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Paper short abstract

This paper explores bystanders’ responses to people who speak out against men’s sexual harassment of women in corporate Japan. It assesses the potential and limitations of acts of speaking out in disrupting gendered corporate cultures where women continue to be marginalised.

Paper long abstract

This paper explores bystanders’ responses to people who speak out against men’s sexual harassment of women in corporate Japan. Scholarship has made clear the challenges in speaking out against sexual harassment—more commonly known as sekuhara—or sexual assault, highlighting how cultural emphases such as group harmony, desires to keep intact career prospects, and fears of victim blaming intertwine with women’s subordinate hierarchical positions to reproduce cultures of silence. However, over the past few years, surveys indicate that greater awareness of sekuhara along with organisations more proactively enforcing formal mechanisms have led to increasing numbers of corporate women speaking out against or seeking advice about sekuhara. Scholarship, however, has yet to consider the responses to women who speak out and the broader effects of speaking out on gendered power relations in corporate culture.

Drawing on semi-structured interviews with white-collar employees of various hierarchical statuses from managers to new recruits, this paper investigates the various responses of bystander employees to women’s acts of speaking out against sekuhara. In particular, it focuses on how gendered backlash intertwines with corporate culture to inform bystanders’ often negative, dismissive attitudes towards women who speak out. These include assumptions that women are merely overreacting or that they are attempting to exact revenge on disliked colleagues. While such responses reproduce gendered stereotypes that marginalise women, the paper also explores the simultaneous disruptive potential of acts of speaking out. In other cases, bystanders’ fears that accusations of sexual harassment may damage professional standing result in disruption to their everyday interactions around women and ability to speak freely about gendered issues. Senior managers, meanwhile, attempt to disrupt cultures of harassment by wielding formal discipline over subordinate offenders.

By focusing on the gendered politics and effects of speaking out against men’s sexual harassment, this paper ultimately seeks to elucidate the potential of disrupting gendered injustices and creating more inclusive workplaces.