When the Flirting Guest’s Age Is Crucial: Young People in the Hospitality Industry Reflect on Sexual Harassment

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate and analyse how young people’s perceptions of sexual harassment and unwelcome flirting from customers in the hospitality industry are affected by the customer’s age. Sixty-nine young women and men training for occupations in the hospitality industry were interviewed. The young people were 18–20 years old. The results show that the customer’s age was crucial for how the participants perceived unwelcome sexual interest and advances. If the person who offends was a child, the behaviour could be described as harmless, innocent and thus not as sexual harassment. Unwelcome flirting by a young man towards a young woman of the same age could be perceived as sexual harassment, but at the same time it is in line with the heteronormative ideal and could be understood. When the customer was older, that is, a middle-aged man, the young people’s descriptions of the occurrence were particularly negative.

Keywords

Age age coding age difference flirting sexual harassment workplace harassment

Tina: You get very uncomfortable when you notice that someone is standing there staring at you, and it is even more disgusting if that person is older.

—Tina, Restaurant Management and Food Programme student

The quote above comes from a Swedish research project on sexual harassment from guests and customers in the hospitality industry. Tina, the one speaking in the quote, was training to work in the restaurant branch. After three years of vocational training, she would soon be a fully qualified waitress, and she described how it can feel to perceive being examined and subjected to guests’ invasive gazes. As the quote shows, Tina highlighted the age of the customers as significant for the discomfort she experienced being gazed at. Many of the young people participating in the research project similarly emphasized age as an important aspect when they described the feelings a customer’s actions could provoke.

The Swedish Discrimination Act defines sexual harassment as behaviour of a sexual nature that violates someone’s dignity (SFS, 2008, p. 567). Examples of sexual harassment can be someone touching or sending text messages and images with sexual content. It can also be leering, unwelcome comments or sexual jargon (UHR, 2019). In Sweden, employers are obliged to have guidelines that inform the employees (including managers, substitutes, interns and hired personnel) that sexual harassment in the workplace is not accepted. If an employee reports that she or he has been subjected to sexual harassment at the workplace, the employer is obliged to intervene with an investigation and take measures to deal with the problem (Arbetsmiljöverket, 2019).

Sexual harassment is a widespread problem in certain types of workplaces, such as in the hospitality industry (Ram, 2018; Zampoukos et al., 2020). The empirical material in this study consists of focus group interviews with students who are training to work in the hospitality industry. Lack of experience and low status contribute to young practicum students being in the risk zone in the workplace (Bergold, 2018; Nilsson, 2019). Despite this, the sexual harassment that young people can be subjected to during their education is sparsely investigated. In this study, we also examine the importance of age for how the sexual harassment is perceived by young people training for work in the hospitality industry.

Purpose and Research Questions

How do young people who are training for work in the hospitality industry describe the customers who subject practicum students and staff to unwelcome flirting and sexual harassment?

What significance does the age of the customer have in these descriptions?

Below, we first present a background, and thereafter we describe our theoretical starting points and methods. Then we give an account of the results, and finally we discuss the results drawing on theories of norms concerning gender, sexuality and age.

Background

A substantial body of feminist studies have examined sexual harassment since the 1970s. (See for example: Bogart & Stein, 1987; Conroy, 2013; Gillander Gådin & Stein, 2019; Kelly, 1988; MacKinnon, 1979; Ringrose et al., 2021; Samuels, 2003) In recent years, sexual harassment has attracted new attention as a widespread problem in working life (Pétursdóttir & Greta Rúdólfsdóttir, 2022). Factors that play a role in the risk of being subjected are one’s gender, age and type of employment. Young women with unstable employment are particularly vulnerable (Bergold & Vedin, 2015; Good & Cooper, 2016).

