ABSTRACT
This chapter assesses the incidence of sexual harassment among women in the federal government, how they respond to it, and its impact on them. It further examines the extent to which federally employed men and women share similar perceptions of sexual harassment, as considerable research outside the federal sector has shown that they do not based on responses to two government-wide surveys administered by the US Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) in 1987 and 1994. Sexual harassment is not simply a legal issue, it is a management issue. The chapter summarizes some of the matters that make sexual harassment difficult but important to address, as documented by a growing literature on the subject. It examines changes in definitions and incidence of sexual harassment over by using data from the 1987 and 1994 MSPB surveys. The chapter suggests that women and men think about sexual harassment in very different ways.
