The Sanitized Workplace Revisited

Abstract

Title VII prohibits discrimination based on sex; it says nothing about sexuality. Despite this fact, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and the lower federal courts historically have defined sex harassment, a form of sex discrimination, primarily in terms of unwanted sexual advances and sexual conduct-an approach I call the sexual model. In earlier work (Schultz, 1998), I showed that the sexual model of sex harassment is too narrow, because the focus on sexual conduct has led to a neglect, if not an active disregard, of equally pernicious forms of gender-based harassment and hostility that are not primarily sexual in content or design. In addition, the legal system’s emphasis on unwanted sexual conduct obscures and diverts anti-discrimination efforts from the more fundamental patterns of workplace sex segregation and hierarchy that often underlie and foster sex discrimination and harassment (Schultz, 1998).