Though the situation of students training in hospitality is poorly studied, there is some research on sexual harassment in the service professions and in the hospitality industry. In many workplaces, the perpetrators tend to be colleagues and managers, but in service jobs, it is mainly customers who expose staff to sexual harassment. Researchers have found that harassment is most common in unequal relationships where it can be used as a means of consolidating or strengthening a superior position (Deery et al., 2011; Good & Cooper, 2014). The motto ‘the customer is always right’ (Yagil, 2008), ‘the customer is king’ (Gettman & Gelfand, 2007), and the myth of customer sovereignty (Korczynski & Ott, 2004) contribute to customers taking liberties and not always acting respectfully towards employees in service professions. Staff in the service sector are expected to focus on the customers who pay for their services, regardless of their own situation, which can be very emotionally draining (Korczynski & Evans, 2013; Yassour-Borochowitz, 2020).

The hospitality industry is an area where many young people work and where sexual harassment is particularly common. In many workplaces in this sector, staff can count on guests treating them in a disrespectful manner. Since employees are expected to be pleasant and accommodating to customers and guests, there is the risk that both employees and managers become tolerant of sexual harassment and other violations (Fisk & Neville, 2011). For many hotel and restaurant employees, sexual harassment is part of the job. The harassment can be both verbal and physical. For example, female employees often have their appearance commented on by male guests (Mulinari, 2007). Offensive comments and allusions to sex are not uncommon, and it also happens that guests subject employees to violations in the form of unwelcome and close physical contact (Bergold & Vedin, 2015; Svensson, 2020).

Sexual harassment and other violations relatively rarely become the subject of official reporting. As an explanation for this, staff in the hospitality industry refer to the workplace culture and that sexual harassment is part of the job (Bråten, 2019; Svensson, 2020). Staff also feel that they must be tolerant and helpful toward guests in order not to receive bad reviews, which can reach a large audience in various online forums (Zampoukos et al., 2020). Many workplaces put increasing emphasis on finding out the degree of satisfaction of customers and guests after a service has been performed, by using surveys and other types of evaluations. This risks contributing to staff vulnerability (Good & Cooper, 2016; Hochschild, 2012).

It is less common for the problem of sexual harassment to be dealt with at the organizational level. In the industry, employees are expected to become adept over time and thus be able to handle unpleasant guests and situations in an appropriate way (Mulinari, 2007; Siverbo et al., 2018).

Theory

Based on feminist studies, sexual harassment can be understood as a way for male perpetrators to exploit or strengthen a gender order where they, as men, have an advantage over women (Connell, 2021; Kimmel, 2018). According to MacKinnon (1979), sexual harassment is a way of exercising power through objectification. Objectification is reducing a person to a sexual object, that is, reducing the person to appearance and body. Objectification occurs, for example, when someone assesses and comments on a woman’s appearance in situations where her knowledge and competence should be in focus. MacKinnon believes that the objectification of women not only weakens women and strengthens an unequal gender order, but also contributes to increased violence towards women (cf. Kelly, 1988).

We draw on Connell’s (2021) theory of gender which refers to how women and men are categorized in a binary way, that is, as two separate but mutually homogeneous groups. In the same way, a multitude of behaviours, characteristics and occupations are categorized into masculine or feminine. For example, caring is associated with femininity, while promoting oneself is associated with masculinity. The relationship between masculine and feminine is hierarchical, meaning that what is associated with men and masculinity is attributed to higher status than what is associated with women and femininity. As Connell points out, the categorization has deep cultural roots and the emotional anchoring is often strong. Because the categorization, and gender norms inherent in the categorization, are part of cultural ideas usually taken for granted, they are sometimes difficult to see. Violations of gender norms, on the other hand, often appear clearly and can provoke strong emotional reactions. The consequence of the social and cultural division into feminine and masculine is an overall gender order that characterizes society.

Also central for us is the concept of heteronormativity, meaning that heterosexuality is the norm in society. Men and women are expected to desire each other, enter love relationships, make a family, and so on. Heteronormativity, however, is not only that people are expected to be heterosexual, but also that heterosexuality is expressed in a way that perpetuates the gender order and its boundaries for ‘correct’ feminine and masculine behaviour (Ambjörnsson, 2016; Jackson, 2006). An important component of the heteronormative pattern is that women are expected to subordinate themselves to men, for example, by providing different kinds of emotional support. The support is given in a way that is not mutual. The emotional support is at the same time an illustration of the hierarchical relationship Connell speaks about, as the lack of reciprocity means a reinforcing of the asymmetric gender order where men hold a norm position and are attributed higher status.

