Lin Farley

Last updated

Lin Farley
Born (1942-12-14) December 14, 1942 (age 81)
NationalityAmerican
Occupation(s)Author and journalist
Known forCoining the phrase "sexual harassment" and calling attention to the issue of sexual harassment of women in the workplace

Lin Farley (born December 14, 1942) is an American author, journalist and feminist. She was a leader in calling attention to the problems faced by women in the workforce, in particular sexual harassment.

Contents

Sexual harassment

In 1974, she was hired by Cornell University as director of the university's Women's Section and lecturer for a field study course called Women and Work. In a 1974 consciousness raising discussion connected with that course, she began to realize the extent of the problem that she later termed "sexual harassment". [1] As the women in the class described their experiences in the workplace she noticed a pattern: every woman there had either quit or been fired from a job because they had been made so uncomfortable by the behavior of men. She discovered that this phenomenon of male harassment and intimidation of female workers had not been described in the literature and was not publicly recognized as a problem, although she continued to hear it described by women from all walks of life. [2]

In 1975, inspired by the case of Carmita Wood, an administrative assistant to Cornell professor Boyce McDaniel, the group at Cornell formed the anti-harassment organization Working Women United. Wood had resigned after she developed physical symptoms due to the stress of fighting off McDaniel's persistent sexual advances. After Cornell denied her unemployment compensation, Wood approached the Human Affairs Office, which was staffed by Farley and two other committed feminists, Susan Meyer and Karen Sauvigné. [3]

In April 1975, she testified before the New York City Human Rights Commission Hearings on Women and Work, led by Eleanor Holmes Norton. She defined sexual harassment as "unwanted sexual advances against women employees by male supervisors, bosses, foremen or managers." She gave examples: "It often means that a woman is hired because she is pretty, regardless of her qualifications; that a woman's job security is eternally dependent on how well she pleases her boss, and he often thinks sexual companionship is part of the job description; and that women are fired because they have aged or they are too independent or they say 'no' to sexual byplay." [4]

A New York Times reporter who heard her testimony wrote about it, [5] and by the end of 1975 her message had reached a national audience. [6] Government agencies began to recognize sexual harassment as a problem to be addressed. Norton's Human Right's Commission added language to their affirmative action agreements guaranteeing "protection to male and female employees alike against unfair abuse of sexual privacy". [5] Over the following decades Farley gave numerous public and academic presentations on the topic, and served as a consultant to the U.S. Department of Labor, the AFL-CIO, civil rights organizations and women's study programs.

She wrote a book, Sexual Shakedown: The Sexual Harassment of Women on the Job, [2] published by McGraw-Hill in 1978 and in a paperback version by Warner Books in 1980. In it she traced the history of sexual harassment as a longstanding issue [7] and gave contemporary examples, such as help-wanted advertisements implying that acceptance of sexual interaction was part of the job description. [8] The book established sexual harassment as an important topic on the feminist agenda. [7] The Christian Science Monitor said the book was "an overdue alert to the sexual harassment of working women by male employers which starkly reveals the emotional and physical degradations inflicted on women in the exploitive politics of power at their most base." [9]

In 1981, she collaborated on the 33-minute documentary The Workplace Hustle, produced by Woody Clark and Al Brito and narrated by Ed Asner. Farley was a consultant and also appeared in the film. It was intended as a training film for workplaces, and it was widely used for that purpose by government agencies as well as corporations like Xerox and Hewlett-Packard. It won awards at the San Francisco Film Festival and the New York Film Festival. [10]

Background and personal life

Her parents, Vincent and Beatrice Farley, were working-class people; both were shop stewards in their respective unions. [11] Her parents had little education, but read widely. She later commented, "My mother had a hard life and all her dreams were stifled. I know that I became a feminist and wrote Sexual Shakedown in part because I had become sensitized from her experiences as a working woman." [2] She attended local public schools in New Jersey and then in Downey, California. During her senior year she was elected the Youth Governor of both the California YMCA Youth & Government (Y&G) Model Legislature Program, and the American Legion Auxiliary's Girls State. She was the 12th and first female Youth Governor for California's Y&G Program.[ citation needed ] She started and dropped out of several colleges before going to the University of Southern California on a journalism scholarship. Before graduation she went to work for the Associated Press in New York as a reporter and feature writer.

She taught at Cornell from 1974 to 1976, then became a freelance consultant on women's issues while writing her book.[ citation needed ] She received a master's degree in Eastern and Western Psychology from Naropa University in 1985. She earned a PhD in Eastern Psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies in 1993; her thesis was titled "The secret world of men: Men's attitudes, beliefs, fantasies and desires with regard to women and children".

She lived in Taipei for three years while writing for the English-language publication Free China Journal . Returning to the United States, she became a consultant to computer companies on human factors engineering.

