Sexual harassment is a fact of life in the American workplace; 21 percent of women polled by NEWSWEEK said they had been harassed at work and 42 percent said they knew someone who had been harassed. Other surveys indicate that more than half of working women have faced the problem at some point in their careers. The situation tends to be worst in male-dominated workplaces; in a 1990 Defense Department study, 64 percent of military women said they had endured such abuse. Although the severity may vary–from a pattern of obscene joking to outright assault-the emotional damage is often profound and long-lasting. Men “don’t understand that caged feeling,” says University of Texas sociologist Susan Marshall. “But women know what sexual harassment is. It’s when your neck hairs stand up, when you feel like you’re being stalked.”
Defining sexual harassment is one of the law’s newest frontiers. While some of the boundaries have been set by recent decisions, there is still considerable debate over just what constitutes actionable behavior. Most people understand that when a supervisor demands that a woman sleep with him in order to keep her job, he’s stepped over the legal line. But what about aggressive flirting.? Or off-color conversation? Often, it’s a matter of perception. Some women may find such activities offensive; others may just shrug. And men and women may see things very differently. University of Arizona professor Barbara Gutek surveyed 1,200 men and women for a study on harassment. She asked her subjects whether they considered a sexual proposition flattering. About 67 percent of the men said they would, while only 17 percent of the women agreed. In contrast, 63 percent of women would be insulted by a proposition, compared with 15 percent of men,
Even when their cases seem clear-cut, women say they feel ashamed-as though they were to blame for what happened to them. “Do we have to talk about the sex?” asks Mitzie Buckelew, as her eyes redden and tears begin to fall. She would like to forget that night with her boss in a suburban Atlanta hotel five years ago. Buckelew has claimed in state and federal lawsuits that Donald Farrar, the DeKalb County assistant police chief threatened to fire her from her secretarial job if she did not have sex with him. He calls her charges “ludicrous.” Buckelew claims that even after she gave in, hoping that would end the abuse, he persisted. “He would sneak up behind me and grab my breasts and my rear end right in the office,” she says. “He would feel up and down my legs.” Buckelew also claims Farrar gave her herpes; he has refused to give her lawyers his medical records.
Since Buckelew filed a harassment complaint in 1989, her car has been vandalized. Obscene phone calls wake her up in the middle of the night. She’s still waiting for a resolution of the state and federal suits she has filed. In the meantime, she’s been reassigned: to the county dog pound. Shortly after Buckelew sued, Farrar resigned with a full pension. “You start questioning yourself,” Buckelew says. “Maybe I did ask for it. I know I didn’t use good judgment … I just didn’t know what to do.”
Until just a few years ago, women had no recourse when confronted with unwanted advances or offensive comments by a boss or coworker. In offices where they were the minority, women thought they had to go along to get along. Palma Formica, a family practitioner in New Jersey, recalls that when she was a medical student more than 30 years ago, it was “standard procedure” for professors to make “male-female jokes, usually genital oriented, with the woman bearing the brunt.” Women never objected. “What are you going to do, get up and walk out of class? You want to be a doctor? You want to be in a man’s field? Then you swallow hard and pretend you don’t hear.”
But in the past decade, as women have grown to represent nearly half the work force, the courts have begun to strike down what was once “standard procedure.” In 1980, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (the federal agency that investigates bias in the workplace) said that making sexual activity a condition of employment or promotion was a violation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Also forbidden: the creation of “an intimidating, hostile or offensive working environment.”
The EEOC rules had little effect on most women’s lives until 1986, when the Supreme Court agreed that sexual harassment did indeed violate civil rights. In the landmark case of Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson, Washington, D.C., bank employee Mechelle Vinson claimed that her supervisor fondled her in front of other employees, followed her into the ladies’ room, exposed himself and, on several occasions, raped her. The supervisor and the bank denied her claims, but the court sided with Vinson.
Two other major federal court decisions in January of this year refined the legal definition. In a Florida case involving a female shipyard worker, the court ruled that nude pinups in the workplace constitute illegal harassment. A week later a three-judge panel in San Francisco stated that in cases where men and women might see a pattern of behavior differently, the deciding factor should be whether a “reasonable woman” might feel threatened. In that case, a female IRS worker turned down a request for a date by a co-worker. He responded by writing unwelcome love letters to her. “Men, who are rarely victims of sexual assault, may view sexual conduct in a vacuum without a full appreciation of the underlying threat of violence that a woman may perceive,” wrote Judge Robert R. Beezer.
