The Birds and the Bees--and the Workplace

Ross Perot and other corporate leaders tried to ban it, the U.S. armed services declared war on it, and some Neanderthals almost spoiled the fun for everyone with their swinish behavior. In the end, they all faced the same conclusion: You can’t outlaw love.

The workplace remains a sexy place for many people despite decades of anti-fraternization policies, anti-sexual-harassment laws and even inhibition. Indeed, President Clinton and Monica Lewinsky were not the only people engaged in on-the-job hanky-panky. By some estimates, up to 40% of American adults have had a sexual encounter at work.

It’s no surprise. Recent studies suggest that the workplace is a more popular--and successful--meeting place for couples than bars, health clubs or personal ads. One-third of all relationships now start at work, experts say.

“People are working much longer hours, so it’s no secret why the workplace has become the No. 1 place for dates and mates,” said Dennis Powers, a Southern Oregon University law professor and author of a recent book, “The Office Romance: Playing With Fire Without Getting Burned.”

“Love in the workplace is prospering despite the laws, attorneys and opposing philosophies,” Powers said.

Just ask the creators of Fox Television’s “Ally McBeal,” where each week the staff of a sexually charged law office act out such issues as lesbian attraction, fetishes, sexual insecurity and infidelity--often in the firm’s unisex bathroom.

To be sure, real-life workplace relationships have become legally more treacherous. Driven by fear of lawsuits, some companies now require employees who date co-workers to sign so-called love contracts, or informed-consent forms stating that workers in a relationship have been advised of the company’s sexual-harassment policy and that their relationship was consensual.

Those policies emerged from a tectonic shift in norms with the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas showdown in the early 1990s. But the zero-tolerance policy that seemed to mark that era appears to be softening, experts say.

Indeed, the scenes in “Ally McBeal” reflect a backlash against political correctness in the workplace, said Laree Kiely, a professor of business communication at USC.

“People in the workplace now rarely discuss sex unless it’s with people who are just like them,” Kiely said. “Some people feel excluded. They are beginning to pull against the tether.”

Kiely and other experts say the end-of-the-century workplace has evolved into a place with a new set of rules.

“Men are expected to treat women more respectfully,” she said, “and that was what women have fought for in the first place. We are trying to gentle down the men.”

For decades, sexual norms in the workplace remained unchanged. Images of a bullying male boss chasing a female secretary around the desk pervaded popular culture.

“There was clearly a double standard,” said Robert Billingham, a professor in Indiana University’s Department of Applied Health Science, who has lectured on sexual behavior and attitudes. “Those people in positions of power and authority, exclusively males, could coerce sex from female employees. They could maintain the sexual relationship, not because the secretary or subordinate was interested in them, but by their sheer power.”

In 1964, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act, which prohibited discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion or national origin. The men in power were not really interested in outlawing sexual discrimination, but in an effort to scuttle the bill, Virginia Dixiecrat Rep. Howard W. Smith added a rider about sexual discrimination. (It still failed, but years later would provide thousands of sexual-harassment victims with legal support for their lawsuits.)

The entry of more women into the labor pool, especially in the 1970s, also had a major impact on manners, or the lack thereof, in the workplace. In 1960, only 38% of all women over age 16 held jobs. By 1970, that number had climbed to 43%. By 1980, it had reached 51%, according to the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Daniel J.B. Mitchell, a professor of human resources and organizational behavior at UCLA, said many policy experts were surprised by the large numbers of women entering the work force in the 1970s. Experts attributed the phenomenon to the women’s liberation movement, birth control and higher divorce rates, Mitchell said.

And as women moved into nontraditional jobs, they began pushing against the boorish and even violent behavior that many of them encountered from male colleagues and bosses.

The idea of sexual harassment came to the fore in 1976 after Yale law student Catharine A. MacKinnon published a paper entitled “Sexual Harassment of Working Women.” MacKinnon argued that unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, dirty jokes and other degrading behavior against women violated the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

MacKinnon’s work set the stage for a 1991 showdown in which Anita Hill accused her former boss and then-U.S. Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas of demanding dates, bragging about his sexual prowess, describing pornographic films and complaining about somebody putting “pubic hair on my Coke.”

Thomas was eventually confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court, but the workplace would forever be transformed. Thousands of women--and some men--came forward to file claims and lawsuits against abusive bosses and co-workers.

“The Hill-Thomas hearing was a major turning point for men and women,” said USC’s Kiely. “Enlightened men were embarrassed by the lack of understanding by male senators. It was horrifying.”

The sexual-harassment genie was out the bottle.

As harassments suits against companies soared, many firms toughened their policies, some even adopting a zero-tolerance approach.

Texas billionaire Perot bragged that he barred office romances and fired couples for adultery when he ran Electronic Data Systems.

With the flood of sexual-harassment suits, the U.S. Supreme Court tried to craft rules that would help to define sexual norms in the workplace.

Legal scholars say the justices came closest to outlining civility rules for the workplace in a 1998 ruling in a same-sex harassment case. There is no “general civility code” in the law and simple “horseplay” or “roughhousing” among men is not illegal, nor are “flirtations” between men and women, but when harassing conduct of a sexual nature is so “severely hostile or abusive” that workers cannot do their jobs, it violates the law, Justice Antonin Scalia said.

Those rules were clarified in a pair of sexual-harassment rulings a few months later when the justices held that employers can be forced to pay damages to workers who are sexually harassed by a low-level supervisor, even if they knew nothing about the harassment.

“With these rulings, the court is saying that they would rather have these issues handled inside the company and not in their courtrooms,” said Allan Weitzman, an employment lawyer with Proskauer & Rose in Boca Raton, Fla. “They [want] these matters handled and resolved by the human resources department.”

Weitzman and others say some corporations are trying to strike a balance: prevent sexual harassment while ensuring that the workplace is not a sanitized, stultifying place.

At post-Perot EDS, for example, company officials say they still frown on romances between managers and subordinates, but there is nothing in writing that qualifies as rules. Many companies, including EDS, consider romance to be their employees’ business.

Powers, the law professor and author, says “the pendulum is swinging back to achieve balance.” Less than 1% of companies now have anti-fraternization policies, he said.

“Litigation has forced industries to deal with an issue they didn’t want to deal with,” said Billingham, the Indiana University professor. “The sad thing is that many norms are now based on fear. People fear saying the wrong thing or doing the wrong thing. It can’t continue like this. The workplace would be too austere a place.”

But USC’s Kiely says society seems ready to create a new set of norms.

“No one knows what these norms will be,” Kiely said. “But if we are to judge from what we see on ‘Ally McBeal’ and the popular culture, we’re going to test the limits.”