Kim Elsesser How Sexual Harassment Training Hurt Women Summary

In “How Sexual Harassment Training Hurts Women”, Kim Elsesser claims that California employers’ sexual-harassment-prevention training inadvertently blocks women from social relationships with their male colleagues, who "typically dominate senior management", which in turn limits females’ careers. In response, since Elsesser believes that men and women can build professional relationships while maintaining boundaries, she proves that California employers’ current sexual-harassment-prevention training leads men to avoid interacting with female colleagues altogether. The author goes about this by describing a hypothetical scenario involving an executive and two opposite gender employees, citing testimonies from female employees, and producing findings from her research, all of which she does in order to convince

The author shows this when she provides a theoretical situation where a male executive chooses to "stick with [an]other m[a]n” for “business” rather than work with a female employee because he fears that “allegations would surface” in their workplace once co-workers discover him spending time with a female associate.

Elsesser continues on backing up her claim that sexual-harassment-prevention training shifts communication between opposite-gender co-workers by providing actual stories from women who dealt with "protocol" making it “extremely difficult” to interact with male executives. For instance, Elsesser cites that an "office rule" prevented one woman from interacting "alone with [a] congressman". Elsesser, enraged, also spits that companies use this policy, which "a lot of women experience", to make "situations" that involve men and women communicating in their workplace "not seem