The Rise of Legal and Political Resistance to Sexual Harassment

Sexual harassment is an abuse of power channeled through sexuality and gender-based expectations. Sexual harassment occurs in a context of inequality. As the #MeToo movement has taught many previously unaware people, living in a “modern” environment in which women are generally expected to be educated, employed, and fully empowered citizens, capable of speaking for themselves has not protected women from gender-based harassment. Of course sexual harassment is not only perpetrated by men against women (or girls); it is the product of any abuse of power channeled through sexuality and gender expectations. But it most commonly involves a male superior and female subordinate.

Sexual harassment may be old, but public acknowledgement of it as a problem, and the creation of laws, policies, and other strategies for eliminating it, is very new. The term “sexual harassment” was only coined in 1974. Before that there was no term to describe this experience, even though some women activists and theorists had long recognized the problem and fought to address it.^{Footnote 14} It was first identified and discussed within the feminist movement, and has remained one of its key issues. An early influential voice was the young lawyer, Catharine A. MacKinnon, who argued in a law school paper and then in her 1979 book, The Sexual Harassment of Working Women, that sexual harassment is a form of sex discrimination because it is predicated on and reproduces women’s subordination to men, a view that remains widespread until this very day.

MacKinnon influentially argued that the law should recognize two different forms of sexual harassment. The first, the only one recognized in law at the time, is a quid pro quo where a woman’s sexual compliance secures benefits or allows her to avoid harmful retribution. The other form, when harassment becomes a persistent condition of work, has come be called creation of a hostile working environment. Law and policy quickly began to emerge as the problem was named and identified as a form of harmful inequality largely due to Mackinnon’s influence.^{Footnote 15}

In this essay sexual harassment includes both the quid pro quo and hostile working environment types. In the quid pro quo form, sexual compliance is demanded directly or by implication, in exchange for employment conditions and benefits. A hostile working environment can be created both by acts that seem explicitly sexual (such as persistent unwanted sexual attention or lewdness) and those that do not. A hostile working environment that constitutes sexual harassment may also involve verbal or nonverbal behavior that is not explicitly about sexuality, but which systematically demeans or insults people on the basis of or because of their gender. This latter form is also known as gender harassment. In both instances a situation rises to the level of a hostile working environment when “the recipient has made efforts to rebuff or escape the attention, or in which the power relations of the workplace make it difficult for the recipient to rebuff or escape the attention without fear of job consequences.”^{Footnote 16}

A 1986 Supreme Court case, Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson, first defined sexual harassment as a form of prohibited sex discrimination under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The case still makes for remarkable reading. The story of Mechelle Vinson, originally hired at Meritor Savings Bank as a teller, and Sidney Taylor, her boss, is not likely to sound extraordinary to any to anyone who has studied sexual harassment or worked with victims. At first, Vinson found Taylor supportive, even fatherly in his demeanor. Then he began to make sexual overtures, which she rebuffed. Eventually, fearing for her job, she relented. His sexual demands escalated, and eventually he raped her. His sexual demands became an ongoing requirement for her employment and a persistent condition of her work.

Justice William Rehnquist’s majority opinion was a crucial turning point in the legal treatment of workplace sexual harassment. Rehnquist believed that Taylor’s sexual harassment constituted prohibited sex discrimination under Title VII because his actions depended on gender. Had not Vinson been a woman, she would not have been subject to this treatment. He expanded the definition of harassment used by courts (though it was previously articulated by the EEOC), arguing that sexual harassment should not be defined only as quid pro quo demands for sexual activity as a condition of employment, but also as conduct that “has the purpose or effect of unreasonably interfering with an individual’s work performance or creating an intimidating, hostile, or offensive working environment.”

Rehnquist also took up the implications of Vinson’s apparently “voluntary” participation (at first) in sexual relations with Taylor in considering whether she experienced sexual harassment:

He argued that a judgment of sexual harassment did not require that she be raped even though she was raped subsequently. Rehnquist also found the employer liable, especially because the company’s grievance procedure, which did not even mention harassment, required her to grieve to her supervisor, who was the abuser.

Justice Rehnquist’s argument and perspective on sexual harassment are still not sufficiently understood outside of specialist circles. Even in the 2017 APSA Survey on Sexual Harassment quite a few respondents, especially those who did not share the view that harassment is a problem worth investigating, took the narrower view that Rehnquist rejected in 1986. Some respondents seemed to be under the misapprehension that sexual harassment and sexual assault are interchangeable terms. Since Meritor, sexual harassment is legally defined as a violation of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights act prohibiting sex discrimination at work. Sexual harassment at educational institutions became illegal under Title IX of the 1972 Education Amendments Act barring sex discrimination in education institutions.

The existence of legal tools to combat sexual harassment has not, of course, solved the problem of sexual harassment. As we have seen, sexual harassment remains a common experience for women. Relatively few report their experience to authorities, which also means that sexual harassment is a common practice among many men. Advocacy groups and public policy have continued to pressure institutions to develop better reporting and resolution mechanisms.

From time to time particular incidents have drawn public attention to the issue. In late 1991, the Tailhook Scandal shocked the public when more than 100 naval and Marine Corps aviation officers were accused of assaulting 83 women and 7 men during a convention. Through this incident people learned about profound gender inequality and sexual abuse in the U.S. military, and ultimately the military implemented major changes to attempt to combat that inequality and abuse.^{Footnote 17}

Also in 1991, when Justice Thurgood Marshall retired from the Supreme Court, President George Bush nominated Clarence Thomas, a young conservative African American opposed by many African American organizations. The nation was stunned when Anita Hill, a young African American law professor, charged that when she was Thomas’s assistant at the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission, he had sexually harassed her. Ultimately, after some pressure, the Senate allowed her to testify, but ultimately confirmed Thomas, now the second longest-serving justice on the court, by 52–48.^{Footnote 18} This provoked many women across the country to speak out about and even take action against their harassment experiences. A year after the hearings, Time reported that the number of cases reported to the EEOC rose by over 50% in a year, but surveys still showed that “while between 40 percent and 65 percent of female workers claim to have experienced sexual harassment on the job, less than 5 percent file complaints.”^{Footnote 19} It reported that men seemed newly sensitized to the issue. And eventually, the incident and its effects faded from memory.

Moving forward, in 2006 Tarana Burke reflected on her experience as a Harlem youth worker nearly a decade earlier when she met a young girl who confided in her that she had been abused by her mother’s boyfriend. At the end of that encounter, Burke recalled, “I watched her put her mask back on and go back into the world like she was all alone and I couldn’t even bring myself to whisper . . . me too.”^{Footnote 20} Burke founded the Me Too Movement, by which she meant that survivors should band together to empower themselves, first of all by transcending shame and a sense that they are alone. She simultaneously formed an organization Just Be, Inc., aimed at the health and wellbeing of young women of color. Although her abuse took place within a domestic setting rather than an employment setting, she provided the critical language that ultimately caught fire in the current resistance to sexual harassment on the job and in education.

During the 2016 presidential election sexual harassment and assault again gained increased attention as a result of the Access Hollywood tape in which candidate Donald Trump bragged about how he could grab women with impunity regardless of their wishes because of his celebrity status.^{Footnote 21} In terms of mobilizing resistance, that also emerged, but too late to stop Trump’s candidacy or victory over Hillary Clinton.

Burke’s phrase, “me too,” now a Twitter hashtag, catalyzed a massive new movement a decade later in late 2017 when, after a media mogul was accused by first one, then many famous women actors of sexual harassment. The actor Alyssa Milano tweeted, “If you’ve been sexually harassed or assaulted write ’me too’ as a reply to this tweet.” Within hours hundreds, then thousands of women responded, and the #MeToo movement was born. Within months numerous high-profile men lost their positions and standing, toppled by accusations and evidence. Even more shocking was another public revelation, that the former team doctor for USA Women’s Gymnastics had committed numerous acts of assault and abuse of over 300 young women and girls.

