What is so bad about a little name-calling? Negative consequences of gender harassment for overperformance demands and distress.

It is proposed that, for women working in traditionally male occupations, gender harassment causes overperformance demands (OPD), which lead to psychological distress, which was strongly supported for 262 female police officers but was not supported for male officers.

Abstract

Few studies have investigated why harassment has negative effects on women's well-being. The authors proposed that, for women working in traditionally male occupations, gender harassment (GH) causes overperformance demands (OPD), which lead to psychological distress. This mediated model was strongly supported for 262 female police officers but, as proposed, was not supported for male officers (N = 315). For men, levels of GH and OPD were lower than for women, and GH was not a significant predictor of OPD. Harassing behaviors thus had different consequences for women and men. A lack of perceived support for equal deployment of women police was associated with OPD for women,and family --> work conflict was a significant predictor of OPD for both men and women.