An unqualified right
Less than 20 years ago, women in the United States won the legal right not to be sexually harassed. That right may now be withdrawn — at least for some women.
In 1994, 28 year-old Paula Jones filed a civil suit for sexual harassment. In itself, this is nothing unusual. For most women, being a target of some form of sexual harassment is a daily experience.
In Australia over the last three years, sexual harassment complaints have increased massively and now make up more than 50% of all sex discrimination complaints received by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission. Despite the possibility of losing their jobs, being socially ostracised and isolated and having to pay huge legal fees, a small number of women manage to exercise their democratic right to lay charges against their harasser.
Jones' is not, however, an "ordinary" case — at least that is what we are being told. Why not? Because US President Bill Clinton, against whom the charges have been laid, is not an "ordinary" man.
The US Supreme Court is currently inquiring into whether Clinton should be "distracted" by a civil suit while in the White House and therefore whether or not the case, and justice, should be deferred until his presidency is over.
Clinton's $475 per hour lawyer is arguing that, should he have to stand trial, the president could be required to answer numerous "embarrassing" questions and would be distracted from work which is "unique, time-consuming and vital to the nation". Presidents, according to this argument, have special rights. Unlike the women they harass, they are above the law.
But if presidents are exempt from the law, why not all cabinet ministers, or the president's top advisers, or heads of multinational corporations or the armed forces? Surely the work of all such powerful men is also "vital to the nation"?
And why stop at sexual harassment? Why not allow these important men to rape and pillage at will, so long as it does not impede their work for the nation?
That Clinton believes he can bend the law in his favour in this case is no surprise. The scales of justice in capitalist society have always been stacked against women.
The law under capitalism — written, practised and enforced by a tiny but powerful minority in their own interests — maintains a sexual double standard to justify the exploitation of the majority of women as unpaid domestic workers, low-paid wage workers and sex objects.
This double standard ensures, for example, that while the pornography industry makes mega-profits for capitalists, sex workers are routinely fined and jailed for trying to earn enough to eat. It is within this double standard that rape in marriage remains legal in many US states, but when pregnancy results, abortion is a crime.
The hard-won legislative right of all women to say no to unwanted sexual attention did not end sexual harassment. Changing the law does not change society, and it is not until sexism is eradicated and women are equal with men in all spheres of social life that the sexual objectification and harassment of women will end.
But legal reforms, and the campaigns which win them, are important steps forward on the road to women's liberation because they force broader acknowledgment and acceptance of women's basic human rights and offer some avenues, however limited, for redress in the face of injustice. Any attempt to roll back or qualify such gains under the guise of "exceptional" circumstances must be resisted.
Like all women, Paula Jones' right to freedom from sexual harassment is unqualified. So is her right to full and immediate justice when that freedom is denied.
By Lisa Macdonald