Workplace Sexual Harassment and Assault
This subsection of “Sex: An Unapologetic Conversation" will analyze how professional working women experience sexual harassment and the power differentials that exist within the workplace. This topic correlates to the larger conversation around sex, as sexual harassment is sadly a prominent experience for many professional women. Often perpetrators of sexual harassment in the workplace are males of a higher authority level than the victim, but perpetrators can be of an organizational level, whether the harasser is a coworker, a subordinate, or a boss. Sexual harassment is all about dominance and exertion of power over a victim, and males are most often performing and proving their masculinity. Power is the most widely talked about factor in workplace sexual harassment, but racialized sexual harassment where the victims are women of color is a huge, untalked-about factor as well. Women of color are disproportionately sexually harassed in the workplace at higher rates than white women due to the intersection of their gender and their race. With all that being said, sexual harassment is a legal and ethical issue. However, prior to the #MeToo movement, most victims of sexual harassment remained silent. The #MeToo movement became the outlet that gave women their voice and empowered them to speak up against their perpetrators. Sexual harassment has been reported more in the last five years than it ever has before because women feel protected and women feel heard. Therefore, the following subsections will dive deeper into the power differentials associated with the workplace, racial discrepancies in rates of sexual harassment, and female empowerment succeeding the #MeToo movement.
