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Dissertation Information for Carrie N. Baker

NAME:
- Carrie N. Baker

DEGREE:
- Ph.D.

DISCIPLINE:
- Women's Studies

SCHOOL:
- Emory University (USA) (2001)

ADVISORS:
- Mary E. Odem

COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
- Beth Reingold
- Mary Radford

MPACT Status: Fully Complete

Title: Sex, Power, and Politics: The Origins of Sexual Harassment Policy in the United States

Abstract: This dissertation tells the history of resistance to sexual harassment in the United States. Through most of this country's history, sexual coercion in the workplace was considered a moral problem. Beginning in the early 1970s, however, a diverse group of women worked both individually and collectively through courts, legislatures, and the press to redefine sexual harassment as an issue of economic coercion and sex discrimination. Black women and working-class women, in particular, were centrally involved in the movement against sexual harassment, drawing upon their experiences from within the civil rights movement and the labor movement to redefine sexual harassment as a civil rights violation.

Courts initially viewed sexual coercion in the workplace as merely a "personal matter" that was not gender-based. In 1975, feminists in Ithaca, New York coined the term "sexual harassment," held a speakout, and conducted a groundbreaking survey of women, showing that sexual harassment had a widespread and devastating impact on women. Soon groups of women around the country began conducting research on the incidence and effects of sexual harassment, developing theories about the causes, meaning, and functions of the phenomenon, and working to raise public awareness of the problem. Armed with these surveys and theories, feminist attorneys made sociological and historical arguments about the impact of sexual coercion on women in the workplace to courts around the country. By the end of the decade, activists had convinced courts that sexual harassment was sex discrimination in violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Soon federal and state governments were launching initiatives to combat sexual harassment and courts were expanding the scope of sexual harassment law.

Through a close analysis of feminist writings, legal briefs, case law, scholarly debate, government records, and the media's portrayal of sexual harassment over time, as well as interviews with activists from the 1970s, this dissertation will explain the origins and development of public policy on sexual harassment in the United States and how the movement against sexual harassment fundamentally reshaped the public understanding of sex roles and sexual behavior in the workplace.

MPACT Scores for Carrie N. Baker

A = 0
C = 0
A+C = 0
T = 0
G = 0
W = 0
TD = 0
TA = 0
calculated 2008-02-02 23:12:38

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