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America's Overprotective Sexual Harassment Law

by Joan Kennedy Taylor

This article first appeared in Investor's Business Daily, April 6, 2000.

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We are letting something destructive happen to American business in the name of helping women. Current sexual harassment law--that is, the extension of anti-discrimination law to stifle and punish sexual speech in the workplace--is creating the very hostility between the sexes that it purports to correct.

Men and women are not natural enemies but are being told that they are. Men are warned that if they offend female co-workers they might be disciplined or even terminated. Women are being instructed that offensive speech, if heard from men in the workplace, is probably illegal. And to top it off, the Supreme Court is requiring businesses to give these warnings.

There is certainly a free speech issue involved, but from a management perspective the matter is worse than that: it's divisive. The workplace and society are changing. The American work force is becoming more diverse, while our work is less dependent on physical strength. Women are now needed in jobs for which, just a few decades ago, they had to struggle to be considered.

The problem is not one of sexism. It is a problem of expectation and communication and of misinformation given to workers of both genders. There are undoubtedly a few men who bitterly resent the success of women. But their problem and problems of sexual predation and male aggression are not the subjects discussed in the ubiquitous programs that management feels compelled to set up today. Rather, it's clear that those programs deal with faulty expectation and miscommunication: the joke couched in raw language, the playful misunderstood insult, the complimentary remark, the hazing of a newcomer--in other words, the staples of male culture.

Women can't know the way men behave when women are not around. And men, used to all-male workplaces, are not sure how to treat female co-workers. They may treat them as sex objects rather than colleagues or be overly paternalistic. But such faulty expectations and miscommunications do not prove sexual harassment.

If the problem is not one of sexism, the solution is not one of legal remedy. Instead, the solution is to increase all workers' knowledge and to foster communication. We need a different attitude and a different kind of employee training.

This country tried once before to protect women from the effects of workplace transition. The protective labor legislation in effect from 1908 until the 1970s mandated special conditions for women: minimum wages, maximum hours, laws against night work and heavy lifting, and requirements for special rest breaks. Certain occupations, such as mining and wrestling, were banned for women altogether. Feminists realized in the 1970s that such regulations were "protecting" women out of good jobs and promotions.

Once more, an attempt to protect women at work is doing them harm. Like the labor legislation, sexual harassment protection spreads the assumption that women are too delicate to flourish in the workplace without government aid. Sexual harassment regulation has failed women in a changing world. It harms everyone. It violates free speech, creates rather than lessens workplace hostility and fosters a Victorian view of women. If some women find it difficult to speak up for themselves, we should help them empower themselves, not rely on the government to mandate worker relations.

Not only should government not be relied on in social situations, it cannot be relied on. Women can learn what to expect in the workplace and how to handle problems that arise with their male co-workers. In so doing women will not only better protect themselves, they will also feel the satisfaction that comes from being effective personally as well as professionally.