Applications Of Feminist Legal Theory

B. Sexual Harassment

B. Sexual Harassment Introduction Despite the increase in the proportion of women in the labor force, women workers continue to face significant problems in the workplace. One gender-specific problem is sexual harassment.! Studies suggest that between 40 percent to 80 percent of working women have experienced some form of sexual harassment.2 Many feminists currently regard sexual harassment as a form of violence similar to rape and battering.3 Sexual harassment in employment poses a serious barrier to women's equality. As writer Lin Farley notes: Olob segregation by sex is to a large degree sustained by male sexual harassment . This abuse is already rolling back the momentum of affirmative action and it will continue to coerce women by means of severe economic and emotional abuse into over-erowded, sexually-segregated job categories.... At the same time, the abuse also impacts destructively [by] disrupting female job attachment , promoting female unemployment and inhibiting female solidarity.4 Law professor Nadine Taub concurs that sexual harassment is a barrier to equal opportunity , although she describes the problem somewhat differentlv: Unreciprocated sexual advances do not represent harmless expressions of interpersonal attraction. Rather, like rape, they are exercises in male power and reminders of women's inferior status and traditional role as sexual object. As such, they are an important cause of absenteeism and job turnover; they also make it harder for women to perform their jobs wel1.5 Catharine MacKinnon, probably the most famous scholar on the subject. believes that sexual harassment impedes equality in two wavs: "by using [woman's] employment poCopyrighted Material 725 726 I SEXUAL HARASSMENT sition to coerce her sexually, while using her sexual position to coerce her economically ."6 Every incident of sexual harassment reproduces, MacKinnon writes, "the inequitable social structure of male supremacy and female subordination which [antidiscrimination legislation] seeks to eliminate."7 Sexual harassment is related to women's position in the workplace, although the nature ofthat link is subject to speculation. While some writers concur with Farley (above) that sexual harassment is a causal factor of sex segregation in employment,S other writers suggest that, perhaps, sexual harassment is the result of occupational segregation. For example, Goodman writes that sexual harassment is a consequence ofwomen's subordinate place in the labor market.9 She explains that, because of the sexual stratification of the workplace, many women workers are subordinate to male superiors. Women's low status, she suggests, makes them especially vulnerable to harassment.lO Catharine MacKinnon takes a more interactive view. MacKinnon argues that sexual harassment is both cause and consequence ofwomen's segregation in the labor force. [T] he sexual harassment of women can occur largely because women occupy inferiorjob positions and job roles; at the same time, sexual harassment works to keep women in such positions. Sexual harassment then, uses and helps create women's structurally inferior status.!l Another subject of speculation concerns the extent to which sexual harassment in sex-segregatedjobs differs from that in nontraditionaljobs. Sexual harassment may be more prevalent in the latter.12 Moreover, the function of sexual harassment may differ . One commentator suggests: "The function ofsexual harassment in nontraditional jobs is to keep women out; its function in the traditional female job section is to keep women down."13 Although evidence reveals that sexual harassment of women workers is longstanding ,14 the practice first garnered public attention in 1975.15 Prior to that time, no term existed to describe the phenomenon.16 In that year, two feminist activists at Cornell University's Human Mfairs Program received a request for assistance from administrative assistant Carmita Wood, who was employed in a university laboratoryP Unable to endure sexual harassment by her supervisor, Wood resigned. Mter the denial ofher application for unemployment insurance, she requested assistance from the Human Mfairs Program. The feminist investigators sent requests for case studies to three hundred women's organizations and organized a conference in Ithaca. Later, the activists, with Wood and a university professor, formed Working Women United. Although the organization originally focused on unionizing women, it subsequently altered its focus to sexual harassment.1S The women's movement was slow to recognize sexual harassment as a feminist issue. Scholars suggests several reasons: (1) women (especially the successful and highly skilled) deny sexual harassment, in part because ofbeing threatened by beingjudged as sexual objects; (2) some victims (especially middle class women) resolve the harassment by quitting; and (3) women perceive harassment as personal, feeling guilty that they may have provoked it.19 Backhouse...