Prominent figures in American film, news, and politics are facing a dramatic wave of sexual harassment accusations. In response, the heads of organizations — like the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences and various colleges and universities — are not only encouraging victims to voice their allegations, but also re-examining their own institutional cultures. Social science research has explored the social dynamics of sexual harassment in the workplace and the conditions that prevent reporting. 

Individuals who experience sexual harassment often do not report right away — some may not interpret their experiences as abuse at first, but even when they do, many choose not to come forward. And others who are aware of the harassment frequently turn a blind eye. In order for victims of sexual harassment, discrimination, or abuse to come forward, they must first believe that doing so will be effective and not result in their own harm. Lost jobs opportunities and the fear of retaliation are among the most frequent reasons for not reporting, and educational, psychological factors, and financial resources all influence the likelihood of reporting. 

• Amy Blackstone, Christopher Uggen, and Heather McLaughlin. 2009. “Legal Consciousness and Responses to Sexual Harassment.” Law & Society Review 43(3): 631–668.
• Deborah Brake. 2007. “Perceiving Subtle Sexism: Mapping the Social-Psychological Forces and Legal Narratives that Obscure Gender Bias.” Columbia Journal of Gender & Law 16: 679.
• Elizabeth Wolfe Morrison and Frances J. Milliken. 2000. “Organizational Silence: A Barrier to Change and Development in a Pluralistic World.” Academy of Management Review 25(4): 706-725.

Organizations can also develop cultures of corruption and silence as sexual harassment becomes embedded within the institution. Members normalize and justify these practices, and then socialize newcomers to view such behavior as permissible and even desirable. In doing so, members of the organization legitimize and reinforce the status quo. For instance, women’s success may be interpreted as a threat to men’s masculinity, and in some cases, these men respond through controlling practices like sexual harassment. In order to keep their jobs and avoid conflict with coworkers, many women remain silent and feel they must tolerate unwelcome sexual advances. When coworkers witness harassment and do not respond, victims may internalize negative judgments, which lowers their sense of well-being and reduces opportunities for collective action.

• Heather McLaughlin, Christopher Uggen, and Amy Blackstone. 2012. “Sexual Harassment, Workplace Authority, and the Paradox of Power.” American Sociological Review 77(4): 625-647.
• Deborah Jones and Judith Pringle. 2015. “Unmanageable Inequalities: Sexism in the Film Industry.” The Sociological Review 63(1): 37-49.
• Diane Vaughan. 1996. The Challenger Launch Decision: Risky Technology, Culture, and Deviance at NASA. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Blake E. Ashforth and Vikas Anand. 2003. “The Normalization of Corruption in Organizations.” Research in Organizational Behavior 25: 1-52.

This past week, the Philadelphia Board of Pensions and Retirement voted to withdraw its investments in the for-profit prison industry. However, the prison industry depends on more than just investors to finance its operations. It also relies on resources from defendants, inmates, and their families. Social science research demonstrates the far-reaching consequences of the penal systems’s money leveraging strategies.

Federal and state criminal justice agencies and correctional institutions charge defendants and inmates with the costs of arrest, prosecution, conviction, incarceration, and supervision. For example, fees include the cost of electronic monitoring and registration for people convicted of sex offenses. In some states, defendants pay for their hearings (court-fees). If found guilty, they also pay room-and-board fees while in prison (pay-to-stay fees).

• Kirsten Levingston. 2008. “Making the Bad Guy Pay: Growing Use of Cost Shifting as an Economic Sanction.” Pp. 52-79. in Prison Profiteers: Who Makes Money from Mass Incarceration. New York: The New Press.

As a form of punishment, judges impose monetary sanctions for misdemeanor and felony crimes alike. Monetary sanctions disproportionately disadvantage defendants from low-income communities through three different mechanisms: reducing family income, limiting their access to jobs or educational opportunities, and increasing the likelihood of ongoing criminal justice system involvement. These consequences challenge the assumption that monetary sanctions serve as a more favorable alternative to incarceration or supervision.

• Karin D. Martin, Bryan L. Sykes, Sarah Shannon, Frank Edwards, and Alexes Harris. 2018. “Monetary Sanctions: Legal Financial Obligations in US Systems of Justice.” Annual Review of Criminology 1: 10.1-10.25. 
• Amaia Iratzoqui and Christi Metcalfe. 2017. “Set Up for Failure? Examining the Influence of Monetary Sanctions on Probation Success.” Criminal Justice Policy Review 28(4): 370-393.

Correctional authorities outsource the operation and provision of services within correctional institutions to generate revenues for both public and private institutions. Contracts to run prison services – commissaries, telephone services, or online banking, for example – are based on commissions (what critics call “kickbacks”), which generate incentives for corruption and disproportionate profit-making at the expense of inmates and their families. This means companies have higher incentives to increase their profit margins by charging higher prices and fees.

