Sexual Harassment Victimization Has No Age Limit but Our Perceptions Do: The Intersection of Victim Age and Prototypes of Sexual Harassment

Abstract

A woman’s fit with prototypes of her gender group affects the ease with which others perceive her as targeted by sexual harassment and older women are viewed as less prototypically feminine than younger women. Using both implicit and explicit measures, we examined whether this bias in prototypes prevents older women from being recognized as victims of sexual harassment. University students (N = 114) imagined being a human resources manager making judgments about what claims employees filed. They then viewed faces of younger and older women employees and, using MouseTracker software, judged whether these women filed a sexual harassment or manager behavioral claim. Participants were less likely to categorize older (vs. younger) women as having filed a sexual harassment claim. Participants also overwhelming agreed with the statement that “younger women are more likely to be harassed than older women”. These results showcase how this bias, that younger women are more likely to be harassed than older women, is present at both conscious and subconscious levels of cognition, which will be key in designing future interventions.