States have also been trying to set their own standards. Kent Sezer, general counsel for the Illinois Human Rights Commission, describes one case in that state in which a judge developed what Sezer calls the “stub-your-toe test.” An employer had been using profane language; a female employee claimed he had created a hostile environment. The employer said the words were simply expletives and protected as free speech. The judge disagreed. He said that the expletives should be put to a simple test. If the employer had awakened at night and, as he got out of bed, stubbed his toe, would he have shouted, “Oh, cunt!”? The judge didn’t think so, and ruled against the employer.
These decisions and others have spurred hundreds of public and private employers to write sexual-harassment policies telling workers exactly how to behave. “Nowadays, it’s basically a legal requirement that you have an anti-harassment policy,” says Joan Engstrom, equal-employment-opportunity director for General Mills (109,000 employees), based in Minneapolis. Courts may hold employers liable for maintaining a harassment-free environment; the bill for failure can be steep. Although many cases are settled out of court and then sealed, there have been several multimillion-dollar awards in recent years. Avoiding huge payments isn’t the only incentive for companies (many awards are, in fact, under $10,000). The publicity surrounding a harassment charge can damage a company’s standing with the public.
But corporate policies are only as good as the supervisors who enforce them. Freada Klein, who heads a Cambridge, Mass., consulting firm that advises companies on harassment, says that one third of harassers are the victims’ immediate supervisors. Another third, she says, are even higher up on the corporate ladder but do not directly supervise their victims. The rest are the victims’ peers. Like many companies with well-respected records in this area, General Mills runs regular training sessions for employees, with videos explaining sexual harassment. Engstrom says General Mills tries to give its employees a simple explanation of its policy: “Employees are to be treated with dignity and respect. Unbusinesslike conduct that could be considered offensive or intimidating will not be tolerated.”
Other companies have more bureaucratic systems in place. At AT&T, whose national work force is 47 percent female, managers must attend an annual training session that includes a discussion of sexual harassment. Nonmanagers learn about the company policy through a book that explains the company’s investigation process. Employees also get a copy of the company’s code of conduct and many see training tapes on sexual harassment. Company spokesman Burke Stinson says 95 percent of complaints filed with AT&T’s personnel office “turn out to be founded.” AT&T officials won’t give out exact figures, but they say that some employees have been fired and others transferred or sent to counseling.
Even if they work for a company with a well-established harassment policy, many women still keep their mouths shut. They don’t want to be seen as troublemakers–and they worry about the long-term consequences of complaining. “The individual who makes the complaint is immediately subjected to scrutiny, criticism and blame,” says Carolyn Chalmers, a Minneapolis lawyer who handles harassment cases. “You’re immediately put on the defensive to justify your existence and your credibility.” It’s a rather simple risk-and-reward equation that for many women adds up to one big zero. The number of cases of sexual harassment reported to the EEOC and local bias agencies has increased somewhat in the past few years, from 4,380 in 1984 to 5,694 last year. Yet those numbers represent just a tiny fraction of actual incidents, lawyers say. According to Joan Huwiler of the NOW Legal Defense Fund, only about 6 percent of victims file formal complaints to the EEOC, other anti-bias agencies or their employers.
Frances Conley, a neurosurgeon at Stanford Medical School, endured nearly 25 years of insults before she finally quit her job this spring. Her charges of harassment drew national headlines and letters of support from around the country. The university responded by setting up a committee to investigate the charges. Now Conley’s back at her job, hoping that things will get better. But the four months since her resignation “have been the worst four months in my life,” Conley says. “I hate conflict. I hate people disapproving of me. It’s very difficult to go around with people not liking you.”
Women who take their accusations to court face even more formidable obstacles than public disapproval. The legal process is long and cumbersome-it can be years from first complaint to final verdict-and in the interim, the woman is in a legal, professional and often financial limbo. “A woman will complain and then becomes a pariah,” says Judith Vladeck, a New York lawyer who has argued anti-bias cases for 20 years. “If the male is in any way sanctioned, his male cohorts come to his defense, and the woman becomes the wrongdoer, and she’s frozen out.”
Lawyers, too, say the cases are draining. Women are not entitled to collect damages under the Civil Rights Act–just back pay. Often, that’s not enough for a lawyer to spend years in litigation. There are larger judgments in civil suits, but the legal proceedings can be time-consuming. Patricia J. Barry, the Los Angeles lawyer who argued the precedent-setting Vinson case before the Supreme Court in 1986, filed for bankruptcy in 1988 and announced she was giving up civil-rights work. Now she’s arguing divorce and child-custody cases. “Most judges perceive themselves as identifying with the man no matter how horrible he is,” Barry says. “It becomes the woman versus the man.”
