ABSTRACT
Most studies of gender-based violence and harassment (GBVH) focus on white-collar women’s experiences of sexual harassment in highly regulated workplaces in the Global North. However, globally most women work in far less controlled settings. One such setting is Cambodia, where work on construction sites is highly informal. Drawing on survey and interview data collected from workers employed on 23 commercial and 16 residential sites, this article examines perpetrator identity in acts of sexual and non-sexual workplace GBVH. This analysis confirms that workplace GBVH targeting women is often perpetrated by men in positions of authority but also by coworkers, both male and female. It also identifies different patterns of perpetrator identity according to the severity of the incident, and by whether it was sexual or nonsexual. Further analysis based on the precise type of work women do reveals that immediate team context has a significant impact on patterns of perpetrator identity. Nonsexual forms of GBVH were generated primarily through relations of task-based dependency, whereas sexual forms were sustained through interactional practices within teams. By demonstrating that perpetration is shaped less by formal hierarchy than by team-level dynamics, this article challenges conventional accounts of workplace GBVH and extends feminist organizational theory to better account for conditions of informality. These findings challenge conventional narratives around perpetrator identity by demonstrating that the relationship between workplace culture and workplace GBVH is more complex than is generally assumed.