In the present study, we highlight how perceptions associated with gender can interact with perceptions related to age. The gender norms prescribing how men and women should act are not the same for everyone in the group of men or the group of women. For example, there are perceptions connected to different ages, and these contribute to expectations being different. Krekula (2009) talks about age coding to denote distinctive perceptions based on age, something that includes age norms. Age norms reveal what is considered normal and what is seen as deviant, such as, how different age groups should dress, talk, behave and act. For example, young boys and middle-aged men are expected to dress differently. Similarly, middle-aged women are not expected to have the same interests as little girls. Krekula and Johansson (2017) explain how the terms on-time and off-time can be used to denote how the age norms are met and not met. On-time refers to how a person’s actions are correct according to dominant age norms. Off-time, on the contrary, refers to behaviour that does not conform to dominant age norms. A middle-aged man wearing a suit will be perceived as on-time, while a 5-year-old boy wearing a suit rather can be perceived as peculiar and as off-time. The same is valid for a middle-aged woman whose hobby is playing with dolls. She risks being understood as odd and off-time, while the 5-year-old girl playing with dolls fulfils an expectation and she passes as on-time.

Method

In this study, we have interviewed young people in Sweden training for work in the hospitality industry. The Swedish upper secondary school has both university preparatory programmes and vocational programmes. Vocational programmes train for specific vocations or branches and always include at least 15 weeks of practicum, called Workplace Learning (APL). The young people’s choice of the upper secondary-school programme is affected by gender as well as by family background and the local labour market (Rönnlund et al., 2018). There are two vocational programmes that train for work in the hospitality industry: the Hotel and Tourism programme, which is chosen mainly by women, and the Restaurant Management and Food programme, which is somewhat more gender-mixed.

The empirical material of this study consists of interviews with female and male students who attended either the Hotel and Tourism programme or the Restaurant Management and Food programme. Before the young people agreed to be interviewed, they received information about the purpose and implementation of the study and that participation was voluntary. Furthermore, they received information that we would record, transcribe and then anonymize the interviews. In the study, the informants were given fictional names. The study is conducted in accordance with Swedish Research Council ethics principles (Vetenskapsrådet, 2002).

Twenty-four interviews were conducted. Twenty-two of these were focus group interviews consisting of two to eight participants (Krueger, 1994). Two participants were interviewed individually for practical reasons due to COVID restrictions. A total of 69 young people were interviewed. Of them, 35 attended the Hotel and Tourism programme and 34 attended the Restaurant Management and Food programme. The young people were 18–20 years old; 52 of them identified themselves as women and 17 identified themselves as men. No one identified oneself in another way.

The questions framing the interviews were mainly about how students view sexual harassment from customers and guests in the hospitality sector, and to what extent and in what way these types of questions have been addressed in the classroom instruction of the education programmes and in the workplaces where they do their practicums. The majority of students stated that neither the school-based nor the workplace-based part of the education had addressed the questions more than superficially and sporadically. We elaborate this elsewhere (Hedlin & Klope, 2022). In the present study, we focus on how the participants describe the customer who subjects students and staff to sexual harassment, and the significance of the customer’s age.

During the interviews, we used a thematic interview guide, supplemented with photo-elicitation. The shown pictures were taken from the internet; they depicted various types of sexual harassment as well as behaviour that could be considered borderline, such as more difficult-to-define physical contact and flirtatious glances from guests. The photo-elicitation was used to clarify the themes of the conversation and to focus on the participants’ perception of these themes and how they can be understood. Presenting images in this way has been shown to contribute to maintaining the focus and creating good relations among participants in the group (Caldeborg, 2018; Meo, 2010).

