‘I’ll never be one of the boys’: Gender harassment of women working as pilots and automotive tradespeople

Meraiah Foley, Sarah Oxenbridge, Rae Cooper and Marian Baird

Gender, Work and Organization, 2022, vol. 29, issue 5, 1676-1691

Abstract: Significant research has examined sexual harassment in male‐dominated occupations, but gender harassment — harassment that is not necessarily sexual in nature but is targeted at individuals, or a group of individuals, because of their sex or gender — has received relatively less attention. Drawing on in‐depth, semi‐structured interviews, we analyse the lived experience of gender harassment among women working as pilots and automotive tradespeople in Australia. We find that women in these occupations face a daily barrage of belittling jokes and demeaning comments from colleagues, managers and customers, and such behaviours are retribution for encroaching on traditionally male occupational domains. Although women found these behaviours humiliating, intimidating, and offensive, they lacked a comprehensive vocabulary to define or condemn them. This article contributes to an emerging literature arguing that gender harassment needs to be more clearly problematized, organizationally and legally, as a form of sex‐based harassment constituting unlawful sex discrimination.

Date: 2022
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