ABSTRACT
The group – naming itself Women Organized Against Sexual Harassment (WOASH) – engaged in intense activity over a two-year period to protest and work to establish such a procedure. The ubiquity of less severe forms of sexual harassment, feminist scholars agree, normalizes more serious forms of violence against women such as sexual assault. Feminist theory has largely taken a structural approach to sexual harassment, examining how the distribution of power and the division of labor in organizations facilitate men’s power and women’s subordination. Sexual harassment of employees in work organizations drew the attention of policymakers and feminist researchers prior to sexual harassment on campuses being recognized as a pervasive problem. WOASH members were informed by actions against sexual harassment at other universities and among working women’s groups, and in this sense were part of a loose feminist network emerging in the late 1970s.
