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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

As with anti-discrimination laws, it is only employers who are constrained.

That's because sexual harassment is a power issue: one feels less power to defend oneself from unwanted advances when one's economic situation depends directly on the harasser. When such pressure exists, the decision of the harassee is made, to some extent, under duress. I presume you understand why coercion is and should be illegal.

If firm managers had strong enough incentives to maximize profits, then in the absence of other relevant market failures the firm would internalize the problem. Thus it would make economic sense to let each firm’s management decide whether or not to allow harassment in their firm.

This presumes that sexual harassment would show up on the balance sheet in a way that couldn't be explained some other way, for which there would be plenty of incentive for both the harasser and the firm itself. It also presumes that businessmen make their decisions based entirely on economic factors, which is also not true. Businessmen are human, and some humans really want to work in a place where they won't get in trouble for playing grabass with the secretary, or they care more about keeping a talented but horny exec on board than they do about whatever economic losses are due to harassment. That might even be a wise decision, in terms of the bottom line.

For the prospective harassee, it's not like the invisible hand can be all that effective in this case: there is no information on the sexual harassment environment at a workplace in the Classifieds. This is an enormous information gap, only reliably bridgeable by taking a job and then seeing if you get harassed or not. Given that frequent job changes have a negative effect on one's potential earnings, one can see how merely taking two or three wrong jobs in a row, then quitting because of harassment, could scuttle an otherwise promising career. Can you not see the legitimate role of government in preventing such a reduction in a person's hirability because they refused someone's sexual advances?

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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

it's only flirting if it's a two way street.

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