Even some of those who win harassment cases say they feel they lost. As a public-information officer for the Illinois Department of Corrections, Lynda Savage earned glowing evaluations and two salary increases in the early 1980s. But, according to court records, her supervisor, Nicholas Howell, commonly used obscenities when referring to women, brought in suggestive lingerie catalogs and asked Savage to pick out something for his wife and even told her she should buy a vibrator for her 1-year-old daughter. Howell denies directing obscene comments to Savage. She complained to three different administrators, but nothing happened. For months, she says, Howell’s behavior got worse. She was fired before her second child was born.
Nearly five years later, a state court ruled in her favor and awarded her $137,000, along with an offer of reinstatement to her job. Savage did go back, but says her coworkers shunned her so she quit. She has not received another job offer. “In a lot of ways, I have tested my limits so I know where I’m strong and where I’m not,” she says. “Some good has come out of it. But was it worth it?” She thinks about the years of strain on her children and her husband, the lost work opportunities. And she concludes: “No.”
Sexual-harassment cases have been particularly controversial on college campuses. A 1986 survey by the Association of American Colleges reported that 32 percent of tenured faculty women at Harvard and 49 percent of untenured women had reported some form of sexual harassment. Consultant Freada Klein says that 40 percent of undergraduate women and 28 percent of female graduate students say they’ve been harassed. In 1989, the Minnesota Legislature passed a law requiring all educational institutions in the state to develop sexual-harassment policies. “Some universities have gone so far as to indicate that for a faculty member to date a student is a prima facie case of sexual harassment,” says Margaret Neale, a professor at Northwestern’s Kellogg Graduate School of Management. “There is no way to separate the power of the faculty member from the rank of the student.”
Male-dominated campuses, like male-dominated professions, have the most entrenched problems. In early September a sophomore at Texas A&M University was attacked by three male cadets when she decided to try out for an elite ceremonial unit within the A&M Corps of Cadets. Only three of the unit’s 50 members were female. One of the men held her while two others struck her in the breasts and back. One of the attackers threatened her with a knife, dragging the handle against her flesh and warning that he would use the blade on her if she didn’t withdraw her application. The university leveled disciplinary charges against 20 cadets, but officials soon found out this was not an isolated incident.
Within days A&M president William Mobley met with four women cadets who detailed a pattern of harassment. One woman told Mobley that she had been raped by a senior while his roommate watched. The women got Mobley’s attention. He appointed a committee to investigate and named a woman psychologist with no university affiliation to cochair it. “I don’t want to destroy the university,” says one of the women students who met with Mobley. “But men hide behind the mask of harassment and say it’s tradition. That needs to stop.”
Some experts believe that “hostile environments” extend far beyond the campus and the workplace. Earlier this year, 13 female tenants won an $800,000 settlement against their San Francisco landlord who continued to employ an apartment manager even after they repeatedly notified the landlord that the manager was harassing the women. According to court records, the manager touched one woman’s vaginal area and grabbed her breast. He told another woman he would evict her if she had an overnight visitor. He told women who were behind on their rent they would have to pay immediately or model lingerie for him. The women, all single mothers, were usually financially or emotionally vulnerable to his manipulations.
While that situation seems extreme, some feminist legal scholars argue that harassment is part of everyday life for most women and should be regulated. Indiana University professor Carol Brooks Gardner, author of a forthcoming book called “Passing By,” argues that it should be considered illegal harassment when a man makes an obscene comment to a woman in the street. Of course, not all street comments are threatening. A simple wolf whistle probably wouldn’t traumatize most women. “But,” says Gardner, “it’s not OK for a man to touch me in any way whatsoever or to mutter salacious comments in my ear, or to yell out vulgar verbal evaluations. " Any regulations against this type of harassment would be extremely difficult to enforce. For example, who would detain the assailant? Women in such a situation usually just want to get away as quickly as possible.
Has someone you know personally been a victim of sexual harassment at work or school, on the street, in a private club you belong to, or in a store or commercial place?
