Overview and Summary: Sexual Harassment in Healthcare

• Published in: Online journal of issues in nursing 2019, Vol.24 (1), p.1-3
• Main Author: Strauss, Susan
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Accountability; Civil rights; Employment discrimination; Gender; Medicine; Nurses; Nursing; Sex discrimination; Sexism; Sexual harassment; Stereotypes; Violence
• ISSN: 1091-3734; 1091-3734
• DOI: 10.3912/OJIN.Vol24No01ManOS

Florence Nightingale tried to control male physicians and surgeons’ sexual harassment of her nurses in the 1800s. Her approach was one of prevention - each nurse had to be of high moral character, thereby implying that nurses were to blame for their own victimization, which was the thinking of the time. Nightingale also required the nurses to live in separate residences where they would be away from the physicians and would not be stressed with threats of harassment. In addition, they had to abide by a curfew, dress in restrictive clothing, and behave in a ladylike manner. Florence believed the rules provided a coping strategy for the nurses to deal with male putdowns while demanding respect for the nurse who worked outside the home - the role of a lady. The first known published comments of women dealing with sexual harassment at work came in a 1908 Harper’s Bazaar edition where women wrote in about their experiences of “life in the city” (Harper’s Bazaar, 1908). Many of these published letters discussed their sexual harassment, though the term was non-existent at the time. Sexual harassment, though a relatively modern term, is a centuries old phenomenon. Sex discrimination has only been illegal since the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (1964). Even then, it wasn’t until the 1970s that the first sexual harassment lawsuits entered the courts (Cohen, 2016), and the U.S. Supreme Court did not opine that sexual harassment was a form of sex discrimination until 1986 (Meritor Savings Bank vs. Vinson, 1986). In 1991 Congress modified Title VII to allow victims of sexual harassment the right to collect compensatory and punitive damages (Civil Rights Act, 1991). The year 1994 gave us the Violence Against Women Act (1994), and it wasn’t until 1995 that Congress was subjected to the same laws as the rest of its citizenry through the Congressional Accountability Act (1995). But perhaps it has taken the #MeToo movement to bring us where we are today.