Shock and Shame: Sexual Harassment, Social Closure, and Capital Guarding in Tech and Finance

• In Event: Organizations, Occupations, and Work Section Open Call Paper Session

Abstract

Sociological theories of sexual harassment identify it as fundamentally about power. While considerable research documents how sexual harassment maintains social hierarchies in the workplace, less is known about how it is embedded in the economy, creating boundaries around who can access resources and capital. To further understand how sexual harassment reinforces power and inequality in society, I bring together the theories of relational inequality and economic embeddedness. By integrating these frameworks, I show how sexual harassment is a case of how relational inequality is embedded in the investment deals driving finance capitalism in the United States economy. I examine how sexual harassment is a tool for maintaining status and resources in three industries that control considerable amounts of capital: hedge fund, venture capital, and high tech. Drawing from 137 in-depth interviews and field observations, I identify how sexual harassment serves to police access to money via hedge fund investors, venture capital deal-flow, and startup funding. I find that sexual harassment serves as a mechanism for exploitation, social closure, and claims making, simultaneously cutting off access to resources and opportunities for some while consolidating control over those assets within the hands of a select few. Sexual harassment thus serves to preserve a monopoly on status, resources, and power to ensure the reproduction of inequality in these firm types that have broader implications for the U.S. economy and labor market.

Author

• Megan Tobias Neely, University of Colorado Boulder