Sexual Harassment: Confrontations and Decisions

This important new collection not only presents some of the major debates in the current research on sexual harassment, but also attempts to demonstrate the need for further study of the problem. Increasing attention has been paid to sexual harassment but its meaning, nature, and remedy have eluded researchers and public officials. Since the late 1970s there have been many scientific studies that have investigated the frequency, causes, and effects of sexual harassment. One of the problems that plague these studies is the attempts to get a clear-cut definition and description of the problem. For example, sociologists have yet to reach a consensus on whether or not activities such as cursing, sexual jokes, or compliments in the workplace constitute sexual harassment.

The manifestations of the problem are often obvious. The solutions are not. Highlighting the work of social theorists, feminists, psychologists, and legal scholars, Sexual Harassment separates fact from fiction, focuses on opposing views, and outlines the legal and moral complexity of establishing an acceptable social standard to combat this problem.

Updated and revised, this new, second edition includes contributions by Alba Conte, Catherine A. MacKinnon, Camille Paglia, Susan Deller Ross, the editors of The New Republic, and many other distinguished commentators, as well as selections from important court cases.

Edmund Wall (Greenville, NC) is an assistant professor of philosophy at East Carolina University. For the first edition of Sexual Harassment he won the Gustavus Myers Award for Oustanding Book on Human Rights in the United States.