Each new revelation led new cohorts of victims to speak out and organize against sexual harassment and assault. And each new wave also led some people to worry about whether the efforts to right these wrongs would create new wrongs by overreacting and false accusing some men. In the current era, many men are anxious about increased attention to sexual harassment. In one study that has tracked these attitudes over time, the number of male managers who report being uncomfortable working with women has increased dramatically, to 30%.^{Footnote 22} Likewise, this study found that “almost half of male managers are uncomfortable participating in a common work activity with a woman, such as mentoring, working alone, or socializing together.” It appears that this movement to right the wrong of sexual harassment may lead some men to close off occupational and professional opportunities for women. But consider the anxiety we are witnessing. They suggest that many men fear that they cannot help themselves from harassing women, or they believe that they cannot judge whether they are harassing women, or women may well make false accusations against them, either out of misperception or malice.

We are thus left a number of vexing questions: Whose point of view should be used to determine whether actions rise to the level of creating an “intimidating, hostile, or offensive working environment?” If a man thinks he is just being friendly, but a woman experiences this “friendly” behavior as unwelcome and harassing, whose point of view is right? What constitutes a signal that an advance is “unwelcome,” especially in a culture with longstanding expectations that women conventionally rebuff advances or act offended even when they are ultimately open to them? What is a reasonable and fair way of judging what is appropriate behavior? Whose perspective matters here?

The Dramaturgy of Sexual Harassment: Scripts, Characters, Perspectives

As long as there has been theater, plays have offered a means to reflect on human motivation and behavior, good and evil, justice and injustice, tragedy, and the self-generated traps that people weave for themselves. Some plays, of course, are created with the express purpose of forcing us to confront important issues of the day. David Mamet’s play Oleanna is just such a vehicle. He wrote it in reaction to the events of the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill hearings, and when first produced it created a major stir on both sides of the Atlantic. Let us look both at the script, then at an unusual performance that highlights issues of interpretations of gender and sexuality in understandings of sexual harassment.

As it opens, John, a professor, is talking on the phone to his wife about a real estate deal. That call has interrupted his conversation with his student, Carol, who sits across the desk. When he turns back to his conversation with Carol, it quickly becomes clear that they can barely communicate with each other. She struggles to understand him; he is inept at explaining. She is likely working class, he middle class. She lets him know she has to pass the course and cannot understand why it is not going well because, she says, she has done everything he has asked. As this struggle for understanding continues she becomes angry. He tries to comfort her, but in ineffective ways. He is preoccupied with his upcoming tenure case and ability to buy a house. Their interactions escalate, but remain unresolved. They are cringe-worthy.

In Act II Carol and John are in his office, and it is clear that he has been denied tenure, and that a letter she sent to the committee played a role in it. He reads to her portions of the report he received that apparently list the charges she made in his letter—he is sexist, elitist, he wanders from the text in “self-aggrandizing and theatrical” ways, his comments “have taken both sexist and pornographic forms,” and said, “He’d let me write my examination paper over, if I could come back oftener to see him in his office.”

In fact, nothing John quotes is technically false. But does it rise to sexual harassment? Mamet’s play largely left audiences and most reviewers with the impression that Carol was the embodiment of the excesses of feminism and “PC,” while the professor is a bumbling victim whose life has been ruined.^{Footnote 23}

The end of the play is harrowing. John has been denied tenure and is talking with Carol, who now seems to be plotting further actions with some unnamed “Group.” She or they are threatening to accuse him of acts not even hinted at earlier: attempted rape and battery. Even if one had been tempted sympathize with her earlier, Mamet works to close off that avenue of interpretation. But then, probably unbeknownst to Mamet or much of his audience, his script re-opens the possibility of alternative interpretation.

