sexual harassment
...on the entire discussion is dismissive: For various reasons - the rising divorce rate, the “empty-nest” syndrome, the Women’s Liberation Movement, and others - a growing number of middle-class women moved into the job market, making it more difficult for the poor to find work (p. 271). Trattner glosses over the fact that many, perhaps even the majority, of the unemployed poor in America are women. Nevertheless, other experts acknowledge that the greatly increased number of women of all classes entering the work force over the last few decades have had far more impact than merely taking away jobs from others. The presence of women in fields previously dominated by men has created some uniquely modern problems, as well as bringing to the forefront problems previously left undiscussed. One of the latter such problems is sexual harassment. The term “sexual harassment” was first used in a landmark case in 1977. The District of Columbia Court of Appeals ruled that Patricia Barnes was a victim of sexual discrimination, which is illegal under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Her government job was abolished after she refused to have sex with her supervisor. The next significant term associated with sexual harassment was legally established in the 1986 case of bank teller Mechelle Vinson. The U.S. Supreme Court found that Vinson’s supervisor and company had created and encouraged a “hostile work environment” in which illegal harassment was made acceptable. This upheld an EEOC ruling that such harassment was a violation of regulations providing equal opportunities to all within the workplace. On October 11, 1991, the Senate Judiciary Committee was forced to make public its hearings on the nomination of Judge Clarence to a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. Thomas had been accused by a former employee; Law Professor Anita Hill, of repeated sexual harassment while both worked together at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). The initial hearings, as well as Hill’s accusations, were held behind closed doors, but public outrage brought them out into the open. The hearings placed the term “sexual harassment” into the general vernacular and strongly divided public opinion on the issue. The conflicting testimony of both witnesses highlighted one of the most significant problems in cases of sexual harassment, since the hearings became her word against his. Although courts had heard cases in which employees accused supervisors of making unwanted sexual advances and even of threatening to withhold job benefits unless the employee agreed to provide sexual favors, the concept was new to the general public. The Senate hearings inflamed the public on both sides of the issue. George A. Kendall (1992) referred to her as “the unspeakable Ms. Hill” (p. 77); and his sentiments were shared by many who believed that she was unnecessarily slandering an innocent man. Naomi Munson (1992), writing at about the same time, reported, “Polls showed that most people, black and white, male and female, thought Judge Thomas should be confirmed, even if the charges against him were true” (p.55; both the italics and the interpretation of poll results are Munson’s). Hill was denounced by the Republican senators on the committee, who called her everything from deluded to a liar. She was attacked by the all-male panel who implied that she was indulging in fantasy, acting like a spurned woman, displaying a martyr complex, or was simply insane. Senator Arlen Specter accused her of perjury; and that this had political consequences when outraged feminists actively campaigned against his re-election, largely on the memory of his condescending hostility. In the year following the hearing, four new women were elected to the Senate and 24 were elected to the House of Representatives, largely in response to women’s perceptions that Hill would have been better treated and what have been more likely to be believed had female legislators been included in the process. Unlike some others involved in high-profile sexual harassment suits, both the accuser and the accused were able to weather the event, at least professionally. Thomas was eventually confirmed by the Senate, but by a vote of 52 to 48, the closest ever in recent decades. Conservatives and others who believed that Hill had lied on the stand called for revocation of her tenure; nevertheless, she retained her professorship and became an active speaker against sexual harassment in all settings. In 1987, Cheryl Gomez-Preston won a suit (brought almost three years earlier) against the city police force, where sexual abuse from supervisors and fellow officers eventually made her physically unable to work. She founded the Association for the Sexually Harassed (ASH) as a result of her experience. The January 1991 case in Florida Federal Court which found the open display of nude pictures in the workplace to be a form of sexual harassment was followed closely by the San Francisco case which set the “reasonable woman” standard. Here, the court ruled that sexual harassment could be proven in circumstances in which a reasonable woman would feel threatened. The Civil Rights Act of 1991 permitted litigants to file for punitive damages from companies who employed individuals convicted of sexual harassment. However, the act placed financial caps on the amount that could be awarded, based on the size of the company. The backlog of cases at the EEOC, along with the cost of pursuing a legal claim, have sometimes made it seem as though the problem is being dealt with through more comprehensive legislation and a more informed public. Gretchen Morgenson (1992) claims, Sexual harassment is less prevalent today than it was in 1986. According to the EEOC, federal cases alleging harassment on the job totaled 5,694 in 1990, compared to 6,342 in 1984. Yet today there are 17 percent more women working than there were then (p. 47). However, Catherine Yang (1996, May 13) says, “Sexual harassment charges alone rose by 150% from 1990, to 15,549 last year” (p. 98). Morgenson’s figures may have been accurate at the time, but she was recording a temporary aberration. Richard Posner (1992) notes one effect of the 1991 Act: The principal legal controversy in sexual harassment cases is over the degree to which the employer should be held liable for the unauthorized harassment of one employee by another who is not her supervisor. The current answer is that the employer is liable if it has reason to believe that there is sexual harassment in its work force and does nothing about it; in other words, if it is negligent with respect to the problem (p. 392). Allowing claimants to sue employers risks taking blame away from the harasser himself. In many cases, however, the accused harasser is a supervisor; at the pharmaceutical company, Astra USA, the accused harasser of numerous women is the president and CEO himself, Lars Bildman. Mark Maremont (1996, May 13) writes the following: What is especially disturbing about Astra is the way the alleged harassment emanated from the top - then coursed its way down through the organization. Legions of women who felt embarrassed and angry nonetheless conformed to an unacceptable standard of behavior set by the subsidiary’s very own CEO (p. 88). Since the accuser is often the subordinate or the employee with less job experience, courts may find it harder to believe her story. In earlier years the situation was frequently exacerbated by the likelihood that the case would be tried by a male judge. Posner (1992) writes, “Judges know next to nothing about [sex] beyond their own personal experience, which is limited, perhaps more so than average, because people with irregular sex lives are pretty much… screened out of the judiciary” (p. 1). As more women have become judges and as more cases have come to prominence, women have found it somewhat easier to have their testimony accepted. In addition, more such cases are now tried by juries, which tend to be more sympathetic to the case. The Thomas hearings changed the public’s level of awareness of sexual harassment as an important problem but did little to affect public understanding of the issue. This results in part from the difficulty in defining sexual harassment. Posner (1992) observed, “Whenever there is sexual interest between a superior and subordinate employee, there is a potential for sexual harassment” (p.316). More recently, however, experts have come to agree that sexual harassment has less to do with sex than with power. Elaine Landau (1993) writes, “Sexual harassment is actually not about sex - it’s about power and abuse” (p. 3). Maremont (1996, May 13) observes, “That’s the nature of sexual harassment, which is partly a question of perception: What one woman might believe is harmless fun, another might find grossly offensive” (p. 88). While the corporate world, especially since the Thomas hearings, has struggled with definitions, some of the clearest attempts at providing standards of behavior that avoid such perception have come from education. The American Association of University Professors drew up guidelines as early as 1983 which say in part, “Intimate relationships between professors and students are regarded with suspicion because they pose conflicts with faculty responsibilities and ethics” (quoted in Landau, 1993, P. 54). In 1990, a high school in Massachusetts defined offensive behavior, including “staring or lee...