Expanding the footprint of sexual harassment prevention training: A power, credit, and leadership perspective

The stakes involved with both sexual harassment and discrimination warrant attention to these issues and a concentrated effort on improving these programs in order to make a real impact. Sexual harassment is most likely to occur in organizations with lopsided gender and power differentials, including male-dominated fields such as construction (Hegewisch & O’Farrell, 2015) and surgery (Medeiros & Griffith, 2019b); in service work (Rodriguez & Reyes, 2014); and in low-wage, shift work (ROC United, 2012; Sepler, 2015). (2020), we argue that sexual harassment training needs to be reconceptualized and rebuilt if it is to impactfully address complex issues such as power dynamics and idiosyncrasy credits, and create actual organizational change. In addition to this framing that avoids the evocation of the same defensiveness, negative attitudes, or gender identity threats that occur with sexual harassment training, the booming leadership-development business (Westfall, 2019) suggests that there is a keen interest in the topic that sexual harassment prevention training has always lacked.