آزار و اذیت جنسی در قلب؟ نظر جامعه درباره EEOC برابر میتسوبیشی موتور ساخت امریکا

Abstract The number of sexual harassment cases filed annually with the EEOC has more than doubled, from 6000 in 1990 to over 15,000 in 1996, and monetary settlements reached through the EEOC have risen from $7.7 million in 1990 to $27 million in 1996. This article reports the results of a survey of community responses to the sexual harassment suit filed by the EEOC against the Mitsubishi Motor Manufacturer of America (MMMA), plant in Normal, Illinois. Eighty-seven percent of the respondents reported following the case and half said they believe the women’s claims are legitimate. But when asked to assume that they were a member of the jury hearing the sexual harassment case, only 33 percent said they would find MMMA guilty. This article reports the results of a telephone survey conducted in August and September 1996 of residents in Bloomington-Normal, Illinois seeking their opinions about the Mitsubishi Sexual Harassment suit. Before discussing the background for the Mitsubishi sexual harassment suit and the results of the community survey, we provide a brief general account of sexual harassment and its treatment in the courts. Sexual harassment is a type of sex discrimination that transgresses Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Guidelines have been established by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that define the types of sexual harassment. The first form of sexual harassment falls under the “hostile environment” category. This type of sexual harassment involves making unwanted sexual advances or other verbal or physical contact with the goal of unreasonably obstructing an individual’s work performance or alternatively effectuating an intimidating, hostile or formidable working environment. “Quid pro quo” involves establishing the conditions of employment, implicitly or explicitly, upon the submission of unwelcome sexual advances. Since the early 1980s, several cases have been instrumental in determining what constitutes sexual harassment. Hinston v. City of Dundee (1982) held that sexual conduct becomes wrongful only when it is unwelcome. It specified unwelcome as “in the sense that the employee did not solicit or incite it, and in the sense that the employee regarded the conduct as undesirable or offensive.” In 1985, Hicks v. Gates Rubber Co. and McKinney v. Dole stated that sex-based harassment (harassment not incorporating sexual language or activity) can also violate Title VII if it is “sufficiently patterned or pervasive” and targeted toward employees due to their sex. Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson (1986) found that willful submission to sexual conduct does not necessarily suppress a claim of sexual harassment. The basis that was established was “whether [the employee] by her conduct indicated that the alleged sexual advances were welcome, not whether her actual participation in sexual intercourse was voluntary.” Rabidue v. Osceola Refining Co. (1986) determined that the perspective of the victim of sexual harassment should be considered when establishing the standard of “unreasonably interfering” with the victim’s workplace performance. In 1987, Barbetta v. Chemlawn Services Corp. found that the proliferation of pornography “may be found to create an atmosphere in which women are viewed as men’s sexual playthings rather than their equal coworkers” if it is sufficiently continuous and pervasive. In Harris v. Forklift Systems, Inc. (1993) the court held that if the workplace is saturated with conduct that is severe and pervasive enough to precipitate a hostile, discriminatory or abusive workplace, then Title VII is obstructed despite the fact that the plaintiff may have suffered psychological harm. Papa v. Domino’s Pizza involved a male employee being subjected to sexual harassment by his female supervisor. He was subsequently awarded $237,000 for the violation of his rights. This marked a dramatic triumph for the EEOC as it was the first trial in which they were successful at pursuing allegations on behalf of a male. According to Newsweek (January 13, 1997) the annual number of sexual harassment cases filed with the EEOC has more than doubled from 6000 in 1990 to 15,300 in 1996. Similarly, monetary settlements reached through the EEOC have risen from $7.7 million in 1990 to $27 million in 1996.

