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Abstract
This dissertation analyzes the evolution of private disputes that arise from changing social values, particularly disputes over sexual harassment. It is based on three sources of data: interviews with attorneys and plaintiffs in precedent-setting cases of sexual harassment, and interviews and survey responses from working women about their recent experiences with unwanted sexual attention at work.
The first stage of this disputing process occurs when a woman has an experience with unwanted sexual attention at work. These experiences vary in their intrusiveness, their frequency, and their organizational context. Women give competing interpretations to these experiences, leading to the second stage of the disputing process. In interpreting their encounters with unwanted sexual attention, women's political views about the role of women in society shape their evaluation of whether they have been harmed. Women's accounts of their injuries reflect competing theories about women's equality. Yet women did not describe every harmful experience as sexual harassment. Rather, they measured the conduct against legal standards to decide whether or not they had been harassed.
The final stage of the disputing process consists of women's decisions about how to respond to unwanted sexual attention. They may avoid the harasser or ignore his behavior, or they may use more assertive strategies such as confronting the harasser or getting a third party to intervene. These decisions are powerfully influenced by women's expectations about grievance procedures, which actually offer meaningful disincentives for complaints. Their decisions about how to respond, in turn, have consequences for their ability to enjoy their right to a workplace free from sexual harassment.
The overall picture that emerges from this dissertation is that, in the context of sexual harassment, women develop a double consciousness about law: law provides oppositional frameworks which lead women to interpret their experience as unjust, while it also dictates standards and procedures which impose serious and meaningful costs on resolving the problem. Thus, in women's ongoing struggle for equality at work, the law of sexual harassment has had a lasting impact on women's daily working lives.
