LDEO Diversity Colloquium: Course corrections in addressing sexual harassment in academia
by
Kathryn Clancy
Associate Professor
Director of Graduate Studies
Department of Anthropology
University of Illinois at Urbana‐Champaign
Academia has the second highest sexual harassment incidence across American workplaces, second only to the military. Sexual harassment is especially prevalent across the sciences and other male-dominated disciplines. Gender harassment in particular, the “put downs” of sexual harassment, are rarely recognized as creating a negative workplace for women and gender minorities. Yet gender harassment is the most prevalent and frequent form of harassment, and thus has similar negative outcomes for women compared to the kinds of singly traumatic sexual events described more often in the media. I will draw from recent publications as well as upcoming projects to demonstrate 1) Women of color and white women are run through a gauntlet in academia where they are hit, and hit, and hit again in a million small ways. 2) The seemingly small harms of gender harassment, those daily hits as we make our way through the gauntlet, are how we are punished for being who we are, and how we are knocked out of academia. 3) By shifting our attention towards sexist forms of harassment, towards gender harassment, we see different ways of solving the problem that do not lie in reporting and other punitive measures.
