Divine Discrimination: Gender Harassment and Christian Justification

The present study investigated the relationship between gender harassment, or acts which convey demeaning attitudes about women, and college adjustment. Additionally, we explored whether Christian attribution, or the perception that the perpetrator was motivated by their Christian/Catholic beliefs to harass, moderated the relationship. Two hundred and twenty-three female-identified students attending a Catholic university in a large city completed the Gender Experiences Questionnaire (Leskinen & Cortina, 2014) and a separate measure of the specific dimension of sexuality policing, indicated whether they made a Christian attribution for experienced harassment, and completed the Student Adaptation to College Questionnaire (Baker & Siryk, 1989). Christian attribution was not found to moderate the relationship between gender harassment and college adjustment. However, it was found to moderate the relationship between sexuality policing and college adjustment by potentiating its negative effects at lower levels of harassment. Implications and future directions are discussed.