Women’s Representation and Federal Employees’ Sexual Harassment Experience

There has been a good deal of research on sexual harassment in public sector workforces. One facet of this body of research that has not been fully explored is the potential impact of gender representativeness on sexual harassment in the workplace. In the context of representative bureaucracy, we examine if increased representation of women in the upper levels of the federal workforce is associated with active bureaucratic outcomes, such as decreased incidents of sexual harassment at the lower levels of bureaucracy. We also examine the effect of gender representation of the team or workgroup of the employees. We find that as the proportion of women supervisors increases, the likelihood of female employees experiencing sexual harassment significantly decreases. We also find that women’s representation in workgroups and the perceived effectiveness of sexual harassment policies are negatively associated with both the likelihood and frequency of sexual harassment.