Tackling Sexual Harassment: Short and Long-Run Experimental Evidence from India

Karmini Sharma
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Karmini Sharma: Imperial College London Business School

CAGE Online Working Paper Series from Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE)

Abstract: Sexual harassment awareness training is a key tool to combat sexual harassment, which affects nearly 205 million people in the workplace (ILO, 2022). This paper provides the first randomized evaluation of such training in collaboration with colleges in Delhi, India, to study its impact on sexual harassment. I randomly assigned men to receive this training, with empathy-building, and collected reports of sexual harassment from women in their classes. The training significantly reduced sexual harassment for up to 3 years and altered men's perceptions of social disapproval more than their intrinsic attitudes. It also led to a long-lasting reduction in classroom romantic relationships. A mechanism experiment suggests this is due to women finding it difficult to judge men's quality when social disapproval generates a pooling equilibrium. A similar intervention for women had no detectable effects. Finally, men's training increased women's labor market engagement without affecting their mental well-being or test scores.

Keywords: Gender; sexual harassment; deterrence; beliefs JEL Classification: D91; J16; J28; K42; O12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp and nep-gen
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