Drawing boundaries: Exploring the relationship between sexual harassment, gender and bullying

SynopsisThe starting point for this article is to address the seemingly straightforward question: what are the differences, if any, between sexual harassment and workplace bullying? After summarising the development of interest in workplace bullying, the article explores how boundaries have been drawn between the two. It is argued that gender is an important feature of both but that the methods used to research bullying make the processes supporting gendered bullying difficult to uncover. Drawing on debates about how sexual harassment might be reconceptualised away from the current focus on sexualised harassment, it is argued that there are potential areas of commonality between gendered bullying and sexual harassment. It is argued that these should be explored by feminists before sexual harassment is categorised at organisational level as merely another workplace indignity.