Workplace sexual harassment: a qualitative study of the self-labelling process among employees in Denmark

ABSTRACT

Purpose

To explore how employees understand work-related sexual harassment and label their experience.

Methods

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.

Results

We identified four major themes. The first two themes, distinguishing between sexual harassment and unwanted sexual attention and labelling real life sexual harassment, 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; making the connection and negotiating boundaries and labels, explain the sensemaking process, i.e., how the interviewees come to understand and label their experience.

Conclusion

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.

KEYWORDS:

• Work
• sexual harassment
• self-labelling
• sense-making
• qualitative study

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Working Environment Research Fund [26-2018-03].

Notes on contributors

Maj Britt Dahl Nielsen

Maj Britt Dahl Nielsen is a senior researcher at the National Institute of Public Health at the University of Southern Denmark. Her primary research interest is mental health and well-being. She has special expertise within occupational mental health and sexual harassment at work, including prevention and measurement of sexual harassment. She has extensive experience with intervention research and qualitative and quantitative research methods.

Sofie Smedegaard Skov

Sofie Smedegaard Skov is a PhD student at the National Institute of Public Health, University of Southern Denmark. Her research interests revolve around mental health and well-being. Her research primarily focuses on the ethical dimension of providing good care to persons with dementia and living well with dementia. She has great experience with using qualitative, ethnographic, and participatory research methods.

Gry Grundtvig

Gry Grundtvig is a senior consultant at COWI, where she works as a project manager for projects within the welfare area: social, health and work-related issues. Her main interested is people’s well-being, especially society’s most vulnerable groups of people. As a sociologist Gry is specialized in qualitative and quantitative methods.

Anna Paldam Folker

Anna Paldam Folker is professor and head of research at the National Institute of Public Health at the University of Southern Denmark. Her research focuses on the philosophical foundation of rating scales of well-being, quality of life and meaning in life. She is interested in linking the fields of public mental health and public health philosophy to conduct cross-disciplinary empirical studies grounded in theory.

Reiner Rugulies

Reiner Rugulies is Professor of Psychosocial Work Environment Research at the National Research Centre for the Working Environment, Copenhagen, Denmark, Affiliated Professor of Psychosocial Medicine at the Department of Public Health, Copenhagen University, Denmark, and Editor-in-Chief of the Scandinavian Journal of Work, Environment and Health. He has published more than 300 peer-reviewed research journal articles, in particular on the epidemiological association between exposure to adverse psychosocial work environment factors and risk of chronic somatic diseases and mental disorders.

Per Tybjerg Aldrich

Per Tybjerg Aldrich is now a working environment policy consultant at the Danish Union of Early Childhood and Youth Educators, where he particularly works with the members’ psychosocial working environment. When he actively participated in the current study, he was engaged in various research and development projects, and consulting in a private occupational health and safety consulting company.

Thomas Clausen

Thomas Clausen is a Senior Researcher at the National Research Centre for the Working Environment in Denmark. His research mainly focuses on psychosocial working conditions – both on research methods and on interventions to improve the psychosocial work environment. Thomas has led the development of the Danish Psychosocial Work Environment Questionnaire and has also led several intervention projects in Danish workplaces.

Ida E. H. Madsen

Ida E. H. Madsen is a Senior Researcher at the Danish National Research Centre for the Working Environment and the National Institute of Public Health. Her research is mainly focused on the impact of psychosocial working conditions on mental health. She has conducted a range of research projects examining how working conditions affect mental health, including several projects concerning work-related sexual harassment and its mental health impacts. She is the founder of the Danish Work Life Course Cohort Study, a register based cohort study encompassing all individuals who first entered the Danish workforce during the years 1995–2018, and an Associate Editor of Scandinavian Journal of Work, Environment & Health.