Nurses' strategies to address workplace sexual harassment: Understanding solidarity through legal consciousness

This lecture focuses on the affective solidarity between the respondents themselves, other WSH survivors, non-victims and potential victims.

Many legal consciousness researchers have delved into the countermeasures of nurses enduring workplace sexual harassment (WSH). These studies depicted cultural schemas composed of gender division of labor, stereotypical sexual morality, ideal victim myth, and unequal power relations, and have analyzed WSH survivors’ agency through the lens of identity community. 

However, while legal consciousness interpreted through the perspective of a harassed individual abounds, the contextual impact of interpersonal relationships within an institution is a realm less explored. Developing from interpersonal factors, this paper focuses on the affective solidarity between the respondents themselves, other WSH survivors, non-victims and potential victims. 

Aware of the characteristics of the institution they work for, the nurses display agency by utilizing “bottom-up solidarity” with their identity communities, which leads to the prevention and deterrence of sexual harassment.

Besides, when the solidarity strategy reaches its limit of protection, the sexually harassed nurses turn from their Workplace Relationship System to the Legal Remedy System given legitimation by the state, where “top-down solidarity” becomes the resource for them to seek procedural, substantive, narrative justice and sense of fairness, while affect serves as a catalyst. 

When WSH survivors consider their fights not only for themselves but also for other potential victims, this perception empowers the nurses, expands the solidarity network and increases possible protection. At this point, the coping strategies for workplace sexual harassment transform from the resolution of personal disputes to a movement for rights.