Sexual Harassment

History of Sexual Harassment

Unsolicited advances such as sexually suggestive remarks, coerced sexual activity, and sexually derogative comments have historically been a component of all social life, but it was not until fairly recently that the term sexual harassment became recognized as a type of discrimination and that this classification of behaviors became illegal according to federal law. With the Civil Rights Act prohibiting workplaces and educational settings from discriminating against gender, females began entering the workforce with males, and sexual harassment became defined as a legal issue. Although sexual harassment has become subject to legislation only recently, a wide variety of behaviors that have been unsolicited, unwanted, and of a sexually harassing nature have been embedded in power structures throughout time.

African American female slaves frequently endured sexual coercion from their white male owners, while working-class women also experienced sexual advances from their supervisors in both factory settings and in domestic service positions. The early legal system of the United States offered no recourse to unsolicited behaviors of a sexual nature except for the act of rape, and even then, the protection of rape laws did not extend to slaves. In the late 1800s and the early 1900s, the demands of female workers to be protected from unwanted sexual advances were vocalized through women's rights organizations (though these groups were primarily composed of white, middle-class women concerned with moral purity and middle-class sexual standards).

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited discrimination by race, religion, and sex, among other things, and lent itself to protecting sexually related discrimination. The 1974 lawsuit Barnes v. Train is widely considered the first test of sexual harassment in the courts. In this case, a female employee claimed discrimination when she refused [Page 641]the sexual advances of a superior and subsequently lost her position.

In 1986, the Supreme Court heard Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson and determined that a hostile work environment was another component of sexual harassment. A hostile work environment can be anything from nude calendars posted on a cubicle wall to using sexually derogative terms when talking to coworkers to telling dirty jokes.

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