Sexual Harassment in the Workplace Case

In the 1960s the roles of women were very limited in almost every aspect from family life to the workplace. A woman was supposed to follow one path and that was to get married in her early twenties, start a family quickly, and devote her life to homemaking. A woman was legally subject to her husband's "head and master laws" and they had no right to their husband's property or earnings but the husband controlled their wife's property and earnings. Women were limited to certain jobs such as teachers, nurses, and secretaries. Women also had no control of sexual harassment in the workplace. Finally in the 1970s and 1980s Women's Movement, women actually could do something about sexual harassment in their workplace. There has been many changes in women's right from 1960 until present day.

For example take in this scenario. Its 1968 and Molly just graduated from college and has begun her first job using her newly obtained degree. Molly has a lot of money to pay back in student loans from college. Molly has a three year old as well as a brand new six month old baby. Molly is a single mom who lives over three hundred miles from her closest family members. Once Molly's divorce from her husband was finalized, Molly continued to live in the city that her and her husband had moved to so he could find work and so she could finish her schooling. Since the first day of her new job a man that shares the next office has shown an unusual amount of interest in Molly. This guy has made several suggestive comments in front of other co-workers following the comments with the words "just kidding". When Molly asked this guy to stop he just laughed and told her it was fun.

In the 1960s women were working on getting together and dismantling workplace inequality. This included trying to put a stop to women getting denied for the opportunity of getting better jobs and to put a stop to women not getting paid as much as the men did. In 1964 Representative Howard Smith of Virginia proposed to add a prohibition on gender discrimination into the Civil Rights Act that was under consideration. Even though the law passed with the amendment intact this did not enforce the law's protection of women workers. In our scenario Molly would be lucky to even have her job. Most women had low paying jobs such as clerical or administrative work. Molly would also not have any protection what so ever. The man who shares the next office would have been able to sexually harass Molly as much as he wanted and got away with it because it was not a crime back then. There really isn't much Molly could do to stop her unwanted attention. Molly could tell her boss about the guy that is sexually harassing her. I do