When we carried out the interviews, we did not define sexual harassment or tell the participants what behaviours should be considered sexual harassment; this was left open (cf. Hanrahan, 1997). We did not ask if the participants themselves had been subjected to sexual harassment or anything that could be considered sexual harassment. The reason was that we did not want the participants to think that we expected them to tell about sensitive experiences they might want to keep to themselves. We also used the photo-elicitation as a means to focus on the participants’ reflections and understanding of sexual harassment as a phenomenon, rather than on their own experiences.

Although none of our questions concerned what the young people themselves had experienced, we found that many had a great need to talk about their experiences. Many female participants on their own initiative brought up how customers and guests had acted in a way that they felt was unpleasant. Often they spoke about unwelcome flirting and comments that could be categorized as sexual harassment. The descriptions of the customers were often coloured by particularly negative judgments linked to the customer’s age.

The interviews were recorded with a mobile phone and transcribed shortly afterwards. We conducted the interviews in Swedish. The transcript excerpts in this study were translated into English. As Braun and Clarke (2006) recommend, the material was transcribed as soon as possible after the interviews were conducted, leading to the interviews being recalled in memory, which in turn aroused analytical insights and ideas.

The empirical material has been processed as in carrying out thematic analysis. We examined the transcribed interviews with the aim of finding patterns in the material. We were looking for repetitions, similarities and differences (Rennstam & Wästerfors, 2015; Ryan & Bernard, 2003). The analysis unfolded in several steps. Initially, we read all the transcribed interviews repeatedly, with the intention of getting an overview. When we had a preliminary overall picture, the next step was to focus on the purpose of the study. We read the material closely with the two research questions in mind. This involved marking the sections that contained descriptions of customers who subject practicum students and staff to unwelcome flirting and sexual harassment.

We then examined these sections with particular regard to the importance attached to the age of the customers. We coded the descriptions, which meant giving them a title or designation that captured the essence of the content. For example, we found that participants highlighted how male customers of their fathers’ age subjected them to unwelcome attention, which was initially coded ‘older men as fathers’. The codes were then compared, adjusted and brought together into preliminary themes (Rennstam & Wästerfors, 2015). Concretely, this meant, for example, that descriptions that had been coded ‘older men as fathers’ were brought together with descriptions coded as ‘slimy men’. These codes then became the theme ‘older men as slimy’ when the codes that had been developed were compared and reformulated.

The Significance of the Customer’s Age

Below, we first describe how the young people talked about young customers who expose them to unwelcome sexual attention. When other young people did this, it could be called ‘not right’ or ‘a bit unpleasant’, but it was considered understandable or even harmless. Next, we show how the young people talked about middle-aged male customers and unwelcome sexual attention from them. The descriptions of the unwelcome sexual interest from these customers were particularly negative.

Young Men as Understandable and Young Girls as Harmless

According to the young people, both younger and older men subject female staff and female practicum students to unwelcome comments and flirting, but it was the older men who provoked emotions and who were highlighted as the most common sexual harassers.

Interviewer: Who is subjecting staff to sexual harassment? What do you think about that? Can it be anyone of the guests?

Elsa: It can really be anyone. You shouldn’t put everyone in the same basket.

Alice: I think it’s mostly older men.

Elsa: Yes, it’s often older men.

Alice: They are a little slimier. It’s more disgusting when they say something. But it’s not right when young guys behave like that either.

Elsa: There’s also them, but usually it’s older men.

(Elsa and Alice, Restaurant Management and Food Programme)

The excerpt shows that Elsa first answered cautiously that the harasser could be anyone, and she said she did not want to generalize. She did not state that she was referring to any male person when she said ‘it could be anyone’, but this seems to be implied. Alice said, however, that in her opinion the harassers were first and foremost older men, which then Elsa agreed with. The young women’s conversation shows that young men can make unwelcome comments. Young men doing this also behave wrong, Alice emphasized. At the same time, the young men and their behaviour is perceived in a different way; they are not as disgusting when they say something, according to Alice. This type of reasoning was put forward by many participants, and especially by the female students. When young people talked about how older male customers might say things to them, the word ‘disgusting’ recurred to describe the feeling that the men provoked. It was not that the men patted or touched them. Instead, it was that the men were significantly older than the young women, and they gave them compliments and tried to flirt with them. Although young men should not try to flirt with female staff, their behaviour did not come close to arousing the same feelings.

The fact that young men behave in a flirtatious way towards young women serving in cafés and restaurants or receiving guests at hotel receptions, is in line with common heteronormative patterns. For young people aged 18–20, the compliments that young men give young female staff are on-time. Although the comments do not feel comfortable for the receiving young woman, they are at least in line with current age norms (Krekula & Johansson, 2017). In addition, when male teenagers have objectified and subjected their female peers to sexual harassment, the behaviour has often been trivialized and accepted (Gillander Gådin, 2012; Stein, 1995).

As long as the flirting young men behave in a pleasant way and the behaviour is not exaggerated, there is not a violation of current norms. Although many of the comments and compliments are not welcome and they make the young women uncomfortable, they can be said to be part of the heteronormative rituals (Jackson, 2006). In accordance with a traditional heteronormative pattern, men are expected to court women, give compliments and praise their appearance, to which women are expected to respond with such acts as giving attention back as well as smiling and laughing at men’s jokes (Hochschild, 2012; Jackson, 2006).

However, the heteronormative ideal also contains an age dimension. There is a limit to how big the age difference between the man and the woman can be. The limit for age norms varies depending on the context and can be difficult to establish (Krekula & Johansson, 2017). Although according to most participants, the term ‘older men’ referred to men 40 years and older, the limit for who could be called ‘older’ could also be set at a younger age. Judging from some young women’s reasoning, 25 years old seemed to be the age that separated younger men from older men. When these young women reasoned about older men behaving flirtatiously, one of the young women exclaimed, ‘Sugar daddy!’ The term ‘sugar daddy’ refers to an older, often well-to-do man who has a relationship with a younger partner (Nayar, 2017). In the typical sugar-relationship, an exchange takes place where a rich older man gives financial support and expensive gifts in return for a sexual relationship with a young attractive woman (Recio, 2021; Upadhyay, 2021). The young women distinguished between acceptable flirting from young men and unacceptable flirting from older men that were associated with ‘sugar daddy’.

Magdalena: If they are up to 25, they are still guys then, and it works. But when they are older, then they are… as she said, ‘sugar daddy’.

Nina: Yes, the slimy and unpleasant type! No, I don’t like it!

Interviewer: You don’t like it at all?

Nina: Just when he’s older! I react more then than when he is younger, because then I can understand it in a different way.

(Magdalena and Nina, Restaurant Management and Food Programme)

As the excerpt above shows, Magdalena explained that compliments and flirtation from men up to 25 years old were okay. This did not seem to be perceived as repulsive, and above all it was understandable. Men aged 25 and younger could be categorized as ‘guys’; and even if the young women, who were 18–20 years old here, could be several years younger, the age difference was not too great. ‘They are still guys then, and it works’, as Magdalena explained.

While the female students described many experiences of being sexually harassed themselves, the situation was different for the male students. Erik, however, was an exception. He worked part-time at a café, and he described how customers who subject female staff to intimate questions and unwanted advances have become a big problem at the work place. After telling about this, he recalled that he too had been the subject of unwelcome romantic attention. He said that many schoolgirls visited the cafe. Some of these girls had searched for his name on social media, especially on Snapchat. They had also followed him when his shift ended and he went home to his house. He said it was ‘a bit unpleasant actually’, but he still dismissed what happened as insignificant:

Erik: They added me on Snap and I thought it was weird; I deleted them. Also, they followed me when I walked home after work. It was a bit uncomfortable actually. Two days in a row that happened.

Interviewer: What did you think about that?

Erik: You can laugh about it; they are children.

Interviewer: But still…

Erik: No, I don’t attach any importance to it.

(Erik, Restaurant Management and Food Programme)

The excerpt above depicts the only example in the material where a male student recounted how he was subjected to sexual harassment by customers. When Erik talked about what happened, it was clear that he was unsure how he should perceive the situation. Although he did not perceive the customers’ actions as funny, he said you can laugh about it. The explanation for this is the age of the customers; ‘they are children’, Erik explained. One interpretation is that he meant that as children, they were harmless, and therefore it was not relevant for him to take the girls’ interest in him seriously. Based on Krekula and Johansson’s (2017) reasoning about age norms, the girls’ romantic interest in Erik could be considered off-time, at least for Erik, and therefore be dismissed.

