Iron women.

• Author: Mencimer, Stephanie
• Position: Political Booknotes

CLASS ACTION: The Story of Lois Jenson and the Landmark Case That Changed Sexual Harrassment Law by Clara Bingham and Laura Leedy Gansler Doubleday, $27.50

THESE DAYS, LAWSUITS OVER sexual harassment in the workplace seem so commonplace that it's hard to remember that it was only a decade ago that Anita Hill first uttered the term on television. But the ban on employment discrimination on the basis of gender is a relatively new phenomenon--and also something of an accident. When Congress was debating the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act, it originally didn't include gender among the categories of illegal discrimination. But octogenarian Virginia Congressman Howard Smith, who opposed the act, added the word "sex" to the bill's language in an attempt to make it so unpalatable to the rest of his colleagues that it wouldn't pass. Much to his surprise, it did anyway.

Because Congress passed the law without any debate over what constituted sex discrimination, the courts had to interpret the law On their own based on cases brought by a few women brave enough to test it. In 1979, feminist scholar Catharine McKinnon asserted that sexual harassment could not only entail a proposition in exchange for keeping a job, but that a hostile workplace, including repeated exposure to sexually offensive material as a condition of employment, could also be considered a form of illegal discrimination. But it wasn't until 1988, when a small group of women in Minnesota filed a class action against their employer, that McKinnon's premise was really tested in the courtroom.

In Class Action: The Story of Lois Jenson and the Landmark Case that Changed Sexual Harassment Law, Clara Bingham and Laura Leedy Gansler have set out to tell the story of those women who made sexual harassment law mean something. It's a horrific tale that dates back to the mid-1970s, when women were entering the workplace in droves. It's a story that should have been told long ago, but was probably overlooked because the women in this story were not college professors or even secretaries. They were blue-collar iron miners, working deep in the belly of Minnesota's Eveleth Mines. As the first women to enter that man's world, they were mercilessly punished. Their torture by the men at the mine makes office butt-pinching episodes seem like child's play.

For years, the women were assaulted, stalked, and terrorized by the men they worked with on a daily basis. One woman who drove a truck suffered...