John’s wife phones in the middle of the final conversation. He tersely says to his wife, “I can’t talk now, Baby” and to Carol, “Get out of here.” Carol is on her way to do so when she turns and says, “and don’t call your wife ‘baby’.” This pushes John over the edge. He begins to beat her, screaming words that seem to be Mamet’s major point, “You vicious little bitch. You think you can come in here with your political correctness and destroy my life?” As she cowers on the floor he raises a chair over her as though to smash it down on her and delivers his final line: “I wouldn’t touch you with a ten-foot pole. You little cunt . . . .” Instead of hitting her with the chair, he lowers it, goes back to his desk, and proceeds to shuffle papers, resuming professorial character. She utters her last line. “Yes. That’s right. That’s right.”

This conclusion is open to multiple interpretations. Approaching it as Mamet probably intended and it was understood by most audiences, Carol has ruined John’s life. Justifiably angry, he pulls himself back to reason in the nick of time. She is pleased because she has driven him to violence that justifies the irrational vengeance she has sought. She may now report an actual incident to complete her ruin of him.

But consider a perspective informed by research on gender relations and sexual harassment that one might see despite Mamet’s text and stage directions. The antagonism between John and Carol begins because he is claiming to teach her (ironically, his lesson is partly about his cynicism about the education establishment), but in fact he cannot understand her, or teach her effectively. She says she feels stupid, and many reviewers concluded she was in fact stupid.^{Footnote 24} She is ignorant, but we have no idea how intelligent she is—she is a young woman from a class background that has not prepared her well regardless of her intelligence.

He is portrayed as a stereotypical bumbling and somewhat distracted academic. He tells her he will give her an A regardless of what she does, perhaps to encourage her, but his lack of pedagogical skill and his preoccupation with his new house and tenure instills no confidence that she will merit anything but failure. She is not asking for an A, but to learn, to understand. Her anger rises as she recognizes that is not happening.

No feminist perspective is likely to interpret Carol as pure victim—it is difficult to imagine her letter to the tenure committee was anything but excessive. Mamet’s ham-handed introduction of the unnamed “Group” that now seems to be controlling her increases the insidiousness of her role. John exhibits relatively controlled but ineffective anger through their final discussion until she reacts to a phrase that suggests his infantilization of women (“don’t call your wife ‘baby’”). He reacts with a fury that destroys his professorial propriety with an explosion of three different gendered and sexualized put-downs in a couple of sentences.

These weaponized words are very particular, and their ready availability when reason flees is important. From this perspective, her “Yes. That’s right” takes on a potential new meaning. Maybe she was not really crazy, stupid, or completely misperceiving him. Perhaps she sensed his negative gender- and sexuality-based judgment of her lurking behind his performance of professional norms. Mamet would probably reject this interpretation—his play was designed to be anti-feminist—but he is the one who framed John’s bilious fury in gendered, sexualized terms he cannot suppress.

Thus far we have only analyzed the text, but plays are meant to be acted. Performers embody the characters and make a difference in what we see through their presence, gestures, and inflection. Let us now consider the embodiment of the characters, and especially the gender of embodiment in the performance of this ambiguous enactment of sexual harassment.

Not many years after Oleanna was first produced, in the mid-1990s, I took advantage of a program at the University of Wisconsin–Madison through which professors could commission theater students to perform scenes for classes in any discipline to help elucidate a point. I used this to help my students probe issues of gender, sexuality, and sexual harassment. I commissioned three different performances of one scene of Oleanna, each with a different pair of actors with the stipulation that in each iteration they had to play the scene in exactly the same way with no variation in their performance. The only difference had to be the gender of the actor, not the performance. First, the scene was done with male professor and a female student as Mamet instructed. Then it was performed with a female professor and a male student, then with a male professor and a male student.^{Footnote 25}

The actors struggled to rehearse these scenes according to my instructions. They found it more difficult than usual to agree on an approach to the scene given the gender changes. The instructions interfered with normal performances of gender and sexuality because women and men “normally” would have performed each of these parts differently, and differently depending on the gender of the other actor.

Describing their experience, the actors said the scene flowed naturally with a male professor and female student. The two verticalities—gender and institutional role—combined in a culturally coherent way, especially with respect to sexuality. With two male characters, actors would normally face no difficulty in playing a professor and student, but the sexual dimension of the play created a challenge because of their inclination to perform gay stereotypes, which would have made the performance different from the others. The scene with the female professor and male student was the most difficult for them to interpret because of the cultural contradiction with traditional institutional, gender, and sexual verticalities.

