African American Women More Likely To Be Harassed: MSU Researcher

MONTCLAIR, NJ — At first glance, the results of a recent study out of Montclair State University might seem like good news… until you break it down by race, researchers say.

African American women are just as likely to report sexual harassment in the workplace as they were two decades ago, while white women saw a steady decline in harassment claims, according to a new study led by a Montclair State professor.

“When you lump all women together it looks like there is a decrease in sexual harassment, but when you break it down by race, it is not declining in African American women,” MSU sociology professor Yasemin Besen-Cassino said.

The study, published in the journal "Gender, Work and Organization," included Besen-Cassino's husband Dan Cassino as co-author. It found there was more than a 70 percent decrease of sexual harassment claims for white women between 1996 and 2016, but only a 38 percent decrease for African American women, with most of that decline happening in the mid-1990s.

Read more about the MSU study.

Besen-Cassino, the author of “The Cost of Being a Girl: Working Teens and the Origins of the Gender Wage Gap,” theorized that as sexual harassment is considered an expression of power, African American women, who, in general, have less power in society, are more likely to be targets of harassment.

“Because of societal pressures, men may have become more careful about whom they target. Besen-Cassino found that men not only targeted African American women, but also targeted older women, who also may be perceived as less powerful,” Besen-Cassino wrote.

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