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Sexual Harassment Still Happens. So What?

This article is more than 10 years old.

Today’s ABC News/Washington Post poll declares that one in four American women has been sexually harassed on the job.

Tell us something we don’t know.

What’s news isn’t so much that sexual harassment still happens, but that in 20 years, we haven’t come any closer to fixing it and have actually been downgrading it as a serious workplace challenge. Only 64% of Americans see harassment as a serious on-the-job problem, down from a high of 88% in 1992. And while the percentage of women who have reported harassment to their bosses or the HR dept has increased from 33% in 1994 to 41% today, the number of men who admit they have ever done anything (even inadvertently) that could be taken as harassment toward a colleague has dropped from 25% to 10% over the same period.

As a political or labor issue, sexual harassment just isn’t sexy (campaign season aside). Increasingly, it’s seen not as a manifestation of gender inequality and an impediment to the ability of women to command respect in the workplace and more like the disgruntled kvetching of humourless prudes. And you know who’s only too willing to point that finger and paint in pejoratives? Other women. Don’t be a buzzkill, don’t play the heavy, don’t do anything to ruin our in with the cool kids (aka the boys) seems to be the message inherent in the advice from some quarters.

Take, for example, Katie Roiphe’s recent New York Times op-ed. Roiphe argues that our definition of sexual harassment is too broad and hewing to such a “puritanical” mentality makes for a dull and colorless workplace. And besides,

“… the majority of women in the workplace are not tender creatures and are largely adept at dealing with all varieties of uncomfortable or hostile situations. Show me a smart, competent young professional woman who is utterly derailed by a verbal unwanted sexual advance or an inappropriate comment about her appearance, and I will show you a rare spotted owl.”

I could also handle coming down with shingles. Doesn’t mean I’m hankering for that to happen.

And if you don’t buy into the only Debbie Downers object to fun and games between grown-ups argument, there's always Think of your career! hand-wringing. One of the most popular posts on Gen Y career advice guru Penelope Trunk’s blog is entitled Don’t Report Sexual Harassment (in most cases), which, while not outright victim-blaming, warns the woman who has experienced harassment that it’s her career that will hit the skids should she choose to kick up a fuss about the issue or attempt to pursue a complaint through official channels. The post offers up such pie-in-the-sky counsel as:

"If your harasser is your boss, ask for help to switch departments, and ask to go to a better department with a top manager. It's in your harasser's interest to help you. Or, if a co-worker is harassing you, make sure the co-worker appreciates that you handled things yourself. You save the co-worker a lot of problems by not reporting him.These are ways to decrease the chances of retribution while squelching the harassing behavior."

And women have internalized these messages. Make no mistake about it. Smart girls can handle their own problems. Fun girls know how to take a joke. Complaining gets you branded a troublemaker. As Soraya Chemaly so aptly puts it in her takedown of Roiphe’s piece over at The Good Men Project:

“…too many women don’t say anything, drop their eyes and quietly go away. Because, when they do say something they know they will face ridicule, detailed scrutiny and real economic consequences. News coverage of the issue recently hasn’t done much to change the fact that a pervasive slut-shaming/blame the victim approach still rules the day.”

And where does this leave us? With one in four American woman still be harassed on the job and less than half of them reporting it to organizational authorities.

And  also with a few choice words from Molly Lambert about the futility of women policing themselves in the service of joining a boys' club that will never admit them, no matter how many dirty jokes they deign to giggle at.

"You will never actually be part of the boys' club, because you are a woman. You are Ray Liotta in Goodfellas. You are not Italian, therefore you are never going to get made. And you don't want to be a part of the boys' club, because it is dedicated to preserving its own privilege at your expense."

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