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I. Feminists, Sexual Harassment, and the Courts I. Feminists, Sexual Harassment, and the Courts
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II. The Hill/Thomas Hearings and the Court’s 1990s Case Law Refinements II. The Hill/Thomas Hearings and the Court’s 1990s Case Law Refinements
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III. Feminist Responses to the Evolving Legal Claim III. Feminist Responses to the Evolving Legal Claim
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IV. Other Legal Means of Addressing Workplace Sexual Harassment IV. Other Legal Means of Addressing Workplace Sexual Harassment
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V. Conclusion V. Conclusion
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Notes Notes
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19 Sexual Harassment: The Promise and Limits of a Feminist Cause of Action
Get accessTheresa M. Beiner is the Dean and Nadine Baum Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock William H. Bowen School of Law. She writes in the areas of women in the legal profession, employment discrimination, federal judicial appointments, and constitutional law, and is the author of Gender Myths v. Working Realities: Using Social Science to Reformulate Sexual Harassment Law (NYU Press, 2005) and a coauthor of Civil Procedure: A Context and Practice Textbook.
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Published:10 November 2021
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Abstract
This chapter explores the origins, development, and current status of workplace sexual harassment law. Sexual harassment law owes its genesis to a combination of grass-roots feminist organizing and legal feminist theorizing. After initial losses in the courts, feminist lawyers and their clients scored significant victories in the court system. Employers and those accused of discrimination soon fought back, including by participating in the development of an extensive system of training and anti-sexual harassment policies that have not proven helpful to targets of sexual harassment. Feminist legal scholars have offered critiques of the courts’ decisions, taking a variety of approaches to increasing the law’s efficacy and extending its reach to encompass the experiences of men, women of color, and sexual minorities. Yet, plaintiffs using Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the main federal antidiscrimination statute applicable to sex discrimination in employment, continue to find themselves thrust out of court due to formalistic rules developed in the court system. This has led other scholars to suggest different legal approaches to address this persistent and disturbing form of workplace discrimination. Whether current grass-roots campaigns like the #MeToo movement will prove more effective than prior legal efforts remains to be seen.
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