The Women's Movement Against Sexual Harassment

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

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.

Examines the diverse social movement that created public policy on sexual harassment. Based on interviews and original research, this book shows how the movement against sexual harassment fundamentally changed American life.

Carrie N. Baker is an Assistant Professor in the Program for the Study of Women and Gender at Smith College in Mount Berry, Georgia. She holds a B.A. in Philosophy from Yale University and a J.D. and Ph.D. in Women's Studies from Emory University. Her primary areas of research are women's legal history, gender and public policy, and women's social movements. The Women's Movement against Sexual Harassment (2008) won the National Women's Studies Association Sara A. Whaley Book Prize.