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Youth at Work: Adolescent Employment and Sexual Harassment

NCJ Number
228578
Journal
Child Abuse and Neglect Volume: 33 Issue: 8 Dated: August 2009 Pages: 550-559
Author(s)
Susan Fineran; James E. Gruber
Date Published
August 2009
Length
10 pages
Annotation
This study explored workplace sexual harassment from the viewpoint of female students who work while attending high school and compared working students who had experienced sexual harassment with working students who had not.
Abstract
Results indicate that a little more than half of the teenagers experienced some form of sexual harassment at their place of employment. These findings showed that when compared to research on adult women, teenage girls not only experienced more harassment but also that it occurred in a shorter time period. The results of the study with regard to outcomes suggest that sexual harassment's impact on attitudes and behavior centered on work, that is, the site of these experiences, and had a smaller relationship to other contexts (school) or overall functioning (health). Study implications and limitations were presented and discussed. Future research on adolescents' work experience should focus on the relationship sexual harassment has with academic performance and career development. While the effects of sexual harassment on mental health have been documented for adults who have experienced sexual harassment in the workplace, little attention has been given to employed adolescents. The objective of this study was to examine the frequency and impact of workplace sexual harassment on work, health, and school outcomes on high school girls. The study compared the frequency of harassment in a sample of published research and compared outcomes for girls who experienced harassment versus those who did not. Tables and references