Talk:Sexual harassment

The lede picture and its caption

'A man making an unwelcome sexual advance on a woman by putting his hand on her thigh'

The caption of the lede picture sounds as if it shows a genuine sexual assault that happened to be captured on camera. I'm inclined to think that it should be indicated clearly that it is just a scene enacted consensually for illustrative purposes (and hence the man's act was neither unwelcome nor a genuine sexual advance). I am not sure about the exact wording, though. 62.73.72.3 (talk) 09:22, 26 April 2025 (UTC)

Yes, agreed. I changed the caption. Metamagician3000 (talk) 07:01, 15 June 2025 (UTC)

Also, nothing in the picture shows clearly that the advance is unwelcome, which is the crucial factor. Given that, I'm not sure that it is helpful as an illustration of the topic. --62.73.72.3 (talk) 09:40, 26 April 2025 (UTC)

Definition

'Sexual harassment is a type of harassment based on the sex or gender of a victim.'

Is it really, though? Given that the concept of sexual harassment seems to include all kinds of unwanted sexual advances towards the victim, annoying displays of sexual interest in the victim and similar, I don't understand in what sense it is 'based' on the sex or gender of the victim. For a bisexual harasser, it doesn't matter what the sex or gender of their victim is. Similarly, in a hypothetical hermaphroditic alien species, there could still be sexual harassment in the sense of unwanted advances. When a person sexually harasses someone of the sex they are attracted to - a straight man harassing a woman, a gay man harassing a man, a straight woman harassing a man, a lesbian woman harassing a woman - it is not the case that, say, the straight woman is demeaning the man for being a man in a display of misandry, or that the lesbian woman is demeaning the woman for being a woman in a display of misogyny. It is not as when someone demeans someone else for being, say, black or Muslim, using racial slurs, mocking them and so on (which is what could be called harassment based on race, religion etc). On the other hand, there are also genuine cases along these lines in the case of gender, too, where men are humiliating and demeaning women for being women in a misogynistic way. They may co-occur with sexual harassment in the sense of unwanted advances, but are clearly distinct issues and may also occur separately from each other. One is 'based on the sex or gender of the victim', the other isn't. It seems to me that the two things are actually being illogically conflated here. 62.73.72.3 (talk) 10:40, 26 April 2025 (UTC)

reference troubles

So under "In the workplace in the United States", the reference after "A well-regarded 2003 meta-survey concluded that about 58% of women have been sexually harassed at work" is the Johnson, Paula A./National Acadamies one, which is a concensus report from 2018. Nothing wrong with the source itself, but without a page number or researcher's name or study title or anything, I have no idea what 2003 meta survey is being referenced. The report is very in depth but as such has A LOT of cited works included. If someone knows or can find which 2003 meta survey is being referred to here and could add some context that would be great! Also, would referencing the actual meta survey itself be allowed here, or is that considered a primary source and therefore frowned upon? Gravelove (talk) 02:45, 26 October 2025 (UTC)

The survey should be Ilies et al. 2003: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1744-6570.2003.tb00752.x. It's cited multiple times in the NASEM report, but this is from page 40: "Given that there is limited longitudinal data on the prevalence of sexual harassment that uses a well-validated behavior-based instrument, the best analysis of the prevalence of sexual harassment across workplaces and time comes from a meta-analysis by Ilies and colleagues (2003). Based on more than 86,000 respondents from 55 probability samples, Illies and colleagues demonstrate that on average, 58 percent of women experience sexually harassing behaviors at work."

I think a secondary source citation is needed for the wikipedia article sentence because it includes commentary on the meta-analysis, but I've seen some articles handle this by adding the primary source as another reference for the same sentence so people can see both primary and secondary sources easily. Hobbitina (talk) 20:55, 26 October 2025 (UTC)

Thank you! Gravelove (talk) 18:17, 6 November 2025 (UTC)