Related Research Articles

Radical feminism is a perspective within feminism that calls for a radical re-ordering of society in which male supremacy is eliminated in all social and economic contexts, while recognizing that women's experiences are also affected by other social divisions such as in race, class, and sexual orientation. The ideology and movement emerged in the 1960s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sexual harassment</span> Unwanted sexual attention or advances

Sexual harassment is a type of harassment involving the use of explicit or implicit sexual overtones, including the unwelcome and inappropriate promises of rewards in exchange for sexual favors. Sexual harassment can be physical and/or a demand or request for sexual favors, making sexually colored remarks, showing pornography, and any other unwelcome physical, verbal, or non-verbal conduct of a sexual nature. Sexual harassment includes a range of actions from verbal transgressions to sexual abuse or assault. Harassment can occur in many different social settings such as the workplace, the home, school, or religious institutions. Harassers or victims can be of any gender.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Catharine A. MacKinnon</span> American feminist scholar and legal activist

Catharine Alice MacKinnon is an American feminist legal scholar, activist, and author. She is the Elizabeth A. Long Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School, where she has been tenured since 1990, and the James Barr Ames Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. From 2008 to 2012, she was the special gender adviser to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court.

<i>Jenson v. Eveleth Taconite Co.</i> U.S. class-action sexual harassment lawsuit

Jenson v. Eveleth Taconite Co., 130 F.3d 1287, was the first class-action sexual harassment lawsuit in the United States. It was filed in 1988 on behalf of Lois Jenson and other female workers at the Eveleth Taconite mine in Eveleth, Minnesota on the state's northern Mesabi Range, which is part of the Iron Range.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Feminist sociology</span> Subdiscipline of sociology

Feminist sociology is an interdisciplinary exploration of gender and power throughout society. Here, it uses conflict theory and theoretical perspectives to observe gender in its relation to power, both at the level of face-to-face interaction and reflexivity within social structures at large. Focuses include sexual orientation, race, economic status, and nationality.

Diana E. H. Russell was a feminist writer and activist. Born and raised in Cape Town, South Africa, she moved to England in 1957, and then to the United States in 1961. For the past 45 years she was engaged in research on sexual violence against women and girls. She wrote numerous books and articles on rape, including marital rape, femicide, incest, misogynist murders of women, and pornography. For The Secret Trauma, she was co-recipient of the 1986 C. Wright Mills Award. She was also the recipient of the 2001 Humanist Heroine Award from the American Humanist Association. She was also an organizer of the First International Tribunal on Crimes against Women, in Brussels in March 1976.

Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson, 477 U.S. 57 (1986), is a US labor law case, where the United States Supreme Court, in a 9–0 decision, recognized sexual harassment as a violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The case was the first of its kind to reach the Supreme Court and would redefine sexual harassment in the workplace.

Women have made significant contributions to philosophy throughout the history of the discipline. Ancient examples include Maitreyi, Gargi Vachaknavi, Hipparchia of Maroneia and Arete of Cyrene. Some women philosophers were accepted during the medieval and modern eras, but none became part of the Western canon until the 20th and 21st century, when some sources indicate that Simone Weil Susanne Langer, G.E.M. Anscombe, Hannah Arendt and Simone de Beauvoir entered the canon.

Feminist sexology is an offshoot of traditional studies of sexology that focuses on the intersectionality of sex and gender in relation to the sexual lives of women. Sexology has a basis in psychoanalysis, specifically Freudian theory, which played a big role in early sexology. This reactionary field of feminist sexology seeks to be inclusive of experiences of sexuality and break down the problematic ideas that have been expressed by sexology in the past. Feminist sexology shares many principles with the overarching field of sexology; in particular, it does not try to prescribe a certain path or "normality" for women's sexuality, but only observe and note the different and varied ways in which women express their sexuality. It is a young field, but one that is growing rapidly.

9to5, National Association of Working Women is an organization established in 1973 that is dedicated to improving working conditions and ensuring the rights of women and families in the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Women in the workforce</span> All women who perform some kind of job

Since the industrial revolution, participation of women in the workforce outside the home has increased in industrialized nations, with particularly large growth seen in the 20th century. Largely seen as a boon for industrial society, women in the workforce contribute to a higher national economic output as measure in GDP as well as decreasing labor costs by increasing the labor supply in a society.

A kyariaūman (キャリアウーマン) is a Japanese term for a career woman. The term refers to the type of Japanese woman, married or not, that pursues a career to make a living and for personal advancement rather than being a housewife without occupation outside the home. The term came into use when women were expected to marry and become housewives after a short period working as an "office lady".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Karen Nussbaum</span> American labor leader

Karen Nussbaum is an American labor leader and founding director of Working America. Nussbaum was born in Chicago where her mother, Annette Brenner Nussbaum, was a publicist, and her father, Myron "Mike" Nussbaum, was an exterminator, actor, and director. Her parents were active in the anti-Vietnam movement and worked to bring speakers to their community of Highland Park in Chicago including Staughton Lynd. During this time, the family was also receiving hate mail from the local John Birch Society. She enrolled in the University of Chicago in 1968 but dropped out to move to Boston and work in the anti-Vietnam movement. In 1975, she earned a B.A. from Goddard College. While in Boston, she began working as a clerical worker at Harvard where she was exposed to inequalities in the workplace for female office workers.

