Unlawful and Unwelcome: Sexual Harassment in the American Workplace.

Vol. 14 No.10 (October 2004), pp.769-771

UNLAWFUL AND UNWELCOME: SEXUAL HARASSMENT IN THE AMERICAN WORKPLACE, by Raymond F. Gregory. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004. 272 pp. Cloth $45.00. ISBN: 0-8014-4250-8. Paper $19.95. ISBN 0-8014-8927-x.

Reviewed by Paul Weizer, Department of Social Sciences, Fitchburg State College. Email: pweizer@fsc.edu .

In his Introduction, Raymond F. Gregory, an attorney specializing in employment and discrimination law, states that this book was written “primarily for ordinary citizens—secondarily for other lawyers” (pp.5-6). He further states that “sexual harassment has yet to be totally eliminated. It will be eliminated only if American working women regularly challenge such conduct. This book has been written to encourage working women to commit themselves to accepting that challenge” (p.7). The book does succeed in being readily accessible to ordinary citizens. The book is devoid of any legal jargon and the explanations of various legal standards are easily understood. Unfortunately, the book will fall far short of the second goal. Gregory asserts that nearly every American woman will, at some point during her working life, be sexually harassed. Yet he provides no support for such a broad claim. Unfortunately, this is symptomatic of a larger problem. Throughout, Gregory relies far too often on oversimplified generalizations based on case summaries devoid of much practical value. He also uses outdated (and sometimes unscientific) statistical support and never puts the data into any reasonable context. As a result, the vast majority of the book is simply a string of instances of sexual harassment devoid of useful analysis or insight.

Chapter One presents an overview of sexual harassment in the workplace. Gregory does a nice job of explaining the origins of the term sexual harassment and explaining in plain language both the history behind the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as well as the issues behind the Supreme Court’s first sexual harassment decision. However, in attempting to set out the scope of the problem of sexual harassment, the chapter takes a wrong turn. Gregory begins with three surveys: the first was taken from a book published in 1985, citing the fact that up to one-half of all women had been harassed. This is followed up with a 1981 Merit Systems Protection Board survey stating that 42% of female employees had been subjected to harassment. The next study cited makes the claim that 90% of working women had suffered from sexual harassment (p.8).

While these numbers appear daunting, they provide almost no meaningful information to the reader in today’s environment. First, the data are questionable. While the methodology of the first survey is unclear, the MSPB survey was based on only those employees who responded to the survey. The study that reached a 90% number was done by Redbook magazine of its readership and was conducted in 1979. It is hard to imagine that studies ranging [*770] from 19-25 years old can add much to the discussion of sexual harassment today. Then, without any logical connection, the next data presented show that between 1992-2001 the number of sexual harassment claims skyrocketed by nearly 50% (p.9). Despite the fact that the author leaps from perceived harassment to actual filings, this statistic is also devoid of any real meaning because it is absent proper context. By leaping from 1985 to 1992, many events which might explain such a rise in filings are left out. In 1991 alone, the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings, the Navy’s Tailhook scandal, and the passage of a new Civil Rights Act, all had tremendous impact on harassment consciousness and very likely on case filings. By completely ignoring these events, the reader is left with no context in which to digest the statistics offered. In fact, throughout the entire book, Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill warrant only two paragraphs while the Tailhook scandal is never mentioned.

Chapter Two provides a broad overview of the various forms of harassment. In explaining what constitutes quid pro quo and hostile environment harassment, Gregory provides a series of examples rather than definitions to make the case to the reader. Using examples, however, is a poor substitute for explaining doctrine or even basic analysis of court rulings. Each example merely lists the facts of the alleged harassment and the outcome of the case. There is no explanation for why the court reached its decision, nor is there any discussion of how the logic of these examples could be applied to other cases with different facts. The first example in the hostile environment section is representative of those in the remainder of the book. The reader is told that co-workers of a female postal worker “repeatedly asked her to perform oral sex, commented on her body, shot rubber bands at her backside, bumped up against her from behind, . . . and generally stalked her throughout the facility” (pp.21-22). After listing how this behavior affected the victim, the reader is informed that “the judge who heard her case characterized her working conditions as those no woman should ever have to endure” (p.22). This one sentence is all the reader is provided of this court opinion. There is no doubt that determining exactly what constitutes sexual harassment is not an exact science. This is especially true in hostile environment cases. However, since an exact replica of the facts contained here is unlikely to re-occur, and what the reader is told of the court decision is both minimal as well as broad, this example, like most in the book, does not provide much useful guidance as to where the line might be in a less obvious case.

The remaining chapters, each considering a different aspect of sexual harassment, follow a similar, unfortunate pattern. The issues range from welcomeness, severe or pervasive conduct, women harassed by other women, harassment in other settings, gender harassment, the reasonable person and reasonable woman standard, employer liability, the employer’s duty to prevent and correct harassment, constructive discharge, retaliation, harassment of men by women, same sex harassment, arbitration, and damages. Each chapter follows the same format in which the concepts are presented through a string of examples. Some chapters do go beyond this formula and provide very useful information. For [*771] example, Chapter Nine on employer liability does provide a detailed description of the liability standard established by the Supreme Court, along with useful analysis and a detailed diagram which succeeds in making a difficult concept much more accessible. Likewise, Chapter Ten, on the employer’s duty to prevent and promptly correct harassment, provides minimum EEOC guidelines and a detailed explanation of these guidelines prior to the string of sample cases which follow. The chapters on arbitration and damages are also very well documented and quite useful. More of such detail, rather than the large number of sample cases, make these chapters the highlight of the book.

In sum, Gregory provides readers with a large volume of actual situations that resulted in claims of sexual harassment. In and of itself, this may be useful for a reader with no background at all in either law or sexual harassment. The book’s plain spoken approach does make it quite accessible. However, this book has extremely limited use from an academic perspective.

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