Publication Date

2006

Abstract

Understanding sexual harassment as a form of discrimination because of sex has grown increasingly difficult as our understandings of both gender and sex have grown richer and more complex This piece offers a new descriptive model for understanding gender bias in the context of sexual harassment law The piece argues that two separate sets of ideas about gender have intersected to produce a new picture of gender equality one that is separated from a binary model of men and women but that nonetheless continues to disadvantage women as compared to men The paper refers to this idea as the androcentricassimilation model of female liberation and argues that the adoption of this particular model of female liberation has presented an assimilation option to women who wish to succeed while obfuscating the fact that our ideas about gender remain hierarchically arranged The paper suggests that this phenomenon may underlie some of the mystery surrounding gendered workplace outcomes and specifically that this descriptive framing provides a foundation for understanding sexual harassment an ostensibly genderneutral behavior when one considers that women can harass men as well as one another as a tool of discrimination that continues to disproportionately disadvantage women The piece concludes therefore that sexual harassment law is properly conceptualized within an antidiscrimination framework

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