• Mary Katzenstein and Maureen Waller. 2015. “Taxing the poor: Incarceration, Poverty Governance, and the Seizure of Family Resources.” Perspectives on Politics 13(3): 638-656.
• Hadar Aviram. 2015. Cheap on Crime: Recession-era Politics and the Transformation of American Punishment. Oakland: University of California Press.

Pregnant women are under attack—or so it seems. Actually, according to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), all women who might become pregnant ever are at risk. In February, the CDC released a report estimating that around 3 million women “are at risk of exposing their developing baby to alcohol because they are drinking, sexually active and not using birth control to prevent pregnancy.” Since then, many have bashed the CDC for advising women to live as though they are “pre-pregnant,” abstaining from drinking if they are not on birth control or if they are even considering getting pregnant. Coupled with growing threat of the Zika virus and its links to birth defects, such suggestions have propelled discussions of women’s roles in preventing catastrophic disability. Sociologists suggest that perceptions of women’s behavior are closely tied to ideas about the morality of motherhood. In particular, women who appear to resist common conceptions of what it means to be a “good” mother are subject to greater social control.Women who appear to resist common conceptions of what it means to be a “good” mother are subject to greater social control.

In American culture, motherhood is inextricably tied to morality. Moral arguments against abortion often rely on particular conceptions of sexual behavior, family life, and care for children. The ideology of “intensive mothering” demands that women be self-sacrificing and devote extensive time and energy to their children’s wants and needs — time and energy that many working women cannot afford.

• Sharon Hays. 1996. The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
• Kristin Luker. 1984. Abortion & the Politics of Motherhood. Berkeley: University of California Press.

This emphasis on mothers’ devotion to their children places them under considerable scrutiny, not only while raising children, but also during pregnancy. For instance, the “discovery” of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome heightened concerns over drinking during pregnancy. This made pregnant women the individual bearers of responsibility for the well-being of future children, and made them susceptible to moral outrage for behaviors like drinking. (Bucking the trend, the New York City Human Rights Commission has just recommended that visibly pregnant women cannot be discriminated against if, for instance, they order a glass of wine in a bar.)

• Elizabeth Armstrong. 2008. Conceiving Risk, Bearing Responsibility: Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and the Diagnosis of Moral Disorder.

Poor women, especially poor women of color, face a greater burden under dealized conceptions about what it means to be a “good” or “fit” mother. Not only are they regularly depicted as immoral or unfit, they are also criminalized and sanctioned at higher rates. Historical analyses show pregnant women are arrested for stillbirths, miscarriages, using drugs while pregnant, as well as incarcerated to prevent abortion. Poor women labeled “high risk” are prosecuted for failing to comply with medical advice when their fetus or baby dies, thus they are ironically discouraged from seeking care during pregnancy. Just as the “crack baby” became a symbol of the irresponsibility of poor, black women in the 1980s and ‘90s, Zika exposure and alcohol use are invoked today to place mothers and potential mothers under continued scrutiny.

• Lisa Handwerker. 1994. “Medical Risk: Implicating Poor Pregnant Women.” Social Science and Medicine 38(5):665-675.
• Enid Logan. 1999. “The Wrong Race, Committing Crime, Doing Drugs, and Maladjusted for Motherhood: The Nation’s Fury over ‘Crack Babies’.” Social Justice 26(1):115-138.
• Jeanne Flavin. 2009. Our Bodies, Our Crimes: The Policing of Women’s Reproduction in America. New York: New York University Press.

Many more men are incarcerated than women, but from 1980 to 2014, the number of women in state and federal prisons rose from just over 13,000 to more than 106,000, making women the fastest growing prison population in the U.S. This drastic increase is due in part to the War on Drugs and the shift to a “tough-on-crime” logic in the 1970s and ‘80s. For women, the mass incarceration era doesn’t just exert tougher penalties; it also carries over an earlier, paternalistic way of disciplining women.

Before mass incarceration, women’s prisons operated under rehabilitative models. These viewed women’s criminal behavior as a result of their vulnerability or dependency, rather than dangerousness. Inmates were sometimes called “girls” and referred to the warden as “daddy.” Later tough-on-crime policies increased security, abolished mandatory counseling, and emphasized order and control in women’s prisons. Still, some contemporary prisons maintain a paternalistic attitude by offering women “treatment” that focuses exclusively their perceived inability to make good choices in the face of challenges from men, drugs, or a history of abuse.For women, the mass incarceration era doesn’t just exert tougher penalties; it also carries over an earlier, paternalistic way of disciplining women.

In other words, incarcerated women are hit with a double bind. Strict sentencing policies ignore social context and drastically increase the number of women in prison, while the paternalism of the past shapes how the criminal justice system interprets and judges their behavior and prospects for rehabilitation.

• Jill McCorkel. 2013. Breaking Women: Gender, Race, and the New Politics of Imprisonment. New York: New York University Press.
• Candace Kruttschnitt and Rosemary Gartner. 2005. Marking Time in the Golden State: Women’s Imprisonment in California. New York: Cambridge University Press.