User:Greciavalenzuela123/Working Women United

History
In the mid-1970s, the feminist movement created social and conceptual spaces where women could speak out on the job about sexual harassment. As women had done previously with abortion, rape, and domestic abuse, identifying and speaking out about the violation legitimized their feelings of violation. This time, they focused on sexual harassment in the workplace, and the case of Carmita Wood inspired the movement. She was declined unemployment benefits when resigning as an administrative assistant to a professor at Cornell University because she had been physically ill from the pressure of avoiding his unwanted sexual advances.

The first organized response to sexual harassment grew out of the women's movement, arising at the intersection between protests against sexism in jobs and feminist opposition to violence against women. The problem of sexual harassment placed together complaints about women working in the workforce with opposition to male sexual violence. Two groups founded in the mid-1970s to concentrate specifically on sexual harassment — Working Women United in Ithaca, New York, and the Cambridge, Massachusetts Alliance Against Sexual Coercion. On a Sunday afternoon, 4 May 1975, 275 women gathered for the country's initial speech opposing sexual assault at the Greater Ithaca Activities Center. Working Women United (WWU), as well as the Human Affairs Program at Cornell University and the National Organization for Women's Chapter in Ithaca.

This campaign developed out of the wider women's movement, which provided the leaders of the fight against sexual assault with an institutional foundation, contact networks, policies, and philosophy.