Asking for It?

New view of sexual harassment

As long as males have employed females, sexual harassment—whether a sniggering grab or outright sex-for-salary extortion—has been a fact of countless women's working lives. Yet as the proportion of women in the work force increased sharply in the past decade, so did the reports of on-the-job intimidation. According to the Center for Women Policy Studies, a Washington-based research group, as many as 18 million American females were harassed sexually while at work during 1979 and 1980. But according to antifeminist Crusader Phyllis Schlafly, most of those 18 million were asking for it.

Schlafly testified last week before a...