Attitudes to Sexism and the #MeToo Movement at a Danish University

ABSTRACT

We explore the relationship between academic employees’ attitudes to modern sexism and the #MeToo movement to better understand how interventions designed to address sexual harassment might be received in Danish academia. Using a survey of employees at a large Danish university (N = 1128), we categorized employees’ open answers about their attitudes to the #MeToo Movement as (a) positive, (b) ambivalent, or (c) negative. These categories were associated with employees’ modern sexism scores, such that those higher in modern sexism were more likely to be negative about the movement, while those with lower scores were more likely to be positive. To better understand possible sources of resistance to policy interventions, we used an explanatory sequential mixed-methods design to analyse the open comments for themes related to employee’s negative attitudes towards #MeToo. The two most prominent themes were: (1) delegitimisation of the purposes of the movement, and (2) perception that the rights of potential sexual perpetrators were more important than those of potential victims. We discuss the implications for the implementation of interventions targeting sexual harassment.

KEYWORDS:

• Sexism
• gender equality
• harassment
• discrimination
• #MeToo

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Ekehammar et al. (2001) and Van Wijk (2011) both uses the 5-point Likert scale for their study, but in order to compare we have recalculated their participants average score to fit the 7-point scale we used.

2. See above footnote.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lea Skewes

Lea Skewes, Post-Doctoral Researcher, Political Science, Aarhus University, Denmark. Lea specializes in gender stereotypes, gender bias, and gender discrimination, with particular attention to how the social category of gender is used to limit peoples´ latitude in occupations.

Joshua C. Skewes

Joshua C. Skewes, Associate Professor, Aarhus University, Denmark. Joshua is the Head of the Department for Linguistics, Cognitive Science, and Semiotics, & Co-Director of Interacting Minds Centre, Aarhus University. Joshua research is centered around cognitive modeling and social interaction.

Michelle K. Ryan

Michelle K. Ryan, Professor of Social and Organisational Psychology, University of Exeter, UK & Professor of Diversity, University of Groningen, The Netherlands. Michelle’s research is funded by the ERC and focuses on the ways in which women’s career choices are shaped and constrained by context and identity.