Feminist views on sexuality widely vary. Many feminists, particularly radical feminists, are highly critical of what they see as sexual objectification and sexual exploitation in the media and society. Radical feminists are often opposed to the sex industry, including opposition to prostitution and pornography. Other feminists define themselves as sex-positive feminists and believe that a wide variety of expressions of female sexuality can be empowering to women when they are freely chosen. Some feminists support efforts to reform the sex industry to become less sexist, such as the feminist pornography movement.

Sexual harassment in the workplace in US labor law has been considered a form of discrimination on the basis of sex in the United States since the mid-1970s. There are two forms of sexual harassment recognized by United States law: quid pro quo sexual harassment and behavior that creates a hostile work environment. It has been noted that a number of the early sexual harassment cases were brought by African American women and girls.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">MeToo movement</span> Social movement against sexual abuse and harassment

#MeToo is a social movement and awareness campaign against sexual abuse, sexual harassment and rape culture, in which people publicize their experiences of sexual abuse or sexual harassment. The phrase "Me Too" was initially used in this context on social media in 2006, on Myspace, by sexual assault survivor and activist Tarana Burke. The hashtag #MeToo was used starting in 2017 as a way to draw attention to the magnitude of the problem. "Me Too" empowers those who have been sexually assaulted through empathy, solidarity and strength in numbers, by visibly demonstrating how many have experienced sexual assault and harassment, especially in the workplace.

Sandra Bundy is best known for her part in landmark case Bundy v. Jackson, which was the first federal appeals court case to hold that workplace sexual harassment was employment discrimination and a violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Working Women United (WWU) is a women's rights organisation based in the United States which was formed in Ithaca, New York in 1975, to combat sexual harassment of women in the workplace.

The Alliance Against Sexual Coercion (AASC) was an American organization that aimed to address sexual coercion and sexual harassment faced by working women. The organization was established in June 1976 by Freada Kapor Klein, Lynn Wehrli, and Elizabeth Cohn-Stuntz. They argued that sexual harassment toward women increases difficulties for women in the workplace by reinforcing the idea that women are inferior to men.

Nadine Taub was an American lawyer who laid the essential groundwork for women's rights in the workplace, including defending and winning the first sexual harassment case in the US in 1977. Taub played a pivotal, but largely unrecognized, role in the development of sexual harassment law in the United States. As part of a group of young female lawyers in the 1970s, including Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Nancy Stearns and others, Taub made legal history by winning cases which argued that the Constitution protected women's rights.

References

  1. ↑ MacKinnon, Catharine A.; Siegel, Reva B. (2004). Directions in Sexual Harassment Law. Yale University Press. p. 8. ISBN   0-300-09800-6.
  2. 1 2 3 Farley, Lin (1978). Sexual Shakedown: The Sexual Harassment of Women on the Job . McGraw-Hill. ISBN   0070199574.
  3. ↑ Baker, Carrie N. (2008). The Women's Movement Against Sexual Harassment . Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press. pp.  27–29. ISBN   978-0-521-70494-6.
  4. ↑ "Testimony given by Lin Farley". Hearings on women in blue-collar, service, and clerical occupations. Commission on Human Rights of the City of New York. April 21, 1975.{{cite web}}: Missing or empty |url= (help)
  5. 1 2 Nemy, Enid (August 20, 1975). "Sexual harassment a problem in the office". New York Times New Service, cited in the Miami Herald. Retrieved March 27, 2013.
  6. ↑ Nolan, Irene (November 16, 1975). "Sex and the working woman – harassment on the job". Louisville Courier-Journal.
  7. 1 2 Taylor, Betty; Rush, Sharon; Munro, Robert J. (1999). Feminist Jurisprudence, Women and the Law. Buffalo, New York: Fred B. Rothman Publications. p. 327. ISBN   0-8377-1224-6.
  8. ↑ Hajdin, Mane (2002). The Law of Sexual Harassment: A Critique. Rosemont Publishing & Printing Corp. ISBN   1-57591-058-6.
  9. ↑ Lindborg, Kristina (April 11, 1979). "Sex as a job hazard". The Christian Science Monitor. Archived from the original on June 30, 2013. Retrieved March 27, 2013.
  10. ↑ ""The Workplace Hustle" no joke". The Telegraph. June 17, 1981. Retrieved March 27, 2013.
  11. ↑ "Lin Farley". Huffington Post. Retrieved April 13, 2013.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.