Sexual Harassment

Sexual harassment – the demand that someone respond to or tole-

rate unwanted sexual advances from a person who has power over the

victim – made headlines in 1991 during the Senate hearings on Presi-

dent George Bush’s appointment of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme

Court. In the course of the hearings, Anita Hill, a law professor, accused

Judge Thomas of having sexually harassed her when she worked on his

start. He had persistently asked her for dates, she said, and made of-

fensive sexual comments when she refused. Thomas denied the accusa-

tions and was eventually confirmed as a Supreme Court justice. We will

probably never know for sure who was telling the truth. But what scan-

dalized many women was the fact that the Senate Judiciary Commit-

tee evaluating Judge Thomas’s appointment initially ignored the charge

of sexual harassment. The public learned of Professor Hill’s accusation

only because it was leaked to the press; the all-male Senate committee

apparently saw the issue as insignificant.

Several themes illustrating the key sociological concepts came to-

gether in the Hill–Thomas episode. First of all, the social structure of

the Senate was (and is) extremely unbalanced in gender terms: Of 100

senators in 1991, only two were women. Second, in part because of this

social structure, women lacked the power to insist that issues important

to them be taken seriously. This is part of a broader cultural pattern in

which male harassment of women is not treated as a major problem.

Indeed, women are reluctant to report instances of harassment; existing

patterns of functional integration fail to offer procedures for responding

to women’s complaints. In addition, functional links between school and

workplace, and between one workplace and another, discourage women

from speaking out when to do so would mean losing a valuable work rec-

ommendation. When faced with reports of harassment, it is functional

for men in positions of power to ignore comparatively powerless women.

One result of the Thomas hearings was to make many women resolve to

take political action to make sure that their voices were heard, that more

women were elected to Congress, and that men would take seriously the

hardship that sexual harassment causes women.

Sexual harassment is a particular problem in workplaces and in re-

lationships of unequal power. It takes place because men (harassers are

usually, though not always, men) abuse their power, and because our

culture denies that this is serious—suggesting in effect that “boys will be

boys.” Sexual harassment can be limited to sexual jokes in a classroom

or on the job that make women feel uncomfortable. It is more serious

when a woman’s professor or boss or co-worker makes a sexual advance,

especially when the woman has clearly indicated that such attentions are

unwelcome. It is extremely serious when a woman’s refusal of a sexual

advance results in punitive treatment or denial of a promotion. This is

also illegal, although male-dominated judges and grievance committees

have been slow to enforce the law.

Sexual harassment causes difficulties not just when women who reject

sexual advances are penalized, but whenever women work in an atmo-

sphere where they fear they must either tolerate harassment or lose their

jobs. Harassment illustrates the fears – small and large – that women

in our society are forced to live with because of the unequal power re-

lationship between men and women. The Hill–Thomas case suggests

that women’s fear of speaking out is realistic, given the gender inequality

built into the social structure.

Sexual harassment is not as extreme a crime as rape, but the underly-

ing problems are similar. Both are products of a culture that encourages

male sexual aggressiveness, and both have been dismissed by the “powers

that be” because of the comparative powerlessness of women. It is still dif-

ficult, for example, to get date rape (forced sexual intercourse with a per-

son the victim went out with voluntarily) taken seriously as a crime. Men,

who have the power through the legal system to define what constitutes

rape, typically consider this sort of assault trivial or even blame the victim

for having provoked it. In one famous case of date rape, the boxer Mike

Tyson was convicted of raping a contestant in the Miss Black America

beauty pageant. In an echo of the Hill–Thomas case, thousands of Afri-

can-American church women were startled to hear the head of their reli-

gious denomination say that Tyson should be given a light sentence or set

free – and some other ministers backed him up. As the women noted,

all the ministers were male. Even though women were a majority of the

church members, the men dominated the leadership of the church.

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