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Why Some Sexual Harassment Claims Are Considered More Credible Than Others

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Victim blaming is nothing new when it comes to sexual harassment but a new study shows that some women are seen as more credible than others when it comes to sexual harassment claims.

The University of Washington-led study, involving more than 4,000 people, found that people were more likely to think "prototypical" women– aka women who are conventionally attractive and appear and act feminine – would be harassed.

Just for clarification, the definition of the “prototypical” woman was taken from previous research, which identified social norm characteristics perpetuated in pop culture and society of a woman: young, feminine, conventionally attractive, and even weak and incompetent. 

Further, the University of Washington study also found that prototypical women were more likely to be believed when making accusations of sexual harassment.

The results paint a bleak picture for women who don't fit the “prototype”, because apparently it wasn’t hard enough for women to convince a workplace or court that they’ve been harassed. For example, did you know previous research has shown that people are more likely to blame women for being sexually harassed due to the effects of male-perpetrator empathy.

“The consequences of that are very severe for women who fall outside of the narrow representation of who a victim is," said Bryn Bandt-Law, one of the study's lead authors. 

"Nonprototypical women are neglected in ways that could contribute to them having discriminatory treatment under the law; people think they're less credible — and less harmed — when they make a claim, and think their perpetrators deserve less punishment." 

The study, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, set up a series of experiments to determine who people think are sexually harassed, what constitutes harassment and how harassment claims are perceived.

For example, in one of the experiments they got people to draw a woman who was harassed – similar to the famous “draw a scientist” experiment – to reveal people’s conceptions and internalised biases.

The other experiments involved written scenarios and digitally manipulated headshots.

What the researchers found was that people generally thought sexual harassment victims were “prototypical” women.

In fact, the authors point out that the association between sexual harassment and prototypical women was so strong that the exact same woman was seen as more prototypical when people were told she was sexually harassed.

On the flip side, the exact same scenarios, presented with non-conventional women, were less likely to be considered harassment, and they were seen as less credible, less harmed by the harassment, and their harasser is seen as less deserving of punishment. 

This is why the idea of a prototypical woman matters, senior author and University of Washington psychology professor Cheryl Kaiser explained in a statement.

"When you make a perception of harassment, you also make a connection to womanhood, but the way we understand womanhood is very narrowly defined. So for anyone who falls outside of that definition, it makes it hard to make that connection to harassment," she said.

Previous research has shown that sexual harassment most commonly happens to women but the problem comes when what someone isn’t seen as “woman enough” to experience harassment.

It’s also worth noting that this study doesn’t even take into account differences in perception when it comes to race, ethnicity, sexual orientation or gender identity. So more research is needed to find out if those factors also influence how credible a sexual harassment victim is perceived.

However, the researchers say that these findings help illuminate how laws may not always protect the people they're designed to.

According to the latest statistics, 81% of women have experienced sexual harassment yet only around 20% of incidents are reported and even fewer are prosecuted since accusations must be found credible, and the incidents harmful, for harassment claims to lead to legal resolution.

But by acknowledging and recognizing that harassment can happen regardless of what a person looks like, the chances for justice are improved. 

"If we have biased perceptions of harm for nonprototypical women, it will drastically change their legal outcomes," Bandt-Law said. "If they're not being believed, they're effectively being silenced."

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