The remarkable story of the women who defined sexual harassment as unlawful sex discrimination under Title IX
When the US Congress enacted Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, no one expected it to become a prominent tool for confronting sexual harassment in schools. Title IX is the civil rights law that prohibits education programs from discriminating "on the basis of sex." At the time, however, the term "sexual harassment" was not yet in use; this kind of misconduct was simply accepted as part of life for girls and women at schools and universities. In Unlawful Advances, Celene Reynolds shows how the women claiming protection under Title IX made sexual harassment into a form of sex discrimination barred by the law. Working together, feminist students and lawyers fundamentally changed the right to equal opportunity in education and schools' obligations to ensure it.
Drawing on meticulously documented case studies, Reynolds explains how Title IX was applied to sexual harassment, linking the actions of feminists at Cornell, Yale, and Berkeley. Through analyses of key lawsuits and an original dataset of federal Title IX complaints, she traces the evolution of sexual harassment policy in education-from the early applications at elite universities to the growing sexual harassment bureaucracies on campuses today-and how the work of these feminists has forever shaped the law, university governance, and gender relations on campus. Reynolds argues that our political and interpretive struggle over this application of Title IX is far from finished. Her account illuminates this ongoing effort, as well as the more general process by which citizens can transform not only the laws that govern us, but also the very meaning of equality under American law. Celene Reynolds is assistant professor of sociology at Indiana University Bloomington. "This deeply researched, beautifully written, and theoretically sophisticated book addresses questions of fundamental empirical and theoretical importance. It represents a very significant scholarly contribution."-Elizabeth A. Armstrong, University of Michigan
"This engaging, fast-moving narrative takes readers from Cornell to Yale to Berkeley, gaining meaning and momentum at every turn to show how sexual harassment was eventually interpreted as discrimination under Title IX to the benefit of many."-Claudia Goldin, Harvard University, and Nobel Prize–winning author of Career and Family: Women's Century-Long Journey toward Equity
"An eloquent account of how Title IX was mobilized to name sexual harassment as a problem, build resources for addressing it, and institute responses to it across higher education. Were these practical and normative changes not at risk today, this might only be a tour de force of historical sociology. But in the current climate it serves not only as an appreciation of past battles that were bravely fought, and even sometimes won, but also as a warning to defend even imperfect gains."-Myra Marx Ferree, University of Wisconsin–Madison
"Celene Reynolds marshals myriad forms of evidence brilliantly in support of her provocative, compelling argument that feminist students and lawyers built new norms of campus behavior in the process of reimagining Title IX as a legal tool to battle campus harassment. This book is for everyone who teaches college students and everyone who is, or has been, one."-Frank Dobbin, author of Getting to Diversity: What Works and What Doesn't
