Finally, we discuss a measurement challenge for RCTs on harassment prevention.
Interventions may increase women’s awareness, making incidents more likely to be labeled and recalled at endline, making real reductions in exposure harder to detect.
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Åshild A Johnsen
We estimate a 29% reduction in women’s exposure to harassment from a roommate relative to the control group.
This is a large point estimate, but imprecise (p = 0.37), so we cannot rule out a null effect.
The intervention gave some recruit groups information about their peers’ beliefs — specifically, that “telling sexualized jokes can be labeled sexual harassment” — and about women soldiers’ equal performance on military skill tests.
The treatment produced lasting improvements in knowledge about what sexual harassment is and about women’s job performance.
It also reduced tolerance of harassment among both men and women, with effects still visible eight weeks later.
Importantly, we find no evidence of backlash among men who initially held more tolerant attitudes toward sexual harassment, which other prevention methods have sometimes been shown to trigger.
