Three experiments among university students have shown that men often estimate higher rates of sexual objectification experienced by young women than women report themselves, a discrepancy that challenges the idea that men underestimate the harassment women face. The research, published in Sex Roles, was led by Olivia A. Foster-Gimbel of Rutgers University and Renee Engeln of Northwestern University and sought to discover whether men and women share a common understanding of how often objectifying behaviours occur in daily life.
Sexual objectification is defined as treating a person primarily as a body or a collection of body parts rather than as a full human being. The phenomenon is reported to be common among young women and is linked to negative psychological outcomes, including depression, body shame and a diminished sense of personal safety. In workplaces and public spaces, experiences range from explicit sexual advances to everyday evaluations of appearance. The researchers aimed to test whether men and women perceive the frequency of these events in similar ways.
The team proposed competing ideas: men might underestimate how often these experiences occur because they have less personal exposure or because, as members of a dominant group, they may downplay the disadvantages faced by others. They also considered the potential impact of the #MeToo movement, arguing that extensive public discussion in recent years could have sensitised men to the realities women navigate.
In the first study, 110 participants aged 18 to 30 were recruited. Women reported how often they experienced a range of objectifying behaviours on a scale from “never” to “almost always,” while men estimated how often the average young woman would encounter the same behaviours using the same scale. The behaviours were categorised into overt actions such as catcalling or unwanted touching and covert actions such as staring or evaluating a woman’s appearance.
The results contradicted the researchers’ initial expectations. Men estimated that the average woman experienced both overt and covert objectification more frequently than the women reported experiencing it themselves. There were no meaningful differences between the sexes in how they perceived the emotional impact of these experiences; both groups agreed on the negative feelings these events evoke for women.
A second study with 199 university students again used the verbal scale and added a precise numerical estimate. Participants also read a short vignette about a fictional woman who was catcalled on her way home from work and were asked to estimate how often similar events happened to women like the character. The pattern persisted: men estimated higher frequencies for the average woman than women reported for themselves on both the verbal and numerical measures. When rating the fictional woman, however, women estimated higher overt harassment than men did, reversing the earlier pattern and suggesting a phenomenon sometimes described as the denial of personal discrimination.
For the third study, 165 university students estimated frequencies for the “average woman” aged 18 to 30, enabling direct comparison without relying on self-reports of personal experience. As before, both overt and covert behaviours were assessed using the verbal scale and numerical counts, and participants offered written explanations for any differences in the estimates.
The findings for overt behaviours showed that women selected higher verbal frequency categories than men, yet both groups produced similar numerical estimates—around 30 instances per year. For covert behaviours, the verbal ratings were similar between genders, but men calculated a higher numerical frequency, estimating about 365 instances a year versus 267 for women.
The written responses suggested several possible explanations for why men and women diverge. Some participants believed men’s higher estimates reflect their awareness of how often men perpetrate these behaviours. Others noted that women might miss some covert actions, such as being stared at from behind. A number of respondents argued that men might deliberately guess higher figures to avoid appearing ignorant or insensitive in a cultural climate that prizes belief in women’s experiences.
The researchers acknowledge several limitations. The studies included only participants who identified as men or women, omitting transgender and nonbinary experiences. The focus was on women aged 18 to 30, so the findings may not generalise to older women or women from different racial or cultural backgrounds. The data were collected in the period soon after the height of the #MeToo movement, and attitudes may have shifted since then. The researchers stress that future work should explore broader demographics and consider how perceptions evolve over time, while noting that interventions might more effectively target the mental health harms of objectification rather than debating exact frequencies.
The study, “A Mile in Her Heels: Do Men and Women Agree on How Often Women Are Sexually Objectified?,” was authored by Olivia A. Foster-Gimbel and Renee Engeln.
