The Women's Movement Against Sexual Harassment examines how a diverse grassroots social movement created public policy on sexual harassment in the 1970s and 1980s. The collaboration of women from varying racial, economic, and geographic backgrounds strengthened the movement by representing the perspectives and activism of a broad range of women. Based on interviews and voluminous original research, this book is the first to show how the movement against sexual harassment fundamentally changed American life in ways that continue to advance women's opportunities today.
What People Are Saying
“In fact, the book documents a far more interesting success story: the deep complexity of the early activists’ understanding of the issue and their openness to a range of strategies. This shows how grassroots mobilization productively drew upon the intelligence of those most affected by oppression in the workplace.” Kristin Bumiller, Amherst College, Perspectives on Politics
“Baker’s book adds important concrete detail and facts to the narrative of sexual harassment. Moving away from the theoretical legal abstraction, she engages in a needed descriptive and explanatory account of how the change in law really happened…The book provides fresh perspective on the issue of sexual harassment, adding the historical background and foundation necessary to understand the contours of the existing law, and the pre-existing concerns that drove the movement for a law responsive to the needs of women.” Tracy A. Thomas, University of Akron School of Law, Political Studies Review
“Carrie Baker...has written an extensively researched book that explores the legal and cultural struggle that laid the groundwork for the Hill-Thomas confrontation. She shows how women from different racial and economic backgrounds came together in what was an extraordinarily diverse grassroots social movement.” Suzanne Wilson, Northampton Daily Gazette
“Baker traces the rise of the social movement against the sexual harassment of women during the 1970s, which brought the issue to the US Supreme Court during the 1980s. Some of the landmarks of the journey are early legal victories, blue- collar workers and hostile environment sexual harassment, and entering the mainstream.” Book News, Inc.
“Carrie Baker’s important new book shows how women changed the world, or at least the conditions of working women in the United States. Carefully researched, clearly written, tough and smart, The Women’s Movement Against Sexual Harassment is an important contribution not only to the understanding of how limits on sexual harassment were enacted, interpreted, litigated, and addressed, but also to our understanding of the potential of women working together to create a new status quo where only a short time ago, none seemed imaginable. It is both educational and inspirational.” Susan Estrich, USC Gould School of Law
“In this deeply-researched study, Carrie Baker explores the intertwined efforts of working women, women of color and feminists to name the problem of sexual harassment. She examines with sensitivity and insight the courageous individuals and organizations that spoke out against this insidious form of discriminatory violence in the 1970s and inspired legal as well as cultural sanctions against it by the 1980s. A must read for activists as well as academics.” Nancy A. Hewitt, Rutgers University