Working Women United

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

According to some researchers, the organization was the first to use the term "sexual harassment" in the workplace context.[1] In the beginning of the organization's activism, their definition for sexual harassment was "the treatment of women workers as sexual objects," but the organization did not specify which behaviors constituted such harassment.[2]

Carmita Wood

The founding of the group was inspired by the case of Carmita Wood, who quit her job at Cornell University due to sexual harassment and became one of the first women in the US to sue her employer on such grounds.[1]

In 1975, Carmita Wood quit her position at Cornell University due to harassment from her supervisor, Boyce McDaniel, and the University refused to approve of a transfer. Subsequently, Wood filed for unemployment benefits from the university. Cornell refused to approve the benefits, stating Wood had quit for "personal reasons." Working Women United was active in response to the incident and Wood's subsequent lawsuit. Cornell instructor Lin Farley, a key organiser in Working Women United, used the phrase "sexual harassment" at a hearing of the New York City Human Rights Commission, and The New York Times reported on the hearing and the phrase used, helping to introduce the concept and phrase "sexual harassment" into the national lexicon.[3]

References

  1. 1 2 Fitzgerald, Louise F. "Sexual harassment: The definition and measurement of a construct." Ivory power: Sexual harassment on campus 21, no. 22 (1990): 24-30.
  2. ↑ Loy, Pamela Hewitt, and Lea P. Stewart. "The extent and effects of the sexual harassment of working women." Sociological focus 17, no. 1 (1984): 31-43.
  3. ↑ "The depressingly long history of sexual harassment". The Week.


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