Is office harassment really a thing of the past?

In her history of the feminist movement, In Our Time, Susan Brownmiller writes about the moment when the term “sexual harassment” first began being used publicly.

It was the mid-1970s, and a group of women activists at Cornell University in the US were organising a “speak-out”, and wanted to define their subject matter appropriately. They considered “sexual intimidation”, “sexual coercion” and “sexual exploitation on the job”, before finally arriving at sexual harassment. That was it. That was the term that described what women had been experiencing in offices and factories the world over, a description that could encompass everything: the suggestive, slyly intimidating remarks from bosses, the badgering for sexual favours, the constant comments on a woman’s appearance, the groping, knee-touching, bottom-slapping shame of it all.

The problem was ripe to be named. In the past week, as part of the fall-out from Jimmy Savile‘s alleged predations, there have been constant reminders of that era, of the casual sexism, often tipping into outright misogyny, that affected so many women in the workplace. DJ Liz Kershaw, for instance, has said she was routinely groped by another presenter when working at Radio 1 in the 1980s; while broadcasting, she would suddenly feel “wandering hands up my jumper fondling my breasts”.

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