In this research, the authors use data from the 2004 Workplace and Gender Relations Survey of Reserve Component Members to test whether the presence of environmental harassment is equally predictive for the U.S. military reserve component as it has been for the active duty military. They also investigate the impact of deployment on reporting harassment. Women and those deployed outside the United States are more likely to report harassment experiences. Results support earlier findings showing that when there are very few reports of environmental harassment, there are proportionately few reports of individualized forms of harassment. When there are sizeable percentages of environmental harassment reported, there are notable percentages reporting individualized harassment experiences.
Juanita M. Firestone and Richard J. Harris, "Sexual Harassment in the U.S. Military: Individualized and Environmental Contexts," Armed Forces & Society 21, 1 (1994): 25-43; Juanita M. Firestone and Richard J. Harris, "Organizational Climate, Leadership and Individual Responses to Sexual Harassment in the Active Duty Military," Free Inquiry in Creative Sociology 6, 2 (1997): 39-54. Juanita M. Firestone and Richard J. Harris, "Changes in Patterns of Sexual Harassment in the U.S. Military: A Comparison of the 1988 and 1995 DoD Surveys," Armed Forces & Society 25, 4 (1999): 613-33; Juanita M. Firestone and Richard J. Harris, "Perceptions of Effectiveness of Responses to Sexual Harassment in the U.S. Military, 1988 and 1995," Gender, Work and Organization 10, 1 (2003): 42-64.
2.
See, e.g., Juanita M. Firestone and Richard J. Harris, "Organizational Climate, Leadership and Individual Responses to Sexual Harassment in the Active Duty Military," Free Inquiry in Creative Sociology 6, 2 (1997): 39-54. Patricia M. Shields, "Sex Roles in the Military," in The Military; More Than Just a Job? ed. Charles C. Moskos and Frank R. Wood (New York: Pergamon, 1998), 99-113.
3.
Earl W. Wallace, "Comparing Army Reserve Forces: A Tale of Multiple Ironies, Conflicting Realities, and More Certain Prospects,"Armed Forces & Society19 ( 1992): 303-22.
4.
Edna Lomsky-Feder , Nir Gazit, and Eyal Ben-Ari , "Reserve Soldiers as Transmigrants; Moving between the Civilian and Military Worlds," Armed Forces & Society34 (2008): 593-614.
5.
Lynn Farley, Sexual Shakedown (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1978); Catherine MacKinnon, Sexual Harassment of Working Women (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1979).
6.
U.S. MeritSystems Protection Board, Sexual Harassment in the Federal Government; An Update ( Washington, DC: Office of Merit Systems Review and Studies, 1988), http://www.mith2.umd.edu/WomensStudies/GenderIssues/SexualHarassment/MSPBReport/full-text.
7.
Beth E. Schneider, "Consciousness about Sexual Harassment among Heterosexual and Lesbian Women Workers," Journal of Social Issues 38 (1982): 75-98; Linda Greenhouse, "Court, 9-0 Makes Sex Harassment Easier to Prove," New York Times, November 10, 1993, 1ff.; Deborah L. Wells and Beverly L. Kracher, "Justice, Sexual Harassment, and the Reasonable Victim Standard," Journal of Business Ethics 12 (1993): 423-31; Thomas L. White, "Sexual Harassment: Trust and the Ethic of Care," Business & Society Review 100-101 (1998): 9-20.
8.
Linda Gordon , "The Politics of Sexual Harassment," Radical America15 (1981): 7-16.
9.
Greenhouse, "Court, 9-0 Makes Sex Harassment Easier to Prove"; Wells and Kracher, "Justice, Sexual Harassment."
10.
Wells and Kracher, "Justice, Sexual Harassment."
11.
Donald E. Terpstra and David D. Baker, "A Framework for the Study of Sexual Harassment," Basic and Applied Social Psychology1 (1986): 17-34.
12.
Firestone and Harris, "Sexual Harassment in the U.S. Military".
13.
Ibid.
14.
Ibid., 39.
15.
Firestone and Harris, "Changes in Patterns"; Juanita M. Firestone and Richard J. Harris, "The Impact of Labeling Events as Sexual Harassment in the U.S. Military: A Logistic ‘Path’ Model" Report to Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute (DEOMI), Patrick AFB", 2007.
16.
James Griffin , "Institutional Motives for Serving in the U.S. Army National Guard," Armed Forces & Society34, 2 ( 2008): 232.
17.
Charles C. Moskos, "From Institution to Occupation: Trends in Military Organization," Armed Forces & Society4, 1 ( 1977): 41-50. According to Moskos, institutional motivations to join the military stemmed from a sense of duty and honor and a desire to serve, while occupational motivations stemmed from rewards used in the civilian sector (e.g., bonuses, pay, promotions, benefits).
18.
