Sexual Harassment and Racial Disparity: The Mutual Construction of Gender and Race

For a number of years, commentators have proffered anecdotal evidence to suggest that women of color figure prominently as sexual harassment plaintiffs. Until recently, a systematic statistical analysis of women\u27s experiences of sexual harassment by race was largely unavailable. For the first time, this Article comprehensively analyzes Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) sexual harassment charge statistics, by looking at data from the last seven years along with Lexis-Nexis and Westlaw electronic reports of sexual harassment complaints for the last twenty years. What immediately becomes apparent in this statistical analysis of sexual harassment charges in the United States is the overrepresentation of women of color and the under-representation of White women in the charging parties when compared with their demographic presence in the female labor force. Although a number of factors may very well be causally connected to the disproportionate patterns in female sexual harassment filing statistics by race, primary amongst the causal factors is the powerful influence of racialized gender stereotypes. Yet, sexual harassers rarely articulate the race-based nature of their conduct and may not even be conscious of it. Therefore, this Article draws upon the similar but more racially explicit context of sex tourism to explicate the race-based motives of sexual harassers