Creating Norms against Sexual Harassment

Activists also have a history of challenging sexual harassment in the workplace. In post-Revolution Russia, Bolshevik feminists were concerned about employers forcing women to have sex, leading early Soviet leaders to criminalize this behav­ior as part of other sexual violence (Juviler 1977). But it was not until U. S. activ­ists took up the issue in the 1970s that sexual harassment came to represent the distinct phenomenon understood today, “[u]nwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature.” Their activism led to the introduction into U. S. anti-discrimination law of two forms of sexual harassment, for which both the individual harasser and the employer can be held liable. The first is quid pro quo (or blackmail) harassment, which ex­ists when there are explicit or implicit threats that submission or rejection of these sexual behaviors will affect employment decisions. The second, hostile work envi­ronment, covers the more subtle sexual intimidation—through sexually charged comments and images—that creates a hostile or offensive environment.

The American construction of sexual harassment as well as resistance to rec­ognizing individual claims of sexual harassment was broadcast globally during the hearings for the nomination to the U. S. Supreme Court of Clarence Thomas, whose alleged sexual harassment did not derail his appointment. By the 1990s, women’s groups across the world were pursuing reform, albeit with different un­derstandings of the problem. For example, French feminists in the early 1990s included harassment based on sexual orientation and stressed women’s rights to “dignity, their moral or physical integrity, their right to receive ordinary services to the public in full equality” (quoted in Saguy 2002, 253). In response to the vari­ous activists’ pressure and conceptions, countries adopted very different reforms. France adopted labor and penal code articles against sexual blackmail in 1992. The European Union, framing the problem as a “violation against workers’ dig­nity” and part of a conflict-ridden workplace where workers sometimes terrorize others, required that all members adopt legislation by 2005 (Zippel 2006). This was not just a North American and European phenomenon; the 1997 Vishaka decision in India, a result of the Indian Supreme Court’s commitment to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), led to the drafting of sexual harassment legislation in 2004.

Even with these different viewpoints, sexual harassment was incorporated into the key U. N. documents on women’s status (see appendix 1). The Nairobi For­ward Looking Strategies for the Advancement of Women (1985) called for “appro­priate measures to prevent sexual harassment on the job or sexual exploitation in specific jobs, such as domestic service” (para. 139). The Vienna Declaration and Programme for Action (1993) linked “gender-based violence” with “all forms of sexual harassment and exploitation” (part I, para. 38). Whereas these earlier docu­ments decried sexual harassment, the 1993 U. N. Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women clearly attached sexual harassment to the concept of violence against women (art. 2).

By the 1990s, these global norms against sexual assault were read into interna­tional law, especially CEDAW, the international bill of rights for women, which did not initially refer to gender violence. In General Recommendation 12 in 1989, the CEDAW Committee requested that states include information about mea­sures to assist and protect women from “sexual violence” and “sexual harassment at the workplace.” General Recommendation 19 from 1992, which elaborates how violence against women violates the articles of CEDAW, explicitly includes both “sexual assault” and “sexual harassment.” Most importantly, the recommenda­tion asserts an international definition of sexual harassment that encompasses both forms as discriminatory.3

Yet, these international documents, even those that officially constitute inter­national law, do not represent legally binding laws with the same power of state — based law, which, in functioning states with credible commitments to the rule of law, is backed up by state machinery to enforce compliance. This is true even in countries like Russia, where international law signed by Russia theoretically car­ries the force of law within Russia. International laws come from supranational institutions such as the United Nations, which is only a collection of states, has no coercive mechanisms, and, in some places, has little legitimacy. Even CEDAW, which requires periodic reports of states’ compliance and their assessment by the CEDAW committee, has no teeth. Global feminist frustration with this limitation led to the passage of the 1999 Optional Protocol. This protocol allows individual women, under certain circumstances, to appeal to the CEDAW Committee and permits this committee to investigate particularly serious violations of women’s rights, perhaps creating the potential for more direct influence over states. Sig­naling some commitment to these norms, Russia is a signatory to both CEDAW, without reservations, and the 1999 Optional Protocol. The United States ratified neither CEDAW nor the Optional Protocol.