Griffin, "Institutional Motives."
19.
Ibid.
20.
E. Belle Federman, Robert M. Bray, and Larry A. Kroutil, "Relationships between Substance Use and Recent Deployments among Women and Men in the Military ," Military Psychology12, 3 (2000):205-20.
21.
John H. Newby, Robert J. Ursano, James E. McCarroll, Xian Liu, Carol S. Fullerton, and Ann E. Norwood, "Postdeployment Domestic Violence by U.S. Army Soldiers," Military Medicine170, 8 ( 2005): 643-47.
22.
David H. Trump, P. Jeffrey Brady, and Cara H. Olsen, "Self-rated Health and Subsequent Health Care Use among Military Personnel Returning from International Deployments," Military Medicine169, 2 (2004): 128-33.
23.
George A. Luz , "Review of Cost Effective and Practical Methods for Obtaining Individual Indices of Operation Stress for Deployed Military Personnel," Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health69 (2006): 777-91.
24.
Sheila N. Kirby and Scott Naftel, "The Impact of Deployment on the Retention of Military Reservists," Armed Forces & Society26, 2 (2000): 259-84.
25.
Ibid.
26.
John H. Newby, James E. McCarroll, R.J. Ursano, Fan Zizhong, Jun Shigemura, and Yvonne Tucker-Harris, "Positive and Negative Consequences of a Military Deployment," Military Medicine170, 10 ( 2005): 815-19.
27.
James Griffith , "The Army National Guard Soldier in Post-9/11 Operations: Perceptions of Being Prepared for Mobilization, Deployment, and Combat," Journal of Political and Military Sociology33, 2 (2005): 161-77.
28.
Also see Paul Bliese and Melba Stets, 9/11’s Impact on Soldiers: The Homeland Defense Study (Washington, DC: U.S. Army Medical Research and Material Command, 2002).
29.
Lisa D. Bastian, Anita R. Lancaster, and Heidi E. Reyst, Department of Defense 1995 Sexual Harassment Survey, Report 96-014 (Arlington, VA: Defense Manpower Data Center [DMDC], 1996); DMDC, 2004 Workplace and Gender Relations Survey of Reserve Component Members (WGRR): Administration, Datasets, and Codebook, Report 2004-021 (Arlington, VA: DMDC, May 2005).
30.
While some might object to blending responses from National Guard and Military Reservists, that was the process utilized by DMDC when collecting the data. DMDC, 2004 Workplace and Gender Relations Survey, 6.
31.
Ibid.
32.
Ibid.
33.
Ibid., 8.
34.
The survey booklet consisted of sixteen pages covering the following domains: • Background: Includes information on gender, race/ethnicity, education, duty status, service, pay grade, and length of time in service. • Satisfaction and retention intention: Includes questions on length of service and overall satisfaction with the National Guard/Reserve and Reserve duty. • Military and civilian personnel categories and civilian education status: Includes questions on activation, deployment, civilian job status, and civilian school status. • Military workplace: Includes questions on gender of immediate workgroup, pay grade of immediate supervisor, and length of time in present military unit. • Readiness, health, and well-being: Includes questions on individual preparedness and physical and emotional health. • Gender-related experiences in military: Includes questions on the extent to which gender experiences were reported and, if reported, members’ satisfaction with the complaint process and outcome. • Personnel policy and practices: Includes questions on the amount of training on sexual harassment, members’ assessment of the effectiveness of training received, and service member’s views on current policies designed to prevent or reduce sexual harassment. No estimated length of time for completing the survey was provided, and respondents were told on the document to "take their time" in responding and were provided instructions for mailing the completed survey. DMDC, 2004 Workplace and Gender Relations Survey, 6.
35.
Richard A. Riemer, ed., 2004Workplace and Gender Relations Survey of Reserve Component members: Statistical Methodology Report, Report 2004-019 ( Arlington, VA: DMDC, May 2005).
36.
Using principal components factor analysis with varimax rotation as an exploratory tool, a two-factor solution was consistently generated for the total sample and for males and females separately. The two items classified as environmental always loaded together on the same factor. Since the primary purpose of this article is to test the replicability of previous findings with this new data set, we have constructed indicators to match previous work as closely as possible.
37.
Note that the disproportionate numbers of items reflect the survey as implemented by DMDC. We are engaged in secondary data analysis and cannot change the questions that were asked.
38.
Riemer, 2004 Workplace and Gender Relations Survey.
39.
Note that the survey was mailed to reserve component members only; there are no comparative data for the active duty military for 2004.
40.
Firestone and Harris, "Organizational Climate, Leadership and Individual Responses to Sexual Harassment in the Active Duty Military"; Firestone and Harris, "Sexual Harassment in the U.S. Military".
41.
Firestone and Harris, "Sexual Harassment in the U.S. Military".
