And Backhouse and Cohen show equally convincingly and depressingly how ineffective it is to appeal to personnel officers, unions, or government human rights agencies, all of whom tend to dismiss the problem more or less casually.
And yet, there is something wrong about this taboo, even if it were possible.
The problem is not sexuality in the workplace, so much as certain features of life itself. Here we should remind ourselves of some basic facts about our society: in Canada, most bosses are men, most women their employees; sexual relationships tend to be initiated by men; women's jobs often require sex appeal; men gain status by their personal achievement, but most women gain status from association with men; and most women work at relatively unskilled jobs with little or no job security.
When we add that most women work for economic necessity, then we have a recipe for female passivity in the workplace, and male power with a sexual component and an economic enforcer. Each separate face embodies inequality, and the remedy is the changes that will produce equality in both the sexual and the working realms.
What we need, say the authors, is more women bosses, women as sexual partners instead of prey, job requirements related to the task and not to its occupant, and women gaining status from work that, finally, is as skilled, as well-paid, and as secure as men's.
Sexual harassment, in short, is simply the most recently revealed (and perhaps the nastiest) consequence of the continuing inequality of women in both private and public. But the solution is not to dehumanize the workplace. Working and personal lives intersect, and this is most obvious in respect to our choices of possible sexual partners. Where else are we to meet people in a world where church and family have declined in importance, and so many people live alone? And what sort of an office life would it be if we cannot have human relationships there - which must include sexual ones?
If the women's movement has taught us anything, it is that sexuality can be life-enhancing instead of constricting, for women as well as for men. Unfortunatey, as The Secret Oppression reminds us, women still have a long way to go from being sex objects to being persons. Naomi Black teaches political science at York University.
