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Working with teen girls in a low-income urban area, I’m often surprised by their reactions to what I perceive as sexual harassment.  While I bristle at the way their male peers interact with them and initiate contact, the young women I work with don’t seem to object, at least outwardly.  A study of 600 young women and their experience with sexual harassment and their perceptions of it notes that culture and socio-economic class colors how we see harassment.

Brown and Leaper note that it is important for girls to be able to identify sexism and sexual harassment as environmental factors, lest they attribute negative experiences to their own faults and suffer erosion of self-esteem. Frequent sexual harassment may lead girls to expect and accept demeaning behaviors in heterosexual romantic relationships, and sexist remarks.

To read Science Daily’s summary of the study, click here.