For anyone who has ever been the victim of it, sexual harassment is pretty simple to understand. When unwanted sexual contact (whether verbal or physical) occurs in the workplace, it is especially unwelcoming because it threatens a person's ability to earn a living without being subjected to deeply personal invasions.
Sexual harassment can end a career, ruin a family beyond repair and force victims into extensive psychotherapy and
medication. It is entirely unacceptable in a nation whose public policy emphasizes equal employment opportunities for women and men. Sexual harassment in the workplaces compromises the victim's ability to function as an economic agent and so threatens (usually) his/her ability to live as an independent, autonomous member of society. When harassment is widespread in the workplace, a worker has no way to escape from its painful consequences except to drop out of the arena of paid work.
But while these damning consequences of harassment are quite clear to the victim, to someone who has not had the experience of being harassed -- and this may well include a person accused of harassment -- the concept can seem a very slippery one, the line between courtesy and harassment or teasing and harassment or sincerely and respectfully expressed admiration and harassment difficult to see.
Such differences of perspective in many cases arise from the differences in perspective of men and women and the relative positions of power their gender gives them in society at large as well as from the power that each person possesses in that particular circumstance. But such differences may also reflect cultural differences in ideas about what constitutes respectful behavior between the sexes as well as personal differences and preferences (Kalish, 1999, p. A6).
Both governmental bodies and private companies have attempted to create clear definitions of what constitutes sexual harassment (whether between men and women ...