The Women's Movement against Sexual Harassment

Sex, power, and politics converge in the story of a diverse social movement against sexual harassment.

Carrie N. Baker (Author)

9780521879354, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 3 December 2007

288 pages
23.4 x 15.6 x 2.1 cm, 0.62 kg

'Baker's book adds important concrete detail and facts to the narrative of sexual harassment. Moving away from the theoretical legal abstraction, she engages in a necessary descriptive and explanatory account of how the change in law really happened. … The book provides a fresh perspective on the issue of sexual harassment, adding the historical background and foundation necessary to understand the contours of the existing law, and the pre-existing concerns that drove the movement for a law responsive to the needs of women.' Political Studies Review

This book recounts the story of how a diverse social movement placed sexual harassment on the public agenda in the 1970s and 1980s. The collaboration of women from varying racial, economic, and geographic backgrounds strengthened the movement by representing the experiences and perspectives of a broad range of women, and incorporating their resources and strategies for social change. Black women; middle-class feminists; women breaking into construction, coal mining, and other non-traditional occupations; and women in pink-collar and working-class white-collar jobs all helped to convince governments to adopt public policies against sexual harassment in the United States. Based on interviews and original research, this book shows how the movement against sexual harassment fundamentally changed American life in ways that continue to advance women's opportunities today.

Introduction: enter at your own risk
Part I. Raising the Issue of Sexual Harassment: 1. Articulating the wrong: resistance to sexual harassment in the early 1970s
2. Speaking out: collective action against sexual harassment in the mid-1970s
3. A winning strategy: early legal victories against sexual harassment
Part II. Growth of a Movement against Sexual Harassment: 4. Blue-collar workers and the hostile environment of sexual harassment
5. Expansion of the movement in the late 1970s: activism, theory, and the media
Part III. The Movement's Influence on Public Policy: 6. Government policy develops
7. Fighting the backlash: feminist activism in the 1980s
8. Legal victory: the Supreme Court and beyond
Conclusion: entering the mainstream.

Subject Areas: Harassment law [LNFJ1], International human rights law [LBBR], Politics & government [JP], Gender studies: women [JFSJ1], Feminism & feminist theory [JFFK]