Ellen Bravo

Ellen Bravo is a published author and executive director of 9 to 5, National Association of Working Women based in Milwaukee. She has dedicated much of her adult life to eliminating sexual harassment on the job, and toward helping define the term "sexual harassment" itself. Bravo is recognized as a leader among working women, but little research has been conducted into her leadership style. This research examines her life and her leadership, and evaluates how others can learn from Bravo's example in this field.

Born in 1944, Bravo is one of three children raised in the midwest by parents who initially maintained a traditional oneincome, one full-time homemaker partnership in their marriage. As the children grew older, Bravo's mother returned to work in order to save money for the children's college education (college was an expectation for all three children). When Bravo's father was unable to work for an extended period after being injured in an accident, Bravo learned that her mother's wages were significantly lower than her father's, ostensibly because her mother was a woman. This close-to-home encounter with pay inequity made a strong and lasting impression on Bravo, and influenced her later activities ("Ellen Bravo" 39).

Bravo received a bachelor of arts degree from Cornell (where she studied Greet and Latin literature) and later earned a master's degree. Her studies took her to Cambridge University as a Fulbright scholar,

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most men do not sexually harass their female counterparts. Indeed, Bravo's position is that sexual harassment is concerned with power, not with romantic attraction, and likens the behavior associated with sexual harassment to assault and rape. She also notes that many victims of sexual harassment tend to blame themselves (similar to victims of assault and rape), which has made helping eliminate sexual harassment difficult in the past (Bravo & Cassedy 22). In 1993, Bravo was elected executive director of 9to5, and she served on the 12-member Federal Commission on Leave, a committee established by President Clinton which evaluated the effectiveness of the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA). Bravo is a staunch supporter of the FMLA, which allows workers to take up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave to care for newborn children, ill family members, or for personal illness. Her experiences on the committee led to her second book, the Job/Family Challenge: Not for Women Only, published in 1995. In this book, Bravo emphasizes that family leave and familyfriendly workplaces are not merely "women's" issues; instead, she notes that these issues affect all workers and employers. Using anecdotal information gleaned from her work on the Fe

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