Sexual Harassment and Service Labor: Strategies and Relational Practices

Abstract

Sexual harassment and gender-based violence are longstanding concerns in studies of service work, but are typically analyzed in terms of interactions between workers and consumers within gendered definitions of “good service,” neglecting the role of relationships amongst workers as a critical context that facilitates or constrains how workers can respond. However, literature on young women and harassment in leisure settings shows that women's safety is an ongoing relational construction—something that women achieve together through relational work. Inspired by these insights and drawing on interviews with service workers, this paper explores how workers respond to sexual harassment from customers, managers and co-workers, and shows how workers—primarily women but also sometimes men as well—collaborate in managing sexual harassment at work. The paper therefore argues for a relational analysis of the way that women negotiate the gendered and heterosexualized power relationships of service labor.