I am (s)he

Victim blaming is nothing new when it comes to sexual harassment but a new study shows that some women are seen as more credible than others when it comes to sexual harassment claims.

The University of Washington-led study, involving more than 4,000 people, found that people were more likely to think “prototypical” women– aka women who are conventionally attractive and appear and act feminine – would be harassed.

Just for clarification, the definition of the “prototypical” woman was taken from previous research, which identified social norm characteristics perpetuated in pop culture and society of a woman: young, feminine, conventionally attractive, and even weak and incompetent.

Further, the University of Washington study also found that prototypical women were more likely to be believed when making accusations of sexual harassment.

The results paint a bleak picture for women who don’t fit the “prototype”, because apparently it wasn’t hard enough for women to convince a workplace or court that they’ve been harassed. For example, did you know previous research has shown that people are more likely to blame women for being sexually harassed due to the effects of male-perpetrator empathy.

“The consequences of that are very severe for women who fall outside of the narrow representation of who a victim is,“ said Bryn Bandt-Law, one of the study’s lead authors.

“Nonprototypical women are neglected in ways that could contribute to them having discriminatory treatment under the law; people think they’re less credible — and less harmed — when they make a claim, and think their perpetrators deserve less punishment.”

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