Despite the similarity of the performances, what looked sexualized changed in each iteration and so each version of the scene looked different to the students. Behavior that looked ordinary and bumbling, or innocent in the first instance looked more insidious in the others. The student’s eventual anger and pushback and the professor’s formulation of rage seemed different in the three performances. In particular, male rage seemed more justified compared to female. Some experimental research has found that people regard harassment scenarios in which men are the victim as more serious than when women are the victim in the same scenario.^{Footnote 26} Harassment of women is more “normal.”

The “facts” of an incident of possible sexual harassment seem to depend on gender of those involved and gendered assumptions about sexuality. They also depend on one’s perspective, as research on perceptions of the real-life incident that provoked Mamet to write this play—the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas hearings in 1991—shows. Headline news during and after the hearings underscored the gender and race differences in perceptions of who was telling the truth, Hill or Thomas. But further exploration of survey data showed that the differences of perspective were more interesting than the simple binary question of which actor people believed or preferred. Different issue publics were, in effect, watching a different play. Different people systematically understood the spectacle in terms of different frameworks, including traditional sexual morality, feminist politics, race politics, or partisanship.^{Footnote 27} So observers did not just take different sides in a “he said, she said” mystery; they were watching different plays with different fundamental questions.

Empirical Research on Gender Differences in Perception of Sexual Harassment

Although men and women generally regard sexual harassment as a serious matter, they differ on how to identify it. A 2017 survey asked people whether they agreed or disagreed with the statement that “What many women call sexual harassment is innocent flirting intended as flattery.” A majority of men and women disagreed with this statement, but large and statistically significant differences emerged between women and men and even more, between Democrats and Republicans. While 55% of men and 66% of women disagreed with this statement, 55% of Republicans and 76% of Democrats disagreed. In other words, the question provokes some gender-based disagreement, as we might expect, but it also is enmeshed in contemporary partisan battles.

Experimental research provides different information about people’s reactions to sexual harassment from public-opinion surveys because it gives us a more precise and unobtrusive handle on how people respond according to variations in experience. Meta-analyses of experimental studies show only small gender differences in the overall perception of sexual harassment. However, further analysis shows that this is because the degree of gender difference depends on the nature of the situation and the questions scholars study.

A meta-analysis of 62 studies found that women perceive a wider range of behaviors as constituting sexual harassment than men do. There were especially large gender differences in whether behavior that creates a hostile work environment qualifies as harassment (e.g., derogatory attitudes toward women, or unwanted physical contact or dating pressure), when compared to coercive behavior.^{Footnote 28} In other words, while women and men may perceive quid pro quo forms of sexual harassment similarly, they may react differently toward the kinds of interactions that might create a hostile working climate. Just as the survey data reviewed earlier suggests, some of what men may see as friendly behavior in the workplace, women find inappropriate and unwelcome.^{Footnote 29}

One recent experimental study offers interesting insights into orientations toward sexual harassment. Gargi Battacharya and Margaret Stockdale were interested in variation in judgments of harassment.^{Footnote 30} They focused especially on testing the common view that judgments about harassment cannot be made fairly because men and women have vested interests that lead them to see the problem differently. Their results showed that differences in people’s judgment of harassment also depended on the quality of evidence they receive about particular incidents, but with some interesting twists.

Bhattacharya and Stockdale used Mechanical Turk to set up two different kinds of harassment situations, each modeled on an actual court case. One describes a hostile work environment involving gender harassment, where women are called sexist names. The other involves sexual harassment more narrowly construed, where a supervisor touches a female employee inappropriately, discusses his sex life, and says he dreams about her sexy dresses. They also created different strong evidence and weak evidence conditions. In the strong evidence condition, experimental participants were told the complainant kept a detailed diary and that there were witnesses. In the weak evidence condition experimental participants were told that there were no witnesses, no prior complaints, and there was no mention of a diary. In all cases the defendant denied the charge and said he was just trying to be friendly. The researchers tested several dependent variables: whether experimental participants thought the supervisor was guilty, how likely they were to think the complainant was making a false accusation, how severe they thought the harassment was, and whether the supervisor should suffer negative job consequences.

