The National Institute of Public Health, University of Southern Denmark, Copenhagen, Denmark.
Green Transition Advisory, COWI A/S, Lyngby, Denmark.
Int J Qual Stud Health Well-being. 2024 Dec;19(1):2324990. doi: 10.1080/17482631.2024.2324990. Epub 2024 Apr 22.
To explore how employees understand work-related sexual harassment and label their experience.
This study is based on 13 semi-structured in-depth interviews with employees exposed to workplace sexual harassment. We analysed the data using a thematic approach drawing on frameworks of sensemaking in organizations.
We identified four major themes. The first two themes, and , outline the interviewees' definitions of the two terms "sexual harassment" and "unwanted sexual harassment" and reveal the challenges of labelling sexually harassing behaviours at work. The last two themes; and , explain the sensemaking process, i.e., how the interviewees come to understand and label their experience.
The analysis showed that the interviewees related sexual harassment with physical, coercive, and intentional behaviours, whereas unwanted sexual attention was seen as less severe and less intentional. The interviewees often doubted how to label their experience, and making sense of one´s experience could take years. Self-labelling is inherently a social process, and the validation and rejection of others play an important role. Finally, the #MeToo movement constituted a turning point for several interviewees' understandings of events.
探讨员工如何理解工作场所中的性骚扰，并对其经历进行标签化。
本研究基于对 13 名曾遭受工作场所性骚扰的员工进行的 13 次半结构化深入访谈。我们采用组织中的意义建构框架，对数据进行了主题分析。
我们确定了四个主要主题。前两个主题 和 概述了受访者对“性骚扰”和“不受欢迎的性骚扰”这两个术语的定义，并揭示了在工作场所对性骚扰行为进行标签化的挑战。最后两个主题 和 解释了意义建构过程，即受访者如何理解和对其经历进行标签化。
分析表明，受访者将性骚扰与身体、强制和故意行为联系起来，而不受欢迎的性关注则被视为不那么严重和不那么故意。受访者经常怀疑如何对自己的经历进行标签化，并且理解自己的经历可能需要数年时间。自我标签化本质上是一个社会过程，他人的认可和拒绝起着重要作用。最后，#MeToo 运动成为了几个受访者对事件理解的转折点。