Research design and survey results Survey data, conducted with the help of graduate students from Illinois State University, were obtained by selecting a random sample from the Bloomington-Normal-McLean County telephone directory. The sample was chosen by selecting every third name from each column of each page and moving down one name with each new page, resulting in a total of 645 selected names. Contact was attempted three times for each individual, and after the third try, the person was removed from the list if s/he could not be reached. The response rate was 56 percent, or 363 respondents, after setting aside not-available persons and refusals to participate. Respondents were equally divided by gender with 182 men and 181 women; the majority were married and between the ages of 25 and 45. Fifty-seven percent of the men and 49 percent of the women had some years of college education. Thirty-two percent of the men and 35 percent of the women classified themselves as professional or technical workers. Thirteen percent claimed membership in a labor union. When asked if they were following the Mitsubishi sexual harassment case, 87 percent said they were, with slightly more men (90 percent) than women (84 percent) paying attention to the story. Roughly two-thirds told us they obtained most of their information from newspapers and/or television. Informal networks most likely played an equally important role in spreading information and opinions about the plant story. When asked if they know someone who works at the plant, 66 percent said they did, with 31 percent responding that the person was either a close friend or relative. In both of these questions, there was no notable difference by gender. Fifty-seven percent of all respondents know employees in either the production or clerical departments at MMMA. Again, there was no difference by gender. Fifty-five percent of the respondents stated that they had already formed an opinion on the case with equal proportions of women and men having done so. In contrast, a slightly larger percent of women (54 percent) relative to men (48 percent) believe that the sexual harassment claims the women are filing are legitimate. A more substantial gender difference emerges, however, when we control for a respondent’s prior knowledge about anyone who had been sexually harassed. In response to the question, Do you know of anyone who has ever been sexually harassed in the workplace?, 41 percent of the men and 49 percent of the women said they did.3 For those who know someone who has been harassed, belief in the legitimacy of claims against Mitsubishi increases, more so for women: now 66 percent of the women and 55 percent of the men accept these claims compared to only 43 percent of the women and 41 percent of the men who lack such knowledge. Sixty-one percent of the respondents who know someone who has been harassed, believe the women’s claims are legitimate. Among those who believe that the claims are legitimate, 90% believe MMMA’s sexual harassment policies should be reviewed and improved. We also asked those believing in the claims to indicate what kinds of actions should be taken to resolve the situation at the plant. Here we also see some mirror gender differences in attitudes toward resolution, compensation, and punishment. While a larger percentage of women support improving Mitsubishi’s sexual harassment policies (96 percent vs. 89 percent), slightly more men call for financial compensation for the victims (53 percent vs. 49 percent) and pink slips for the harassers (64 percent vs. 55 percent) and the managers (49 percent vs. 45 percent) responsible for enforcing the sexual harassment policies. Once they accept the charges, men are somewhat more willing to adopt stronger sanctions. Finally, respondents were asked to assume that they were a member of a jury hearing the sexual harassment case and were responsible for determining the guilt or innocence of Mitsubishi. Clearly, the court of law carries more stringent evidentiary requirements than the court of public opinion. Given the information available to them, and what appears to be a fairly high level of skepticism about the media, only 33 percent of the respondents were now willing to assign guilt to MMMA, 38 percent were not, and 29 percent could or would not decide on the basis of the information available to them. Controlling for gender, 36 percent of the women and 29 percent of the men believed the MMMA was guilty relative to 33 percent of the women and 43 percent of the men who believed they were not guilty. The balance, 28 percent of the men and 31 percent of women, were undecided. On the one hand, when asked whether they would award financial damages if the jury delivered a guilty verdict, 66 percent of the men compared to 56 percent of the women responded in the affirmative. Once again, men are more willing to punish offenders when claims of sexual harassment are substantiated. The regression analyses, summarized in Table 1, help establish the relative contribution of gender vis-à-vis age, income, education, union membership, length of residency, knowledge of anyone who has been sexually harassed, familiarity with a plant worker, and sources of information in explaining variance in five of the dependent variables: Have you formed an opinion? Are the claims legitimate? What actions should be taken to resolve the situation? Is Mitsubishi guilty or not guilty? Should damages be awarded? In addition, we created two sets of dummy variables, one concerning work settings and the other attitudes about the suit. For work settings we coded occupational and employer data to indicate whether a respondent worked in a white-collar industry, which was defined as insurance, education, government, or health care work; or whether the respondent was a man working in a traditional male occupation, such as construction, metal working, fire-fighting, manufacturing, and so forth. During or at the end of the survey, about a third of the respondents volunteered comments about the lawsuit. Several common themes emerged, three of which are analyzed here as dummy variables. Some blamed women at the plant for the harassment (e.g., some women are the type who bring it on themselves, women don’t have a place in industries like this, some women allowed it to happen, etc.) and/or claimed that some women were gold-digging or jumping on the bandwagon just for the money. Others blamed national organizations and politicians, especially Jessie Jackson, for exploiting the incident for their own purposes. These were also a number of comments expressing distrust of the media, or claiming that the media was blowing the incident out of proportion.