While sexual harassment of women in the workplace has been discussed for decades it is still a pervasive problem. This book looks at the history of that harassment from the 1600s (!) to the early 1990s, from long forgotten domestic servants in England of the 1600s to abused Japanese textile workers of 1900, to Anita Hill in 1991 America. Coverage is worldwide with emphasis on the United States and the period 1800 to the present.

Harassment affects women from all walks of life; from unskilled to professional, those in traditionally female jobs, those in traditionally male jobs, and all the rest. Harassment occurs in factories, coal mines, construction sites, law offices, dental offices, government offices, Capitol Hill, and at every other work site. So bad was it in some factories that women took to carrying knives for self-protection. Women have put their economic existence on the line by striking over sexual harassment.