Psychology

The Underestimation of Transgender Women’s Vulnerability to Workplace Sexual Harassment

Document Type

Article

Abstract

Despite experiencing sexual harassment more frequently and more severely than cisgender women, transgender women survivors’/victims’ experiences of workplace sexual harassment are often omitted or ignored. Drawing from theorizing on victim prototypes and perceptions of sexual harassment, we show across six studies (total N = 2,022) that people incorrectly believe that transgender women are less likely to experience workplace sexual harassment compared to cisgender women. This effect is stronger among individuals who deny that transgender women are, in fact, women. We also show that people perceive harassment claims from transgender women who experience unwanted advances to be less credible than identical claims from cisgender women. Perceptions that transgender women are unlikely and non-credible victims of sexual harassment have important implications for understanding the erasure and neglect of transgender women survivors and the obstruction of transgender women’s civil rights. © 2025 by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc

Publication Title

Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin

Publication Date

2025

ISSN

0146-1672

DOI

10.1177/01461672251368955

Keywords

identity denial, prototypes, sexual harassment, transgender women, transphobia

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