversed, and women are in that place of power, they aren’t actually less likely to experience sexual harassment—they might even be more vulnerable to it. This is according to the findings of the Swedish Institute for Social Research at Stockholm University, which surveyed workers in the United States, Japan and Sweden.
While it’s true that social and gender norms vary across these three countries, the findings of the survey were fairly universal: women in supervisory positions were more likely to experience sexual harassment in the workplace—anywhere from 30 to nearly 100% more likely. That likeliness went up across the board when subordinates were mostly men.
Sweden’s data came from the Swedish Work Environment Survey, a nationally representative dataset collected biannually by Statistics Sweden. Five waves of data sets were used: 1999, 2001, 2003, 2005, and 2007. In each, a definition of sexual harassment was offered and the respondents were presented the subjective question—accompanied by some examples—of whether or not they had been sexually harassed in the last twelve months.
In the U.S. and Japan, the research team collected new survey material. The same definition of sexual harassment was offered, but researchers used two different methods to assess exposure to sexual harassment. The first method, the list-based survey, presented respondents with a list of twenty-three types of behaviors asking, “In the past 12 months, have you ever been in a work situation where one or more individuals [behaved in this way]?” The second subjective survey simply asked respondents if they were sexually harassed in the last twelve months. The two measurement types were used as studies have found that subjective questions tend to generate lower reported rates of sexual harassment as respondents fail to define less severe or less frequent incidents at work as sexual harassment.
Among the three countries, the most narrow difference in exposure to sexual harassment was seen in Sweden where female supervisors reported a 30% higher rate of harassment than employees not in supervisory positions. In the U.S., a 50% higher rate for supervisors was found for the list-based measure and a nearly 100% higher rate for the subjective measure. Similar results were found in Japan where supervisors reported a 30% higher rate using the list-based measure and, again, almost 100% higher for the subjective measure.
“When we first started to study sexual harassment, we expected a higher exposure for women with less power in the workplace. Instead, we found the contrary. When you think about it, there are logical explanations: a supervisor is exposed to new groups of potential perpetrators. She can be harassed both from her subordinates and from higher-level management within the company. More harassment from these two groups is also what we saw when we asked the women who had harassed them,” said Johanna Rickne, Professor of Economics at the Swedish Institute for Social Research.
That understanding seems to hold up when you dig deeper into the organizational hierarchy data. Women in supervisory levels were found to be more likely to experience sexual harassment at work but that trend line started to taper off again as you looked to women closer to the top where traditionally they would be less likely to work directly with as many different groups on a regular basis.
So, at least for now, it would seem that there’s a pretty clear paradox of power at play when it comes to sexual harassment of working women. Women climbing the corporate ladder don’t lose the target on their back; in fact, it appears to grow as they climb—only narrowing once they’ve reached the very top.
