The National Council for Civil Liberties (NCCL), renamed Liberty in 1989, played an important role in campaigning around sex discrimination and employment rights in the 1970s and 1980s through its Women’s Rights Sub-committee (set up in 1973) and its Rights for Women Unit (a small group of salaried staff).
The Rights for Women Unit made the decision to campaign around sexual harassment in 1981, leading to the publication of the 32-page pamphlet Sexual Harassment at Work by Anne Sedley and Melissa Benn in July 1982. The pamphlet defined sexual harassment as involving ‘repeated, unreciprocated and unwelcome comments, looks, jokes, suggestions of physical contact that might threaten a woman’s job security or create a stressful or intimidating working environment’ (Ibid., 6).
Sexual Harassment at Work provided an overview of recent UK surveys (by NALGO, MARPLAN and the Alfred Marks Bureau), guidance on how the law (including the 1975 Sex Discrimination Act) could be used, suggestions for developing workplace policies, and a list of practical steps that women could take collectively. One of the aims of the NCCL campaign was to ensure ‘that sexual harassment is taken up by the trade unions movement, as it must be if sex discrimination at work is to be seriously challenged’ (Sedley and Benn, 9).
The pamphlet also acknowledged the complex relationship between racism and sexism:
‘If sexual harassment is a direct reflection of the sexism in our society, we must recognise that black women at work can suffed a double harassment which also reflects the racism of our society. We do not deal with racial harassment in this pamphlet – another major area of discrimination – but we emphasise that black women who are subject to sexual harassmen are victims of a double discrimination.’
Sexual Harassment at Work was illustrated by the cartoonist Christine Roche, using humour in a lively, creative and thoughtful way to engage readers, to counteract prevalent criticisms of ‘feminists’ as humourless ‘prudes’, and to tackle head-on the assumption that sexual harassment itself was a joke. The image above is an example of Roche’s feminist cartooning.