A survey done in 1999, found that the number of Human Resource Professionals investigating one or more incidents of sexual harassment has risen from 35 % to 65% in the last three years. A telephone poll conducted by Louis Harris and Associates on 782 workers revealed: .
31% of the female workers claimed to have been harassed at work .
7% of the male workers claimed to have been harassed at work .
62% of targets took no action .
100% of women claimed the harasser was a man .
59% of men claimed the harasser was a woman .
41% of men claimed the harasser was another man.
Of the women who had been harassed: .
43% were harassed by a supervisor .
27% were harassed by an employee senior to them .
19% were harassed by a coworker at their level .
8% were harassed by a junior employee .
This paper will further examine such cases, as we seek to explore and uncover the answer to this question, "Has most workplace sexual harassment lawsuits been exaggerated and baseless?".
Most chronicles identify that sexual harassment began in 1964, when Congress passed Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (see Figure 1). In the book "Sexual Harassment", Constance Jones wrote of incidents dating back to the 1830s. The term "sexual harassment" was coined by feminists in the 1960s. Sexual harassment is a term used to end harassment and discrimination of women in the workplace. The law does not extend to sexual behavior outside the workplace and schools. .
The federal definition of sexual harassment differs from that of most states. Sexual harassment is "unwelcomed sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature constitutes sexual harassment when submission to or rejection of this conduct explicitly or implicitly affects an individuals employment, unreasonably interferes with an individual's work performance or creates an intimidating, hostile, or offensive work environment".