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In this article Texeria studies the harassment of women in the law enforcement profession, and by association reflects on all women who join the ranks of a traditionally male profession. It details several black women's stories of how they have been sexually harrassed in their workplace, and how they handled it.
I was very disheartened reading this. This article portrays not just sexual harassment, but rape, as a common occurence for women in men's jobs. I still want to believe that the fact that these were all from a single agency leaves room for the possibility that it is an isolated set of incidents and these kinds of practices don't permeate throughout our police forces. I guess I would need to find out if further studies have been done that corroborate or reject this one, until then I'll remain optimistic.
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I really wish that a lot of these studies had been taken from a broader spectrum (the article about sexual harassment in restaurants had the same issue of a small sample), but I get the feeling that this sort of thing takes place, to varying degrees, in law enforcement agencies all over. Certainly the level of sexual harassment will be less in some places and more in others, but the fact is that until relatively recently, law enforcement was an exclusively male profession. People have a hard time letting go of their power and privilege. You see these same sorts of things occurring in the army and such as well. It's an unfortunate truth, but it is one that is certainly changing as time goes by, and more than likely we'll see much lower levels of sexual harassment in these male-dominated professions in the future.
ReplyDeleteI feel like the phrase male-dominated professions is too vague in this discussion - cuz doesn't that apply to most fields at this point? While this is an incredibly disheartenting finding, I do agree that exists at different levels within society and within certain professions. In particular, I would guess you'd see this in more blue-collar, manual-labor type fields, at least as far as the tendancies for the most direct situations of harassment, and potenitally rape. Think of the moview North Country with Charlize Theron, in which a female coal miner (I think that's what she was) is repeatedly harassed, abused and eventually raped by her male coworkers. It's an incredibly heartbreaking tale to witness, and as you can see from this study, it is based on a certain element of truth. I worked on a farm fro six years. While nothing this bad happened there, I know from this experience that you jobs involving a lot of manual labor also involve a certain deal of harassment, especially if they are male dominated. Men in this jobs mock each other on all ways, oftentimes sexually. And if women are brought the mix, well, they are likely to be subjugated to the same type of harassment. Except in these types of blue-collar jobs, I feel there are feelings of resentment, of very explicit "this is a man's world, a man's career" type of mentality in which women are view explicitly as intruders. And this is not any type of jusificiation of the actions and the harrassment thata results from these beliefs, but just sort of a way to explain while it seems to develop in certain fields more than others.
ReplyDeleteIt is a really shocking realization once one discovers how the people sworn to protect them, are really just average Joes, and sometimes they perpetrate crimes. I mean, I'm sure that sexual harassment occurs in firehouses, police stations, military bases, and all traditional "boy's clubs". This is disheartening but also down-right wrong, and repugnant. I guess I can see the winds of change coming in, but once again this issue is more than just policy or hiring wide. The gendering of jobs causes these problems. We are all human, so we should all be capable of human jobs. I mean who is to say that a woman can't fight fires, or be a cop, or fight in a war? people claim that it has to do with hormones, and muscle-mass, and "emotions". Heck, if I were a firefighter, cop, or soldier, I'd have mood swings, I'd have trouble lifting things, and I'd sure as hell cry, I'm human. If I had no emotions or difficulties in strength...I'd be a robot. We really need to do away with the term "male-dominated profession", and maybe make it, "Male-employed profession" Say what it really means, more men have these jobs, doesn't mean they are inherently better at them.
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