In addition, the fact that the girls were children seems to mean that Erik did not feel vulnerable in the way that a person can feel vulnerable when a person of higher status subjects a person with lower status. As scholars have shown, sexual harassment primarily takes place in unequal relationships, where the person with a higher standing takes advantage of the superior position and exposes the person with a lower status (Good & Cooper, 2016; Robinson, 2005). Even though Erik described the situations as ‘a bit uncomfortable’, he apparently considered the girls harmless.

Older Men as Slimy

When the young people described the customers who subject staff to sexual harassment, they highlighted ‘older men’. Those who were categorized as older men were usually said to be between the ages of 40–50, and the young people often called them ‘old men’ [‘gubbar’ in Swedish]. When these men acted in a flirtatious way, they were perceived as slimy. The men were so much older than the students that they could be their fathers. A young person does not want to be called ‘pretty’ or have her appearance commented on by someone that old, according to the students. ‘You do not want to hear that from someone who could be your father’, explained Alice.

Both male and female students stated that mainly older male customers and guests expose women in the hospitality industry to sexual harassment. While the young women described many concrete situations that they themselves have experienced, the young men’s descriptions were fewer, concerned women being subjected, and were also less concrete (cf. Coffey et al., 2018). Hugo and Åke, however, described a concrete situation. They told about when the school restaurant served Christmas dinner and all the students attending the Restaurant Management and Food Programme worked in the restaurant. Their teachers had to intervene when some older male guests commented on the female students serving their table in a sexist and offensive way.

Hugo: When we had the Christmas dinner, we had some guests who were slimy. The girls were let off from serving the two tables in particular. There were some older men who made comments.

Åke: So they [the teachers] asked us to take those tables; the girls mostly stood at the bar then. We had to take care of those old men, serve them and replenish the food. The girls felt quite uncomfortable, which I understand.

(Hugo and Åke, Restaurant Management and Food Programme)

The excerpt above shows how Hugo and Åke talked about an occasion when their female schoolmates served male guests ‘who were slimy’. The men’s comments made the young women feel uncomfortable. The teachers decided that the young men should take over the serving so that the young women could get away from the situation, which can be interpreted as the teachers expecting that the male guests, in accordance with the heteronormative ideal, would not subject the young men to any similar inappropriate comments. Further, no one confronted the guests. The guests were not asked to leave the restaurant, nor given a warning, which can be understood to mean that the teachers in charge did not perceive the men’s behaviour as completely unacceptable. At the same time, this shows the asymmetrical relationship between the female students who served and the male guests. The young women’s feelings and needs were subordinated to those of the male guests. The female students did not get an apology. The teachers solved the problem without embarrassing the men. The teachers seemed to act according to the motto ‘the customer is king’ (Gettman & Gelfand, 2007).

The excerpts above come from young people in vocational training for work in a restaurant. Young women who work or do a practicum in hotel receptions described similar situations. Often these young people also have experience waiting on tables, because many hotels have some type of food service and many of the young people training for work in hotels also take on another job in the restaurant branch. It is not uncommon for young women who work or do their practicum in hotel receptions to receive the same types of comments that women in the restaurant industry receive. Karin, who attended the Hotel and Tourism programme, described male guests’ comments as flirtatious. When there is a great age difference, the flirting was described as ‘quite disgusting’.

Karin: People usually… that is, guys especially usually flirt with younger girls. So very much younger!

Interviewer: Do you mean older men flirt with younger girls?

Karin: Yes!

Interviewer: What do you think of that?

Karin: I think it’s pretty disgusting. If it’s like a 50-year-old man flirting with maybe a 17 or 18-year-old girl.

