Business: Executive Sweet

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Many office Romeos are really Juliets

Forget about that scene in the movies when the pin-striped boss looks at the usually prim secretary and exclaims, "Why, Miss Smith—Mary—you have taken off your glasses!" Nowadays, it is likely to be a Ms. who is doing the noticing. The woman boss, once a corseted cliche in man-tailored suits, has begun to win a reputation for eying the boys in the office. That is the conclusion of a study by two U.C.L.A. psychologists, Barbara Gutek and Charles Nakamura, called "Sexuality and the Workplace." Men, they report, have joined women as victims of sexual harassment on the job.

Under Gutek and Nakamura's direction, 63 students interviewed 178 men and 221 women living in Los Angeles, all relatively young, well-educated and financially independent. Nearly 45% of the men and 47% of the women reported that supervisors or co-workers of the opposite sex had made admiring sexual comments; 31% of the men and 33% of the women spoke of being leered at or touched. It had been made abundantly clear to 6% of the men and 11% of the women that they were expected to sleep with their bosses or with influential co-workers in order to keep their jobs. The women who made passes were described by the men as "very attractive" and under 40; men who made advances to women, on the other hand, were generally over 40 and rated as "somewhat unattractive." They also made passes at other women in the office.

A quarter of the men did not consider it seriously objectionable to have to date or socialize after hours with a boss of the opposite sex in order to hang on to their jobs, while only 14% of the women felt that way. In all, 65% of the women resented sexual looks, gestures or touching, compared with only 35% of the men. One firm conclusion that can be drawn from the report: as more women rise to supervisory positions, it will become harder to tell who is chasing whom around the desk.