The analysis showed that the quality of the evidence affected perceptions of harassment and willingness to take action against the defendant in the workplace just as we might expect—and hope. Stronger evidence supported a greater perception of harassment and willingness to take action against the defendant. Neither gender nor feminist attitudes had an effect on the harassment variables. Right-wing authoritarianism did not affect perceptions of gender harassment, but did on some sexual harassment variables. It also led participants to suspect false accusations, made them less likely to judge the defendant as guilty, as well as favor negative job consequences for the defendant for the described behavior.

Analysis of interaction effects showed women reacted more strongly to the quality of evidence than men did. When the evidence was weak, women saw the supervisor’s action as less severe than men did, they were less sure of the perpetrator’s guilt, whether there should be career consequences, and were more suspicious of false accusations. When the evidence was stronger, they perceived the incident as more severe than the men did, were more likely to believe the perpetrator was guilty, more likely to favor career consequences, and they were less likely to suspect false accusations at play. Feminist attitudes worked in a fashion similar to gender, with feminist participants more harsh than non-feminists in their judgments with strong evidence, and less harsh than non-feminists with weak evidence.

These studies suggest that women and men do not differ much with regard to sexual harassment of the more conventionally understood quid pro quo type. However, women have a broader conception of sexual harassment than men do, incorporating more of the types of behavior that affect the quality of women’s work environments. Men and women take different things into consideration in processing information about harassment—for example, in responding to the quality of information about particular incidents.

Bhattacharya and Stockdale speculated about the reasons for this different reaction to information, although they did not test the alternative possibilities. They hypothesize that women’s greater sensitivity to evidence is related to their experientially-driven sensitivity to the potential harm created by making incorrect judgments, either of the guilt of the perpetrator when there is strong evidence, or doubt when the evidence is weaker. They also speculate that with weak evidence, women’s experience tells them they are likely to lose if they confront the perpetrator, whereas with strong evidence, they may understand the harm the woman experienced from the harassment more than men do. Other research does show that the ability to empathize makes a difference in how people respond to harassment scenarios.^{Footnote 31} Further investigation of these intuitions seem like a productive and promising direction for future research.

One problem in understanding sexual harassment and how to stop it is that there has been much more research on women’s experiences, perceptions, and judgements of harassment, than research on its mostly male perpetrators. This is particularly important for the forms of persistent verbal and nonverbal behavior that focus on women’s sexuality or their bodies, that they experience as demeaning and which men are much less likely to experience. It seems that many men who engage in this behavior perceive their behavior as friendly, while women experience it as inappropriate, intrusive, embarrassing, or even threatening. That gap in perception (assuming that perpetrators are not just masking something more malevolent) is important to understand.

These acts correspond to performances of dominance or, more broadly, asserting verticality in a relationship.^{Footnote 32} Research on communication shows that superiors in hierarchies take up more space relative to their body sizes, talk more, and they exert more visual domination. Subordinates in hierarchy avert their eyes from others more quickly than superiors. A study by Sekerdej et al. of male dyads shows that while touching someone else can be interpreted as a communal act, that is, as friendly and making connections, the initiator of touching is also perceived as more dominating.^{Footnote 33} The authors add that “touch was perceived as a particularly meaningful message of power in contexts in which some asymmetry of power was assumed”, and further that in mixed-sex dyads informal touch “may be seen as much more sexually driven.”

In a work setting sexual harassment by a male supervisor of a female employee involves at least two forms of inequality that may interact: organizational position and gender. It may also involve dimensions as well, such as class or race or age. The differences of perception, then, might derive from the presumptions of verticality that are embedded in people’s everyday behavior or performance of their positions. In short, people in dominant positions get to determine the rules of interaction and express their domination in physical ways, and where that verticality coincides with gender inequality that dominance can become sexualized.

