Sexual Harassment, Sexual Harassment Climate, and the Well-Being of STEM Faculty Members

Despite the documented negative outcomes accompanying sexual harassment, the experience of sexual harassment among STEM faculty members remains underexamined. In this paper, we explore how two sexual harassment variables—gender harassment and sexual harassment climate—are linked to four facets of faculty well-being: job burnout, turnover intentions, psychological distress, and self-rated physical health. Using data from STEM faculty at a mid-sized university located in the upper Midwest ( N = 117 faculty members), we find gender harassment is associated with lower self-rated physical health and higher turnover intentions among women STEM faculty. In contrast, gender harassment was not significant in predicting well-being outcomes among men STEM faculty. Instead, the sexual harassment climate features more prominently in the experiences of STEM men faculty, with the perception that sexual harassment charges will be treated seriously (the sexual harassment climate) being negatively related to men’s job burnout and psychological distress and positively related to men’s self-rated physical health. Taken together, our findings extend the existing literature by documenting that outcomes for STEM men faculty are more strongly shaped by the perceived institutional climate surrounding sexual harassment, whereas women’s outcomes are more intricately linked to experiencing gender harassment.