Psychiatric injury in the women's workplace.

The number of women gainfully employed has mushroomed dramatically since World War II. This explosion is not merely one of increased opportunity; it also reflects the increased need of women to work. One in seven households in this country is headed by a woman. I It is estimated that twothirds of the working women must work and about one-half of them provide the sole or the major support for their families. 2 Thus, women's employment is neither frivilous nor a luxury that can be easily dispensed with. With this accelerating presence of women in the workplace have come increasing reports of problems they encounter by virtue of them being women. Some of these problems, such as lower economic compensation, unequal education and employment opportunities, and cultural barriers to integrating work and family life, while important as social policy issues,3 are not immediately relevant to this article. Sexual discrimination and harassment on the job are more relevant because their agents of cause are more easily indentifiable and their psychiatric consequences, when present, are sharper and more pronounced. While sexual discrimination and harassment are two different concepts, there is also an area of overlap. Essentially, discrimination occurs when women as a group are treated less favorably than men in terms of job opportunities, compensation, etc.4 Perhaps this would better be called gender discrimination because there are no explicit sexual overtones. Sexual harassment occurs when sexuality enters the picture. It has been defined as "the exploitation of a powerful position to impose sexual demands or pressures on an unwilling but less powerful person."4 There are two types of sexual harassment. 5 The quid pro quo situation occurs when sexual favors are demanded in exchange for job opportunities and/or when refusal of such favors brings retaliation. The persistant condition of work situation occurs when sexual conversation or touching continually occurs in the workplace. There may be persistent comments, propositions, attempts to discuss the employee's sex life, repeated "accidental" bumpings, more obviously intentional touching, or even rape. Surveys have indicated that 49 to 81 percent of working women experience sexual pressure on the job.6,7 While these surveys may be flawed because of sampling problems and because what men may perceive as innocent behav-