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Taking on, and changing, sexual harassment law
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SILVER SPRING, Md. (Map, News) - Laura Gansler is a part-time attorney for the National Association of Securities Dealers as well as co-author of the critically acclaimed book “Class Action,” about a landmark sexual harassment case that became the movie “North Country.” This week she gave a special talk about the book and film as part of a special viewing in Silver Spring.
How did you hear about Lois Jensen’s plight, and why did you decide it was a story that you wanted to pursue?
I wrote “Class Action” with my friend, journalist Clara Bingham. It came about as the result of a conversation we were having in 1998 about how the issue of sexual harassment had become a political football — the decade that had begun with the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill hearings was ending with the Paula Jones scandal, and it struck us as odd that the people who had been on one side of the issue in 1991 were on the other side by 1998. What we wanted to know was how sexual harassment laws were impacting working women outside the Beltway — women who were trying to earn livings in what were historically male-dominated jobs. We did some research, and came across Lois’ case. ... It struck us as a very powerful story, one that showed very dramatically the power and the limits of sexual harassment law.
What was the impact of the case on the issue of sexual abuse?
It was the first sexual harassment class action based on a hostile work environment theory. What that means, in practical terms, is it allowed women who were in a pervasively hostile work environment to stand up together, making it much harder for a company to discredit the plaintiffs.
In what way were you involved in the making of the movie "North Country"?
The movie is a fictional account drawn from our book, which is nonfiction. Interestingly, the one thing that most people think the filmmakers embellished — the nature and the degree of abuse the women experienced in the mines — is the one thing that is absolutely accurate. Everything that happened to the women in the movie, in terms of harassment, happened in real life.