Instead, the domestic impact of international documents is more indirect. In the language of international relations constructivists, these international docu­ments constitute a global norm—“a standard of appropriate behavior for actors within a given territory”—that can influence beliefs, behavior, and sometimes even the identity of individuals, groups, and institutions (Katzenstein 1996, 5; Checkel 1998). Such a transnational normative consensus, complemented by in­ternational conventions, may constrain state behavior as states become socialized into the international arena (Klotz 1995). The process through which this hap­pens is norm diffusion, and success is observed as a norms cascade, the growing ac­ceptance of these norms among different actors and states. Fostering this norm diffusion are dynamic networks of social relationships at the local, national, and global levels that are often summarized as transnational advocacy networks (Keck and Sikkink 1998)—the generic form of what this book calls transnational femi­nist networks. These collaborations of social movements, interested professionals, and, sometimes, firms work together on a campaign to “‘frame’ issues to make

them comprehensible to target audiences, to attract attention and encourage ac­tion, and to ‘fit’ with favorable institutional venues. . . . They also promote norm implementation, by pressuring target actors to adopt new policies, and by moni­toring compliance with international standards” (Keck and Sinkink 1998, 2—3). For Keck and Sikkink, they tend to create a boomerang pattern, in which “do­mestic NGOs may directly seek international allies to try to bring pressure on their states from outside” to both raise the issue and formulate a policy response (12). Others have suggested a kind of ping-pong model in which norms bounce back in forth between the supranational institutions and nation-states (Zippel 2006, 120).

In the language of social movement theory, these international documents signal a global collective action frame of the problem, an “action-oriented” set “of beliefs and meanings that inspire[s] and legitimate^] activities and campaigns” (Benford and Snow 2000, 614). The new frame is among the different types of international institutions that “offer resources, opportunities, and incentives” to domestic activists (Tarrow 2001, 1). The corresponding transnational advocacy networks can also foster the recognition of—or certify—identities and public ac­tivities as legitimate (15). They can model “forms of collective action or organiza­tion in one venue that have been demonstrated in another.” For social movement theorists, campaigns succeed when such frames resonate, that is, when the target population sees the movement’s arguments as credible, salient, and not in conflict with national myths or ideologies.

Whereas the first approach undertheorizes the domestic process as it is fo­cused on international relations, this second approach focuses on domestic activ­ism, undertheorizing the transnational. The second approach and sometimes the first neglect the ways that global norms can be powerful interventions. Norms are exercised not just by domestic organizations and their transnational network collaborators; their use can be imposed by transnational activists and other inter­national organizations. Most importantly, most social movement theorists’ em­phasis on resonance misses the point that too much resonance means that the new norms lose their radical critique. For example, until they were qualified with radical claims about marital and date rape, the new global feminist claims about rape met with acceptance because, of course, most everyone agrees that (real) rape is unjust. I agree with Sally Merry (2006a, 10): the most effective translation processes are those that can balance the need to challenge the social order with adaptation to the given cultural context. If a norm has much resonance with lo­cal traditions and beliefs, it ceases to be a challenge in that particular setting; if it has no resonance, then the norm has no rhetorical power in that society. In prac­tice, this often means “that the rights framework does not displace other frame­works but adds a new dimension to the way individuals think about problems” (180-81).

In the language of legal anthropology, international documents are cultur­ally constitutive in that they produce “cultural meanings associating with moder­nity and the international” to which states have incentives to subscribe (Merry

2006a, 89). Their power comes from their consensual nature and their ability to elicit shame. Global norms come to matter when they are made into the vernacu­lar (Anderson 1983). This process of vernacularization includes appropriation and translation (Merry 2006a, 219). National political elites, human rights or femi­nist activist leaders, service providers, legal professionals, or academics—as the key intermediaries between global and local—appropriate global norms. They then must translate these norms into the vernacular, “adjusting the rhetoric and structure of these programs or interventions to local circumstances” (135). These processes can also be localized, as they are when women’s groups, especially poor urban and rural women, claim entitlement to these rights.

This book summarizes the process of the new global feminist norms com­ing to matter in Russia as blame and shame (see table 4.1). I assess how transna­tional feminist networks and global norms may model collective action strategies and can certify domestic activism in the process of localizing activism and ver — nacularization of global norms. I evaluate the agency and effectiveness of femi­nist entrepreneurs, transnational feminist networks, and the alliance between transnational feminists and human rights activists. I gauge whether these agents and processes have led to significant changes in public awareness, state policy, or practice.

appropriating, but not translating, global norms