Sexual Harassment

Abstract

Abstract Sexual harassment is discriminatory and harassing conduct that involves sexual, heterosexist, or sexist behavior and violates the rights ( see Civil Rights) of individuals not to be harassed in employment ( see Employers And Employees) or education. Sexual harassment was invented as a concept in US law by Catharine MacKinnon in her 1979 work Sexual Harassment of Working Women , in which she argued that it is a form of prohibited sex discrimination under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. She identified two types of such harassment: quid pro quo, “in which sexual compliance is exchanged, or proposed to be exchanged, for an employment opportunity,” and what has become known as “hostile environment sexual harassment,” where sexual harassment is a pervasive condition of the work environment (MacKinnon 1979: 32). The two types introduce different philosophical complications about what is wrong about the behavior. Quid pro quo raises the issue of how an offer can be coercive ( see Coercive Wage Offers); hostile environment problematizes the harms ( see Harm) of and criteria for judging sexual harassment. Both types are also recognized in educational environments as rights violations. Claims of sexual harassment have broadened beyond MacKinnon's original conception to include harassment of homosexuals, transgender persons, and other gender norm violators, and sexual harassment of men by other men. The analysis of the wrongness of sexual harassment has been reconceived to fit these various forms. While objections to sexual harassment as a unified conception of harm have been made, recognition of the many types of harms that go under the name sexual harassment represents significant moral progress.