Sexual Harassment: Why Brokers Trade in It, and What Can Be Done to Stop It

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/0045-3609.00038
• Published date: 01 March 1999
• Author: Ellen R. Peirce
• Date: 01 March 1999

Zicklin Conference

Sexual Harassment:

Why Brokers Trade in It,

and What Can Be Done to Stop It

ELLEN R. PEIRCE

Despite strong efforts by brokerage firms and others in the

financial services industry to sensitize employees to the

issue of sexual harassment, recent headlines suggest that,

as a whole, the securities industry efforts have not yet been

successful.1During the last decade, the media has reported numer-

ous high-profile cases concerning a number of prominent broker-

age firms including Kidder Peabody, Goldman Sachs and Smith

Barney.2Last January, New York attorney general Dennis Vacco

held an investigatory hearing into the sexual harassment of women

in the industry. During the testimony, women gave graphic details

of a locker-room environment fraught with pornography, constant

vulgar conversation, and instances of male co-workers exposing

themselves, groping women employees, and threatening them with

physical violence or discharge if they did not provide sexual favors.

One woman testified that men continue to harass women on Wall

Street because the industry allows it. “[T]hey know they can...

they are truly above the law.”3

Although admittedly not a problem unique to the securities

industry, there are, in fact, a host of reasons for why sexual harass-

ment is more evident in the securities industry than in others. This

article will explore the reasons that this problem has persistently

surfaced in this industry in particular by examining the legal

©1999 Center for Business Ethics at Bentley College. Published by Blackwell Publishers,

350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA, and 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK.

Ellen R. Pierce is a Professor of Legal Studies at the Kenan-Flagler Business School, University of

North Carolina–Chapel Hill.

Business and Society Review 104:1 42–52