(Karin, Hotel and Tourism programme)

The feelings of aversion and disgust that the older men’s flirting and compliments provoked can be understood on the basis of gendered age norms (Krekula, 2009). For young people aged 18–20, the compliments that young men give young female staff are on-time. Compliments from middle-aged men, on the other hand, are off-time (Krekula & Johansson, 2017). For young people, it is obvious that these men are violating age-related gender norms.

The young women also described how older men could make them uncomfortable by asking personal and private questions. My, who was doing her practicum in a hotel, described how this could happen. She recounted an episode that had just taken place. She was standing in the reception area ready to receive guests when a male guest entered the hotel.

My: The place I’m at now, it’s a very small hotel. We have hardly any guests at the moment. So it’s just me and my boss. Usually I welcome customers by myself. […] Most of the time, we have older men as guests. Once, it was a couple of weeks ago, I received a man and I thought from the beginning that he had an aura of being a little slimy. As soon as he came inside the door he said, ‘Such an attractive young woman standing behind the counter here!’ Right away, I felt alarm bells. We talked, and he asked where I lived, what address I had, and there it stopped. I said I had to go out, and then I went to my boss, and he had to take care of the man instead.

(My, Hotel and Tourism Programme)

The quote above shows how the male hotel guest’s first reaction was to comment on My’s appearance and call her an ‘attractive young woman’. In MacKinnon’s (1979) terms, My was objectified, that is, reduced to a sexual object by the man who took the liberty to comment on her looks. This did not feel good to My, who said she felt the man exuded a sliminess. His comment was consistent with the slimy impression he gave. He then went on in the same line and began to ask questions of a personal nature, despite the fact that My was clearly not behind the hotel reception desk as a private person, but to perform a job. The man asked where My lived and even for her address. With this, the man had crossed a line that made My unable to remain; she broke off the interaction. She went to her boss and asked him to take over.

The male hotel guest’s private questions show how the boundary between work and private life is crossed when the guest addresses the young woman as a private person. The environment in which the interaction takes place can contribute to the boundary being perceived as unclear. The restaurant or in this case the hotel, where the woman is learning the job or working, and where she wants to be perceived as a competent professional, is at the same time a place for relaxation and recreation for the man.

Discussion

In summary, in this study we have shown that the customer’s age was crucial for how the participants perceived unwelcome sexual interest and advances. If the person who offends was a child, the behaviour could be perceived as harmless, innocent and thus not as sexual harassment. Unwelcome flirting by a young man towards a young woman of the same age however, could be called sexual harassment, but at the same time it could be understood and thus perceived as more acceptable. Also, the power relations are more equal when the guest is of the same age. When the customer is older, that is, a middle-aged man, however, the young people’s descriptions of the occurrence were particularly negative.

Gender and age were the important categories in the young people’s descriptions of the customers who subject practicum students and staff to unwelcome flirting and sexual harassment. Gender could be implicit, as when Elsa said she does not want to generalize, saying that the one who subjects practicum students and staff could be ‘anyone’, while at the same time it seems to mean ‘any man’ (cf. Connell, 2021). Often, however, the participants explicitly highlighted that the sexual harasser is a man. It is a male customer who flirts, comments on the appearance of a female employee or practicum student, and asks questions of a private nature. This behaviour may indeed be in line with masculine behaviour within a heteronormative ideal (Connell, 2021; Jackson, 2006), but it was perceived very negatively by the young people in this study when the men are judged to be ‘older’.

As Connell (2021) points out, gender norms often have deep emotional roots and norm violations can provoke strong negative emotions. Young people expressed these negative feelings when they described the middle-aged men’s behaviour as slimy and disgusting. According to the participants in this study, the men themselves, however, did not seem to perceive that the gender norms and the heteronormative pattern also include an age dimension. One explanation for this may be that men confuse the higher status they have in an overall social gender order with the status they have in the heteronormative order that young people associate with sexual interest and flirting.

The clear power aspect that men’s flirting holds has additional dimensions. A number of studies highlight the objectification of women as a key component in heteronormative masculinity. The objectification of women can thus be part of men’s constitution of masculinity (Bhana & Chen, 2020; Bird, 1996; Kimmel, 2018). Being objectified and addressed as a woman instead of a professional disempowers women and strengthens men’s superior position (Connell, 2021; MacKinnon, 1979). The female participants in this study can be assumed to have been objectified many times before. Nevertheless, the objectification appears as incomprehensible when the person acting this way is an ‘older man’.

