Chapter 35 Summary

In “Sexual Harassment in Public Places,” Margaret Crouch argues that the current discourse on sexual harassment must move beyond its narrow focus on the workplace and academia and understand harassment more broadly so as to include harassment in public spaces such as city streets and public transportation. For only then, according to Crouch, can we see sexual harassment for what it really is: a means of maintaining women’s subordinate place in society, in part by constraining their freedom of movement. Crouch discusses how this constraint operates in street harassment by leading many women to avoid traveling alone in public places for fear of unwanted attention. Crouch also discusses how many legal responses to public harassment do not empower women, but actually reinforce their subordination and unequal status by presupposing traditional views of gender and gendered behavior.