Book Review: Sexual Harassment
| DOI | 10.1177/135822919800300206 |
| Date | 01 September 1998 |
| Published date | 01 September 1998 |
| Author | Simon Honeyball |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
International Journal of Discrimination and the Law, 1998, Vol
. 3, pp
. 143-151
1358-2291/98 $10
© 1998 A
B Academic Publishers
. Printed in Great Britain
BOOK REVIEWS
SEXUAL HARASSMENT, by Hazel Houghton-Jones,
Cavendish Pub-
lishing Limited,
London 1995, 228 pp
. + XVIII, £16
.95
.
There has been a need for some time now for a good full-length
treatment of the law relating to sexual harassment
. Although there is
nothing in the title of this work to suggest it, the bulk of it is to do
with the legal aspects of sexual harassment
. Nevertheless, Hazel
Houghton-Jones does devote a reasonable amount of space to what
she terms the structural and cultural backdrop to her subject, as well
as non-legal methods of dealing with the harassment problem
. This
makes her book particularly valuable
.
When the author addresses the law, she deals with her material
well
. Her treatment is useful in that it is not confined, as so often,
to just a few legal categories, but considers the broad range of legal
avenues open to potential claimants
. She thus considers, naturally
enough, the sex discrimination legislation, but also unfair dismissal
law, health and safety law, and the options in criminal law and tort
.
The law is analysed well and a number of practical suggestions are
made
. The student will find much of value here, but the practitioner
will also be guided helpfully through the law and be given useful
signposts as to possible future legal developments
.
Any treatment of sexual harassment is bound to be difficult for
anyone writing about it, because there are a number of fundamental
conceptual, theoretical and definitional problems which have not pre-
viously been satisfactorily considered and which must be tackled if
the law is to be cogent and coherent in this area
. It needs a firm
logical base on which to build, but this has been notoriously difficult
.
Houghton-Jones does identify these difficulties, often describes them,
sometimes addresses them but, understandably, never resolves them
.
It is, of course, a relatively young subject, in that the term `sexual
harassment' does not appear to have been used prior to the 1970s
although, as the author points out, it is not clear who coined it
. How-
ever, the subject is not young in the sense that its existence is much
older than its label, and even recognition of the phenomenon without
the label goes back a long way
. But labels are important in channel-
ling logical ideas
. Now that we have them, it is time to resolve the
deeper difficulties
.
One such is this
. It is, as the author points out, a fundamental
of discrimination that it imputes properties to people because they are
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