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First published February 2006

“I’m Not Thinking of It as Sexual Harassment”: Understanding Harassment across Race and Citizenship

Sandy Welsh, Jacquie Carr, Barbara MacQuarrie, and Audrey HuntleyView all authors and affiliations
Volume 20, Issue 1
https://doi.org/10.1177/0891243205282785

Abstract

How do diverse groups of women in Canada define sexual harassment? To answer this question requires incorporating race and citizenship into the analysis of sexual harassment. The authors use data from seven focus groups of Canadian women. The white women with full citizenship rights most easily identify with existing legal understandings of sexual harassment and believe they have the right to report their harassment. For women of color and women without full citizenship rights, issues of racialized sexual harassment emerge as central factors in their harassment experience. Black women with full citizenship rights call into question whether the term sexual harassment captures their experiences. Filipinas working as live-in caregivers on limited visas demonstrate how racism and lack of citizenship changes definitions of sexual harassment. Their experiences of harassment combine elements of isolation due to their lack of citizenship, racialized sexual harassment, and abuse. The authors argue that intersectional analyses are needed to understand women’s harassment experiences and their ability to complain and seek legal recourse.

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1.
1. We also did interviews with 17 women to explore these issues as well as issues related to reporting harassment. While not included in this analysis, our work is also informed by these interviews.
2.
2. An earlier version of this article contained a discussion of the conflicts that arose in the research process. Due to space limitations, this discussion was dropped. We do not want to give the impression though that the research process was smooth and seamless. At two points in time, this project was polarized over the issues of racism and the entry point for the study. Some researchers conceived of the project starting with an analysis of gendered violence against women while others spoke of how racism was the appropriate starting place. We were caught in a debate over what an intersectional analysis should look like. This debate can be considered part of larger historical and political debates concerning “the prioritization of race and racism despite the general insistence [in intersectional theorizing] upon the simultaneity of social relations based upon race, gender, and class” (Stasiulis 1999, 356). Details of the research conflicts and researchers’ responses to these conflicts can be found in Carr et al. (2004).
3.
3. This example also highlights the issue of class position as some of these white working-class women experienced violent and severe harassment similar to one of the domestic workers from the Philippines but different from that of the middle-class professional women in our study (including white and Black women). We do not want to mute the diversity of class experiences within the groups in our study. Yet in the interest of space, we made the difficult decision to focus on race and citizenship for this analysis.
4.
4. We are grateful to an anonymous reviewer for pointing out the importance of the race of the harasser, an aspect often overlooked in studies of sexual harassment.

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Published In

Volume 20, Issue 1
Pages: 87 - 107
Article first published: February 2006
Issue published: February 2006

Keywords

  1. sexual harassment
  2. race
  3. citizenship
  4. intersectionality

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Sandy Welsh
University of Toronto
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Barbara MacQuarrie
University of Western Ontario
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