Sexual harassment in the workplace

Sexual harassment in the workplace has always been a problem and has always been of great importance, but the public's awareness of the issue has not always been high. This changed radically with the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings in 1991 and with the accusations of sexual harassment leveled against him by Anita Hill. This event more than any other catapulted sexual harassment to a high position in the public consciousness and made it clear that such activities were degrading to women, harmful to the work environment, and detrimental to public policy. The fact that this problem had been underground for so long also showed that more knowledge of the subject was needed and perhaps that legislation was required to assure a harassment-free workplace in the future. However, precisely what defines sexual harassment has had to be determined by legislation and court decisions and so has shifted over the past several years. It has even expanded to cross gender lines and to see harassment not in direct action but in a hostile environment.

Woerner and Oswald examine the court response to the issue. They begin with the fact that sexual harassment is difficult to define. It generally means "unwanted sexually oriented behavior by someone in the workplace." It is legally defined as a form of discrimination.

The topic has evolved in the lower courts based on Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits sexual discrimination in the

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ering direction over time. The authors imply that changes in the public mind, based on surveys, influenced the courts. They do not say this, but they present surveys in the midst of their discussion and then show how the courts changed direction after that. It is not at all clear that there is a cause-and-effect relationship at work, however. The authors do not discuss their views of how the courts operate or what makes them change as they apparently did on this issue, but they imply that public consciousness of the issue and public disapproval has an effect without offering any support for this view. The overall analysis, though, gives a good sense of the state of the law regarding this issue at the time the article was written and shows how the law has been shaped and guided by court decisions and legislation alike. The article hints at the dynamic that exist between legislation on the one hand and court decisions on the other when Woerner and Oswald note that there was a lack of legislative history on this issue. The authors may be assuming that their readership knows what this means--that the courts lack the necessary guidance based on a legislative history to know the intent of Congress and thus to decide the issue in

Category: Government - S