TV REVIEW : Sexual Harassment in ‘The Workplace’

OK, guys, we know the baseball playoffs are heating up, but unless the Pirates and Braves stage an epic, extra-inning battle tonight, you’ll have no excuse not to watch “Sex, Power and the Workplace” (9 p.m., KCET-TV Channel 28). It’s especially geared for you guys who think anything titled “Sex, Power and the Workplace” is about how to stage your own office party with a bikini-clad model bursting out of the cake.

Think again. Writer-producer Robert Dean’s report doesn’t grab you by the lapel, and its occasionally bland passages may tempt you to switch the channel to catch replays. But Dean’s survey of sexual harassment, how it affects women and what men can do about it demands that attention be paid.

Attorney Dan Stormer cuts to the heart of the matter, declaring that sexual harassment, like rape, isn’t about sex; rather, it’s about power. Often, it’s a power imposed by male bosses over their female workers.

The case documented here of District of Columbia real estate analyst Patricia Kidd makes allegations in the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill affair seem mild: a woman needing to keep her job, an ambitious boss, quiet harassment leading to pure quid pro quo --sex in exchange for job advancement.

Dean explores two headline-grabbing cases that did as much to put the issue on the national front burner as Hill’s testimony: Stanford’s Dr. Frances Conley, whose case proved that intelligence and crude insensitivity are not mutually exclusive; and Kerry Ellison, who won a precedent-setting ruling that states that harassment can be defined by the woman.

Yet if a look at the kind of harassment-awareness session given to male workers at the Department of Water and Power doesn’t do it for you guys, then look in the faces of the women in this report--and consider the pain. And consider that it all began with a simple “No” being ignored.