What Kind of Times Are These? The Mystery of Sexual Harassment in the Postliberal Feminism Era

• In Event: Women Leading Education Across the Continents: Overcoming the Barriers

Abstract

Purpose
Sexual harassment is a recurrent issue in higher education with systemic consequences. The American Association of University Women (AAUW) has enumerated long-term effects of sexual harassment, including physical, emotional, and academic. This assertion is critical for higher education policy since women outnumber men on college campuses (Behling, 2007 cited in Pasque, 2008; Hill & Silva, 2005). The purpose of this US-based study was to explore women’s perceptions of sexual harassment in higher education.

Perspective
This investigation was grounded in the Foucaudian precept that posits “discourse transmit and produces power; it reinforces it but also undermines and exposes it, renders it fragile and make it possible to thwart it” (Foucault, 1990, p. 101). It challenges dysfunctions and limitations of liberal feminist policy and theory and uses feminist critical policy analysis to examine gender and informal and formal processes of power (Marshall, 1997).

Methods
The authors framed this study using multiple feminisms that accentuate institutional structures that buffer patriarchal constructions of gender. It included 19 women who have experienced sexual harassment in four types of universities: historically white universities; historically black colleges and universities; private, and public. The women presented their stories through individual, in-depth interviews.

Findings
Findings and implications revealed connections between policy on sexual harassment and institutional culture. The four, major themes were ambiguity in definitions and vague policy; turning points in women’s educational and career pursuits, women’s ways of understanding power relations, creating strategies, and self-efficacy; and spaces where women find empowering messages. Freedom from sexual harassment is not a reality for women in education currently, regardless of policies that exist.

Results
Changes in policy and strategies can help policy-makers create transformation interventions and alterations of institutional culture. Barriers salient to implementation, however, include the following: implementation realities; loose coupling; street-level bureaucrats; and unintended consequences. In particular, policy slippage is not uncommon. Even so, in an established democracy, it is imperative that leaders strive for congruence between policy and practice.

Significance
While national policies exist in the United States, symbolic politics (Edelman, 1985) fail to provide any substantial support for effecting authentic change in implementation. Recognizing that gender equity has not been attained is the first step to addressing the real and deleterious impact that sexual harassment has on women in the workplace.

Authors

• Brooke Midkiff, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill

• Catherine Marshall, University of North Carolina

• Keren Dalyot, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill