A Game Theory Analysis of Sexual Harassment
Here’s a link to the article: https://www.livemint.com/Opinion/utOFEQrsE2XT2QQlsfw9yI/Opinion–A-game-theory-take-on-sexual-harassment.html
This article talks about the rampant sexual assault against women in India and uses Game Theory to analyze the pay off of a man and a woman. This article takes a very relevant topic in the MeToo era and is able to use her knowledge of economics in order to prove how men have it easier than woman.
Although sexual harassment is a highly nuanced issue, this article walks us through a game that simplifies sexual harassment. Let us start with a simple game with two players: a man and woman. The man can either harass (H) or not harass (NH). A woman can either report (R) or not report (NR) the harassment. When a man doesn’t harass and a woman doesn’t report, then both don’t gain or lose anything. If a man harasses a woman and she doesn’t report it, the man has a positive gain and the woman has a huge negative outcome due to the emotional distress of the harassment and the fact that she has to continue to see the man who harassed her go unscathed. If a man harasses a woman and the woman reports it, the man receives some negative outcome since his reputation is ruined but so does the woman because her reputation is also questioned and she faces the emotional strain of being harassed. If a man doesn’t sexual harass a woman but a woman reports him that means this man was falsely accused. The man gets a negative outcome because his reputation is ruined and he didn’t get anything. The woman also has a slightly lower negative outcome because only has to deal with her reputation being questioned a bit.
I created the table above. The values I used are a little arbitrary, but they reflect the outcomes described in the article. Now, we can calculate the Nash equilibrium of this game. No matter if the woman reports the man or not, the man will gain more by harassing the woman. Meanwhile, it is best that the woman should report the harassment if the man harasses her and should not report harassment if he does not harass her. So, the Nash equilibrium becomes the top left corner, where the man harasses a woman and she reports it. Sadly, the woman experiences more of a loss than the man. Men seem to be indifferent about harassment because whether they harass women or not, they still don’t get as negatively impacted as women.