As young women and practicum students, the female students have low status and an insecure position, while the middle-aged men to a large extent can be assumed to be established in the labour market (cf. Bessant, 2018). The men are also customers and thus have the money that pays the employees’ salaries. The men whom the young people describe as disgusting may even think the young women perceive them as charming, since guests subjecting staff to unwelcome flirting and sexual harassment seldom are confronted (Good & Cooper, 2016; Siverbo et al., 2018). In their education programme, the female students have often been told that they should work in line with the motto ‘the customer is always right’. Unpleasant and uncomfortable customers should also be met with a smile, not least because of concern that dissatisfied customers will give the restaurant or hotel a bad reputation by placing a bad review on social media (Zampoukos et al., 2020). Requiring the young women as practicum students and employed staff in the service sector to offer good service by acting in accordance with traits and conduct typically categorized as feminine, that is, to be nice and accommodating, means that they do not show their negative feelings openly (Connell, 2021). The fact that the young women are trained to accommodate guests in this way can be assumed to contribute to the middle-aged men remaining unaware of how their behaviour is perceived.

Farrugia et al. (2018) point out that young people’s work in the service sector is often about creating a positive atmosphere in the interaction with the customer. The young person’s whole embodied subjectivity is involved; and for this to function best, it must be done in a way that feels natural and authentic to both the young service worker and the customer. This often requires that the service worker and the customer share aspects such as age and cultural taste. The young people in this study described situations where age and most likely cultural taste were not shared. When the noticeably older male customers interacted with the young female staff in a flirtatious manner, they also violated the age-coded gender norms (Krekula & Johansson, 2017).

This violation of age-coded gender norms aroused not only negative emotions, but also perplexity. The middle-aged men who subjected female practicum students and staff to sexual harassment and unwelcome flirting, were the age of their fathers, something that the participants repeatedly pointed out. A father figure who acts flirtatiously towards young women seemed to be perceived as an anomaly. One interpretation of the young women’s perplexity is that fathers are expected to have social skills and know how to behave. Swedish fathers are often associated with modern men who are caring, thoughtful caregivers of their children. The image of the caring, sensitively engaged father has been marketed by Swedish authorities since the 1970s, with the purpose of encouraging fathers to take the opportunity for paid paternity leave (Goedecke & Klinth, 2021). While fathers are associated with positive qualities, which are linked to femininity rather than masculinity, the students are familiar with the phenomena of sugar-dating and sugar daddy. Thus, these phenomena offer a way to understand how it can happen that older men flirt with the young women.

At the same time, it is not uncommon for relationships between older men and younger women to be romanticized in popular culture (Dowd et al., 2023). The large age difference, which for young women means that men’s behaviour is so off-time that it becomes difficult to understand, can for men, with reference to this type of ideal highlighted in the media, appear as on-time (Krekula & Johansson, 2017). Thus, a male guest who is called slimy and disgusting by the young women can perceive himself as a man who attracts young women.

Limitations

As this small-scale study is qualitative in nature and based on a small sample, conclusions must be drawn with caution. As we have described, we have only interviewed young people training for work in the hospitality industry, attending vocational programmes at upper secondary school in Sweden. Yet, we assert it is likely that most people find a perpetrator’s age crucial for how they perceive sexual harassment. We also believe it likely that significantly more young people than those who train for a job in the hospitality industry perceive unwelcome sexual interest and advances from ‘older men’ as particularly negative. One of the study’s limitations is that we have not investigated how ethnicity interacts with gender and age. This merits additional inquiry. In the future, we plan to return with a study that includes ethnicity. Also, in-depth interviews with the guests and customers in hospitality can increase our understanding of unwelcome flirting and sexual harassment.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding

This work was supported by the Research and Development Fund of the Swedish Tourism & Hospitality Industry (BFUF) under Grant Number [Dnr 2020-240].

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