35. Understanding Sexual Harassment at Work
Introduction:
1.The problem:
The moral problem of sexual harassment is the problem of determining the nature of sexual harassment and how to avoid it.
2.Questions:
2.1. How do people define sexual harassment?
2.2. How common is it?
3.Recognized the problem:
Sexual harassment was not recognized by U.S. trial courts as an offense until the late 1970s
4.Sexual behavior:
The term “sexual behavior” consists of behavior that is legally considered sexual harassment as well as nonharassing sexual behavior.
The Discovery of Sexual Harassment:
1. Discovery and report:
1.1. The first accounts of sexual harassment were journalistic reports and case studies.
1.1.1.Lin Farley’s book, Sexual shakedown: the Sexual Harassment of Women on the Job: to bring the problem to public;
1.1.2. Catharine Mackinnon’s book, Sexual Harassment of Working Women: to seek a legal way for handling the problem;
2. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), 1980
Defining sexual harassment under Tile VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act as a form of unlawful sex-bases discrimination.
Defining Sexual Harassment:
1. The types of defining sexual harassment:
1.1. Surveys: asking various populations of people to tell whether various acts constitute sexual harassment.
1.2. experimental studies: asking students, employees, or managers to rate one or more hypothetical situations in which aspects of the situation are varied along important dimensions. It is also known as “Paper people paradigm”
1.2.1. Subjects are asked to determine whether a particular scenario depicts an instance of sexual harassment
1.2.2. Researchers examine the attributions of subjects to understand how subjects’ interpretations of a scenario affect their use of the label, sexual harassment.
2. Experimental studies
2.1. The strength: it allows researchers to make causal statements.
2.2. The weakness: the situation is invariable insufficiently “real.”
3. Results:
3.1. Survey studies shows:
Sexual activity as a requirement of the job is defined as sexual harassment by about 81-98% of working adults.
3.2. Experimental studies shows:
The following variables make a difference whether an incident is labeled harassment: the behavior: relationship; the sex of the harasser; the sex and age of the victim; the sex of the rater; and the occupation.
4. Factors affection the definitions of sexual harassment
4.1. Characteristics of the behavior
4.2. The nature of the relationship between actors
4.3. Characteristics of the observer
4.4. Context factors
5. The pattern:
Threaten
Touching
The relationships between the two people
Gender
50. Homosexual Conduct Is Wrong
(Notes see your handout)
Questions:
1. How to understand the relationship between homosexual and family morality?
2. How to understand the relationship between homosexual and marriage?
3. Is homosexual conduct immoral? Can it be allowed for the moral permissibility?
4. Is AIDS a punishment to homosexual people?