Physiological research provides some evidence about how dominance performances take on a sexual character.^{Footnote 34} One study set up situations in which pairs of male students competed in a non-physical contest, which tends to elevate testosterone levels. In this state, they then interacted informally with either a man or woman they did not know. With women, but not with men, they showed an increased tendency to be more interactive and interested, talkative and self-absorbed, revealing details about themselves, smiling and making eye contact. The researchers understood this as mating behavior. However, we might also hypothesize that in occupational roles in which leaders experience competition and competitiveness, this same tendency, focused on women, especially those in lower positions, could encourage sexual harassment. So once again we return to the contentious question embedded in the ambiguities of sexuality and gender and the multiple perspectives they generate: Whose point of view should be used to determine whether actions rise to the level of creating a “intimidating, hostile, or offensive working environment?”

#MeToo in Political Science: Sexual Harassment and Career Development in an Academic Field

When, in late 2017, so many famous and even powerful public figures told stories about their experience of sexual harassment, it came as a shock to people who had little knowledge about the extent of sexual harassment in the workplace. These “silence breakers,” who were featured as the Time 2017 Person of the Year,^{Footnote 35} gave hundreds of women the courage to speak up. But the emphasis on powerful people should not be misunderstood. These now-famous and powerful women were not yet famous and powerful when they were victims. They were vulnerable young women with career aspirations. The testimony of the abused gymnasts during Dr. Larry Nassar’s sentencing hearing, the sheer number of victims, and the length of time during which their claims had been ignored highlights how extensive the problem of sexual harassment is in our society.^{Footnote 36} One of the most profound impacts of sexual harassment is its effect on young people, on those working to develop their talents and launch their careers. How many talented people and their potential accomplishments have been derailed by sexual harassment?

When the APSA Committee on Professional Ethics, Rights, and Freedoms launched its discussion of appropriate standards of behavior for its annual meetings and fielded a membership survey about experiences of harassment in 2017, it did not anticipate this work would coincide with the explosion of public revelations of sexual harassment, abuse, and assault in many public walks of life.^{Footnote 37} The 2017 APSA Sexual Harassment Study aimed at understanding the extent of harassment at the annual conference attended by roughly 6,000 people, and considered crucial for those who want to be active and visible in the profession.

The brief survey asked APSA members whether in the past four years they had experienced any of the following at the meetings: being “put down” or condescended to; witnessing offensive sexist remarks; being stared or leered at or ogled in a way that made them uncomfortable; witnessing sexist or other materials they found offensive; unwanted romantic or sexual overtures despite efforts to discourage them; feeling bribed to have sexual relations; or feeling threatened for not having sexual relations; or being touched in a way that made them uncomfortable.

A substantial minority of members had such experiences. Some suffered the more severe forms of sexual harassment—threats and bribes conditional to sexual behavior, or unwanted sexual advances despite rejection. Multivariate analysis found that gender, the year of the Ph.D., and the frequency of meeting attendences predicted all forms of harassment. In other words, young women working hard to launch their careers were the targets of the more obtrusive forms of sexual harassment.

Although in the 2017 APSA Sexual Harassment study an unfortunately high percentage of both women and men report experiencing condescending and demeaning behavior at annual meetings, women experience this more than men do. There are some forms of demeaning behavior that women seem more likely to experience. Women reported the experience of having others attribute their words and ideas to men, whereas men did not. Women also report that when they coauthor with men, even if they are listed as the first author, people tend to address themselves to the male coauthor.

Many of the men who create a hostile working environment by overlooking women and their contributions would probably be surprised to find they are doing this, because it is unconscious behavior. Women who repeatedly experience it from different men cannot help but notice this different treatment. When this systematically discriminatory behavior comes from senior members of the field—people who received their professional socialization before women were regarded as full and equal members of the profession—it is especially harmful because it is an obstacle that blocks opportunity and success for women. Clearly this is unreasonable.