ABSTRACT
Sexual harassment in the workplace has also become a hot topic among feminist researchers in the Nordic countries. In 1992, the theme was taken up in a Danish book Seksuel Chikane (Sexual harassment) by the Danish psychologist Liby Tata Arcel, and in a Norwegian book Sex i arbeid(et) (Sex at work), edited by sociologists Marianne C.Brantsæter and Karin Widerberg, both of whom work at the University of Oslo. Sexual harassment can also be seen as a mushroom with an extensive underground mycelium. Hearn & Parkin (1987) point out that making sexual harassment visible provides an important empirical contribution to the study of organizations. These studies are examples of how the understanding of organizations is undergoing change through feminist research. They have opened the door to a broader study of gender and its influences in work organizations. Gender differences at work have most often been treated as something coming from the outside, as the English sociologist Humphrey summarizes:
Sexual differentiation is seen as largely determined outside the labour market in the sexual division of labour in the household. However, it has become increasingly obvious that gender, or power relations between the sexes, permeates all social institutions, and that the
supposedly objective economic laws and market competition work through and within gendered structures (Humphrey 1985:219).
