Sexual Harassment Essay, Research Paper

Exploratory Essay

How do you determine what sexual harassment is, and when your sexually harassed? Three writers; Katie Marton, Fredric Hayward, and Phyllis Doloff, have different ideas on what sexual harassment is. All the writers wrote essays on their experiences with sexual harassment and what it means to them.

First what constitutes sexual harassment? According to Marton, she believes that sexual harassment is just simply trying to seduce a woman. She explains an incident where she was led to a hotel room on her own free will and talked all night with a male executive. She claims she was afraid that he had other objectives on his mind, but nothing happened except talking. Therefore she claims she was harassed because he had intent to do something other than talk, but she had no proof of this because he did not try anything. Doloff on the other hand has a better idea of what sexual harassment is. She explains an encounter where her boss pinches her butt not once but twice. There you can clearly see that she is indeed being harassed unlike Marton who could be just blowing things out of proportion. Also Hayward presents a good observation that if a man stares at a woman too long or in a weird way that the woman does not like, they can call it sexual harassment and could be sued. So still to this day there is no distinct definition to the words sexual harassment.

When do you know you’re sexually harassed? According to Marton her so called sexual harassment happened many years ago and so did Doloff’s. Why do women after so many years now claim they were sexually harassed? Is it that they see many other women claiming they are being harassed so they come out and say they were harassed too? They see what the women of today call sexual harassment and they look back on their lives and say, oh well we were sexually harassed then too. Nowadays it’s so ridiculous on the little things that women sue for just because then know they can win. If you accidentally bump into someone and accidentally touch them that’s one thing but being sued for it that’s just ridiculous. Doloff goes on to say how this happened to her, she was working and her boss pinched her butt and he claimed he was on medication and couldn’t be blamed. One time is ok because it was an accident but when it happens a second time like in Doloff’s case then its sexual harassment. Also in Hayward’s essay he talks about looking at a women wrongly might get you sued, but you could have been day dreaming and it just so happened she’s in the line of sight.

This brings up the case of why women sue and what they gain from it. Women sue cause they know they can win and get a big settlement. Hayward said in his essay that women dress provocatively and that they will also draw the non targeted attention. Like he said women show their cleavage to be admired and then when a man looks at them they get mad. You see more female sexual harassment cases then male sexual harassment cases, why because with women they know if they sue a male employee for sexual harassment its almost a guaranteed win for them and that means large settlement.

Overall no one has a definite definition for sexual harassment or name an exact price or punishment for the act. How do we go about to stop the fraudulent lawsuits and complaints? Maybe having stricter sexual harassment laws, also I know more corporations are having seminars and videos on the awareness of sexual harassment. I have to strongly disagree with the way Marton suggests that her executive escort was sexually harassing her for two reasons. One reason is that she had a choice of whether or not to go up to the hotel room with him. Also her escort did not try anything all he did was simply talk, he might have chosen the wrong place to talk but nonetheless he did not try anything sexual or in a demeanor fashion. But in the situation with Doloff where she was pinched repeatedly is a rightful case of sexual harassment. We might not be able to define sexual harassment, but we can put a stop to dramatic