What Constitutes Sexual Harrasament in the Workplace?

WHAT CONSTITUTES SEXUAL HARASSMENT

IN THE WORKPLACE

The moral issue of sexual harassment has gone unnoticed until recent years. Many women, as well as men, have been violated by their coworkers as well as peers and it has continued to go on without notice. Within the past few decades, there have been very few documented court cases involving sexual harassment. The majority of women were not aware that they were able to file a lawsuit against the harasser. But that soon ended with the legislation of laws such as the Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the designing of certain groups such as the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. These legislations and groups defined what sexual harassment actually is. But even after these organizations were set up, sexual harassment was not brought to the forefront in American culture until a court case was put into the American spotlight. This particular case was between a woman by the name of Anita Hill and a soon to be Supreme Court Judge Clarence Thomas. Right before Clarence Thomas was to be appointed to the Supreme Court, a former employee of Mr. Thomas, Anita Hill, said that he wrongfully sexually harassed her. She said that he made sexually harassing statements towards her and persisted on talking about pornographic films with her. She said that almost everyday Mr. Thomas tried to talk with her about porno movies and he tried to get her to say dirty words. Anita Hill took Thomas to court with the mindset that she was going to rid him of his nomination and bring this type of case to justice. But the court overruled what Anita Hill was trying get across by saying that he was just trying to fulfill his sexual urges.

The outcome of this case was not the most significant part. The most significant part of the Anita Hill v Clarence Thomas case was that it brought to the vanguard a notion that women did not have to hide what was actually going on in the workplace. Women could actually speak out about how they were being treated in the workplace. But there is a minor problem concerning the sexual harassment topic, the distinction between friendly conversation and harassment. Where do you draw the line between sexual harassment and friendly talk between the sexes? The distinction is extremely hard to determine. Even with the boundaries of sexual harassment being a little hazy, statistics show that about ninety percent of women will, in one way or another, experience sexual harassment in their lifetime. That leaves only a small amount of women to be left unharmed by the domination of sexuality in American society. But how can you really tell if someone steps over the line? I believe it depends on the woman and whether it offends her or if she just shrugs off the comments. If just a few comments were made about a particular out fit that she was wearing was made, I do not think the woman should go running to her lawyer to win some money in a court case. On the other hand, I do think it is a good idea to have these types of laws that prohibit co-workers from harassing one another and causing one to feel uncomfortable.

The term "sexual harassment" was not made up by some lawyer, or anyone in the legal professional field for that matter. A few feminists who were fed up with the way they were being handled at work coined the term. A 29-year-old feminist by the name of Lin Farley was teaching an experimental course on women and work at Cornell University in 1974. The female students in her class talked about the disturbing behavior they were involved in at their summer jobs, the men at their jobs had forced them to quit because of their unwanted sexual advances. At the same time, Carmita Wood, an administrative assistant, walked out of the office of a Cornell physicist after becoming sick from the stress of trying to ward off the physicist's sexual advances. Ms. Wood wanted badly to file a lawsuit against the physicist. Farley and two Cornell colleagues found a lawyer for Wood and they brainstormed to invent their newly identified issue: "sexual harassment." And so the term "sexual harassment" was born.

In 1964, a very important legislation regarding sexual harassment in the workplace was made. It is based on the notion that employees should not be submitted to any actions that affect their personal characteristics that have nothing to do with their abilities or job performance. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 states a law that prohibits just that. It states, "It shall be an unlawful employment practice for an employer: (1) to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise to discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions or privileges of employment because of such individual's race, color, religion, sex, or national origin or (2) to limit, segregate, or classify his employees or applicants for employment in any way which would deprive or tend to deprive any individual of employment opportunities or otherwise adversely affect his status as an employee, because of such individual's race, color, religion, sex, or national origin" (Wagner 17).

Although harassment regarding sex is prohibited under this law, it took the courts a while to actually take this concept seriously. Judges worried that these types of cases would upset the natural order of the workplace. They thought that if they ruled in favor of the these sexual harassment allegations even the slightest form of flirtations would be blown up into huge lawsuits causing thousands and thousands of dollars of the people.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission came up with its famous guidelines on sexual harassment in 1980. These guidelines state, "Unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature constitute sexual harassment when (1) submission of such conduct is made either explicitly or implicitly a term or condition of an individual's employment, (2) submission to or rejection of such conduct by an individual is used as the basis for employment decisions affecting such individual, or (3) such conduct has the purpose or effect of unreasonably interfering with an individual's work performance or creating an intimidating, hostile, or offensive work environment" (Wagner 18). This basically means that an employer cannot put an employee in a position where their status as an employee is in jeopardy if they do not comply with sexual favors that are insisted upon them. In order to be considered sexual harassment it has to be unwelcome and of a sexual nature. The sexual conduct is considered unwelcome when one has not done anything to bring it upon them. What the women