Sexual harassment is a type of harassment based on the sex or gender of a victim. It can involve offensive sexist or sexual behavior, verbal or physical actions, up to bribery, coercion, and assault. Harassment may be explicit or implicit, with some examples including making unwanted sexually colored remarks, actions that insult and degrade by gender, showing pornography, demanding or requesting sexual favors , offensive sexual advances, and any other unwelcome physical, verbal, or non-verbal sometimes provocative conduct based on sex.
Harassers or victims can be of any gender. In modern legal contexts, sexual harassment is illegal. Laws surrounding sexual harassment generally do not prohibit simple teasing, offhand comments, or minor isolated incidents—that is due to the fact that they do not impose a "general civility code".
The legal and social understanding of sexual harassment, however, varies by culture. Sexual harassment by an employer is a form of illegal employment discrimination. For many businesses or organizations, preventing sexual harassment and defending employees from sexual harassment charges have become key goals of legal decision-making.
The modern legal understanding of sexual harassment was first developed in the s, although related concepts have existed in many cultures. Legal activist Catharine MacKinnon is generally credited with creating the laws surrounding sexual harassment in the United States with her book entitled Sexual Harassment of Working Women.
Rowe says that harassment of women in the workplace was being discussed in women's groups in Massachusetts in the early s. At Cornell University , instructor Lin Farley discovered that women in a discussion group repeatedly described being fired or quitting a job because they were harassed and intimidated by men.
