NEW ORLEANS (Reuters Health) - When your boss compliments your outfit, what does that mean? Your perception of the sexual nature of the comment may depend on your boss's gender, new study findings show.

Researchers from Bowling Green State University in Ohio found that women believe workplace situations that hint at sexual undertones are most serious when they involve a man who may be coming on to a woman, while men rate the same scenario as more serious if a man appears to be coming on to another man.

These findings may reflect differences in how the two genders ultimately interpret situations involving more blatant forms of sexual harassment.

"The stereotype of the lusting boss, chasing around a woman saying 'you're going to lose your job'--that's probably extremely rare," study author Anne K. Gordon told Reuters Health.

"These things probably start ambiguously, and maybe progress over time," she added.

Gordon presented these findings here Saturday at the American Psychological Society's annual meeting.

In the study, Gordon and her colleagues distributed anonymous questionnaires to over 1,900 employees at a Midwestern company. The questionnaires described scenarios with ambiguous sexual undertones that occurred in the workplace. In one scenario, one person tells another "You look very attractive in that suit. You should wear it more often."

In another scenario, the person says the same thing, but puts his or her arm around the colleague's shoulder. In the final, most serious situation, the person repeats the same sentences, but this time, places a hand on the co-worker's knee.

The investigators varied the scenarios so that they included two men, two women, or a woman and a man. They also varied the nature of the relationship so that it would involve both two peers and a boss with a subordinate.

Both men and women indicated they interpreted the hand-on-the-knee scenario as the most blatantly sexual, but men were most concerned when a man appeared to be coming on to another man. When the woman was the "victim" in the knee-touching scenario, men perceived the situations to be equally serious when the advancer was either a man or a woman.

Women, in contrast, rated the knee-touching scenario as most serious when a man came on to a woman, and saw no difference in whether a man was approached by another woman or another man.

The respondents also indicated they believed the situations would be more serious if they involved a boss coming on to a subordinate, rather than an exchange between two peers.

In an interview with Reuters Health, Gordon said she suspected these trends may reflect a certain amount of homophobia on the part of the study participants. Men were most disturbed by the situation involving two men, and as the scenarios escalate towards more contact, the seriousness of the male-male scenario increases relative to others.

When considering male victims, "for male participants, as you move from no contact, to minimal contact, to moderate contact, the difference between whether it's a female or male perpetrator gets larger," Gordon said.

"If it's homophobia, it's becoming more and more serious as you move to the more threatening," she said.

In addition, Gordon noted that female participants also rated male-male scenarios as more serious than male-female scenarios when there was no contact or only shoulder touching.

"So if it's homophobia, it's not just homophobia among men--it's among women, too," she said.

Reference Source 89

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