Confronting Sexual Harassment

Examining the relationship between law and social change in the context of employees' everyday problems with sexual harassment, this volume elaborates a framework for studying the role of law in everyday acts of resistance - what the author calls the legal consciousness of injustice. The framework situates the analysis in the context of a specific social problem and its related legal domain. It de-centres the law by accounting for the way that social movements, counter-movements, policy makers and powerful institutions frame the debate surrounding the social problem. Drawing on frame analysis developed in social movement studies, this aspect of the approach specifically incorporates other schema and shows how law supports both oppositional and dominant interpretations of experience. Following the stages of a dispute, the framework then examines the way that people use frames to make sense of their experiences.

Anna-Maria Marshall is based at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA. Her research interests are in the fields of legal consciousness, movements and the relationship between law and social change.

Contents: The legal consciousness of injustice: a theoretical framework; The legal environment of sexual harassment: law, policies, and the women who use them; Equality, sex and productivity: the competitive framing environment of sexual harassment; The meaning of equality: perceiving the harm of sexual harassment; 'I guess that was sexual harassment': naming sexual harassment; Idle rights: employee complaints and management responses; Sexual harassment, law and social change: a view from the ground; Appendix A: interview schedule; Appendix B: questionnaire; Appendix C: measures for gender consciousness; References; Index.