Equal Opportunities Work - Theories about Practice

6. Sexual harassment and the gender perspective
Regarding sexual harassment from a gender perspective (defined as a sex/gender
and power perspective) is rewarding in many ways. Such a perspective sees
sexual harassment as a way for the overrepresented sex to exercise power over
the underrepresented sex, and to keep its members in a subordinate position. The
common denominator is the very idea that sexual harassment entails various
means of exercising power. It is oppression of a member of the underrepresented
sex so that he or she feels insulted, threatened, frightened, humiliated, powerless
and compelled into obedience. As we have seen above, this is not always
intentional, conscious exercise of power, but can just as easily be unintentional
and unconscious.
Sexual harassment often takes place in a situation where power is unevenly
distributed between the sexes, and where the male sex is hierarchically
superior to the female sex. As men tend to be more often in power positions,
they are most often also the ones to commit sexual harassment. Moreover, the
person subjected to the harassment is often in a dependency relation to the
individual doing the harassing, who may be an advisor, a teacher, a supervisor
or someone in a managerial position. These are also often people who are in
the know and whose jobs include helping others to develop and learn. These
individuals are often automatically treated with respect and trust, as well as
sometimes admiration simply by virtue of their positions, and it is easy to take
advantage of such a position.3s
In equal opportunities contexts, the debate around sex/gender has often
focused on the hypothesis that there is a supra-individual level, a "gender
order". One central idea in this context is that the structures a"re stronger than
the individual, and if the individual is replaced, the structures will remain. This
may reveal itself, for instance, in the fact that women in management positions
sometimes also prove to be harassers, as well as men. Quite simply, it is
inherent to the structure for people in managerial positions to behave in a
certain way. A structural gender perspective provides one explanation of how
harassment can be "passed down" at a workplace, that certain ways of acting
and behaving are tied to a particular position.
If an individual is subjected to sexual harassment and brings it up, either
formally or informally, it is common for the management to react by claiming
35 Th"r. may, however, be an element of sexual harassment in other relationships as well, for instance the
harassing party may be the subordinate one, for instance when a students harasses his or her teacher.
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