The Sexual Harassment of Female Active-Duty Personnel: Effects on Job Satisfaction and Intentions to Remain in the Military

44 Pages Posted: 25 Sep 2001

See all articles by Heather Antecol

Heather Antecol

Claremont McKenna College - Robert Day School of Economics and Finance; IZA Institute of Labor Economics

Deborah A. Cobb-Clark

School of Economics, University of Sydney; IZA Institute of Labor Economics

Date Written: October 2001

Abstract

This paper examines the relationship between sexual harassment and the job satisfaction and intended turnover of active-duty women in the U.S. military using unique data from a survey of the incidence of unwanted gender-related behavior conducted by the U.S. Department of Defense. Overall, 70.9 percent of active-duty women reported experiencing some type of sexually harassing behavior in the 12 months prior to the survey. Using single-equation probit models, we find that experiencing a sexually harassing behavior is associated with reduced job satisfaction and heightened intentions to leave the military. However, bivariate probit results indicate that failing to control for unobserved personality traits causes single-equation estimates of the effect of the sexually harassing behavior to be overstated. Similarly, including women's views about whether or not they have in fact been sexually harassed directly into the single equation model reduces the estimated effect of the sexually harassing behavior itself on job satisfaction by almost a half while virtually eliminating it for intentions to leave the military. Finally, women who view their experiences as sexual harassment suffer additional negative consequences over and above those associated with the behavior itself.

Keywords: Job Satisfaction, Sexual Harassment, Military Employment

JEL Classification: J16, J28

Suggested Citation

Antecol, Heather and Cobb-Clark, Deborah A., The Sexual Harassment of Female Active-Duty Personnel: Effects on Job Satisfaction and Intentions to Remain in the Military (October 2001). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=283931 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.283931

Heather Antecol

Claremont McKenna College - Robert Day School of Economics and Finance ( email )

500 E. Ninth Street
Claremont, CA 91711
United States

IZA Institute of Labor Economics

P.O. Box 7240
Bonn, D-53072
Germany

Deborah A. Cobb-Clark (Contact Author)

School of Economics, University of Sydney ( email )

606 Social Sciences Bldg. (A02)
The University of Sydney
Sydney, NSW 2006
Australia
61435061387 (Phone)

IZA Institute of Labor Economics

P.O. Box 7240
Bonn, D-53072
Germany

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Downloads
334
Abstract Views
3,506
Rank
164,974
PlumX Metrics