WOMEN MEN Yes 42% 57% No 55% 62%
From the Newsweek Poll of Oct. 10-11
Have you, or has someone you know personally, ever filed a formal complaint of sexual harassment? WOMEN MEN Yes 13% 11% No 87% 89%
From the NEWSWEEK Poll Of Oct. 10-11
Do you think it should be considered sexual harassment–or not–when a man: (percent saying yes)
Women Men Repeatedly asks a woman who works for him to have sex 96% 94% Repeatedly asks a woman who works for him to have a date 47% 48% Makes sexual remarks or jokes to a woman who works for him 75% 64% Makes sexual remarks or noises at women on the street 72% 75%
From the NEWSWEEK Poll of Oct. 10-11
Disturbing Pattern
Sexual Harassment Complaints Filed With the EEOC
1981 3,661 1990 5,694
Percent of Women Experiencing:
Sexual remarks 35% Suggestive looks 28% Deliberate touching 26% Pressure for dates 15% Letters and calls 2% Pressure for sexual favors 9% Actual or attempted rape assault .8%
SOURCES: EEOC; MERIT SYSTEMS PROTECTION BOARD/FEDERAL EMPLOYEES, 1987 SURVEY
According to one study, sexual harassment costs a typical Fortune 500 company nearly $7 million a year. Here’s how employers combat it with their own policy statements:
“No supervisor shall threaten or insinuate that an employee’s submission to or rejection of sexual advances will (influence] wages, advancement…”
“[Managers should] encourage the complainant, where appropriate, to request the harassing employee to stop the offensive behavior.”
“[A] supervisor who knows… an employee was being sexually harassed [faces] disciplinary action.”
“Establish quality control mechanisms (e.g., unit climate assessments) to ensure that sexual harassment training is working.. .”
If someone says stop it, it’s harassment,” says Barbara Otto of 9to5, a working woman’s advocacy group. Below are some examples of what is tolerable–and what is not:
“Hey, great legs.”
“You look very nice today.”
Pornography on bulletin boards or lockers, especially with comments about fellow employees.
Staring up and down someone’s body; a pat on the behind.
Making eye contact while speaking; a friendly pat on the shoulder.
Repeatedly pressuring someone who refuses for dates.
OK:
Asking a colleague with whom you’re on good terms to a company-sponsored social event.
PHOTOS:Scenes from a mashing: Video about sexual harassment on the job/AMERICAN MEDIA PHOTOS
JERRY ADLER The standard for sexual harassment is what a reasonable woman would find offensive, but not all women, or men, are reasonable. Like other allegations that may come down to one person’s word against another’s, sexual-harassment charges are sometimes brought frivolously or maliciously, motivated by revenge, fantasy or jealousy. One who claims to have been a victim of such a charge is Chris Downs, a professor of psychology at the Clear Lake branch of the University of Houston. Downs, who is gay, says the troubles began in the spring of 1989, when a student came to see him in his office and, in a state of high emotion, “blurted out that he was in love with me and that he wanted a relationship with me.” Downs says he turned this advance down and soon began receiving sexually explicit love letters from the student. According to his attorney, Downs read one of the letters as a threat that the student could ruin the professor’s career. Downs says he saw a ,‘very strong revenge motive" on the student’s part-he had been in Downs’s class the previous semester, and Downs had flunked him.
Downs took sensible actions. He brought the letters to the dean’s office, where officials recommended he let the matter drop. But when the letters continued, Downs brought formal harassment complaints to the university and the campus police. Around the same time, the student also filed a charge of sexual harassment against Downs. The student’s version, according to his lawyer, was that he approached Downs seeking counseling for “sexual confusion,” and the professor offered to have sex with him as part of his treatment.
Downs denies he ever sought or had sex with the student, and two university investigations over the following year concluded that no sexual harassment occurred. But the first panel found that professional misconduct did occur, which possibly influenced University president Thomas M. Stauffer’s recommendation that Downs be dismissed. Downs says he was the victim of “a lynch mob.” A lawyer for the university insists that “the process was not defective.”
Luckily for Downs, he also had some allies among his colleagues and in the powerful teachers’ union, the Texas Faculty Association, which was concerned by an “alarming increase” in sexual-harassment charges by students around the state. A campaign to reinstate him in his job succeeded last January. Downs, though, is still bitter toward what he calls “the PC [politically correct] movement on campus,” which reflexively sided with the student. “I’ve learned a great deal about who really are friends and who aren’t,” he now says. “It was very clear that I was being tried as a criminal and I was guilty unless I could somehow prove my innocence.” He’s learned something else as well: he now records all his conversations and lectures, and he no longer sees students in his office-or anywhere else-without another person present.
