Perspectives on Sexual Power, #MeToo

Academic Psychiatry

2018

The list of powerful men accused of sexual harassment seems to grow longer every day: Roger Ailes, Harvey Weinstein, Steve Wynn, Mario Batali, Matt Lauer, Mario Testino, Richard Branson, Roy Moore, just to name a few. These reports tell a distressingly familiar story of unchecked power that reinforces popular understandings about who engages in sexually harassing behaviour and who is targeted. But the #MeToo movement and social science research complicate this simple narrative. Sexual harassment is experienced by both women and men. It occurs in a wide variety of work settings, from construction sites to classrooms. And while harassers are often supervisors, they are also sometimes subordinates and clients. So, what does the research tell us about these sexual harassment scenarios?

Journal of Trauma & Dissociation, 2017

Despite being illegal for more than half a century, sexual harassment remains today the most pervasive form of violence against women, often encompassing other forms of violence in its ambit. This stubborn and pernicious persistence rests largely on (1) a pervasive system of attitudes and beliefs, accruing over centuries and embedded in a variety of cultural institutions, that denies and rationalizes systemic abuse of women; and (2), the organizational and institutional actors that serve to maintain this system, a phenomenon that has come to be known as institutional betrayal. These phenomena, the attitudinal aspects of "rape culture" combined with the iatrogenic features of organizations, institutions, make clear that sexual harassment and the cultural system in which it is embedded is best understood as "systemic trauma" requiring multilevel prevention and intervention systems that are yet to be fully identified or understood.

2019

The National Academies Press, 2023

AUTHOR INFORMATION The authors of this paper are institutional representatives to the Prevention Working Group of the Action Collaborative on Preventing Sexual Harassment in Higher Education. In developing this paper, this group of authors was led by Daniel Kleinman, Associate Provost for Graduate Affairs, Boston University. Other authors include Jason Killheffer, Assistant Provost for Academic Integrity, Yale University; Chloe Poston, Associate Vice President for Strategic Initiatives within the Office of Institutional Diversity and Equity, Dartmouth College; and Cara Tuttle Bell, Director of the Project Safe Center, Vanderbilt University. Suggested citation: Kleinman, D. L. and J. M. Thomas (Eds.). 2023. Preventing Sexual Harassment and Reducing Harm by Addressing Abuses of Power in Higher Education Institutions. Washington, DC: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. https:// doi.org/10.17226/26631.

Journal of Applied Communication Research, 2019

#MeToo has breathed new life into the women's movement and especially into understanding and rectifying sexual harassment, abuse and assault. It has galvanized activists around the globe. And it has placed thousands of stories of the harassed in full view of the public. Sexual harassment, abuse and assault may occur within the organizational context or beyond; but sexual harassment, in particular has been legally labeled an organizational phenomenon. With this in mind, Robin Clair frames the early part of this article around the most recent organizational communication theories (see the appendix for an overview of these theories). Following the essay is a forum, in which invited scholars address questions related to the #MeToo movement.

Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature, 2019

2021

Today is the day Julia has been dreaming about since the first day of her PhD program-it's interview day at the American Economics Association (AAEA) Annual Conference. As her phone plays her familiar morning alarm, Julia jumps out of bed, bright-eyed and hopeful for the 10 interviews she has scheduled for the day. She irons her power skirt and navy blouse carefully, ensuring she leaves no creases uncreased. She reviews her notes on each school, each committee member, and each job requirement, preparing her responses just enough to sound polished but not too much as to sound over rehearsed. She slips on her special interview heels that give her that extra boost of confidence and height she likes and walks out of her hotel room-shutting the door behind her and with it, imagining the start of her future as an assistant professor of economics.

2019

Gender, Work and Organization, 2001

This article argues that the key to the explanation as to why sexual harassment is a feature of organizational life lies in the issue of power. Yet there has been little attempt to link sexual harassment with theories or explanatory models of power. This article first takes Lukes's (1986) three-dimensional model as a framework to explore how harassment may be understood as an exercise of power at different levels then shows how radical feminist and post-structuralist analyses overlap with and are distinct from Lukes's third dimension of power.