Combatting the Sexual Harassment War

Even with the Department of Defense's (DOD) "Zero Tolerance" policy, sexually hostile work environments still exist in today's military. It ranges from verbal conduct that unreasonably interferes with an individual's work performance or creates an intimidating, hostile, or offensive working environment, to unwanted physical touching, and the dreadful sexual assault. While there is a new Joint Task Force (JTF) tracking sexual assault in the DOD, it does not even touch the jokes, comments, connotations and intimidation that still take place, and, as confirmed in an interview with the base MEO office, can quite possibly if allowed to continue can become a greater problem.1 In 1994, most positions in the Air Force, including combat positions, opened up to women, and the number of service women increased to 19 percent by mid 2003. Since women came into the military, we have seen several high-profile military sexual harassment and fraternization situations including the Aberdeen Proving Grounds, Tailhook, and Kelly Flinn cases. Most recently are the War on Terrorism cases in the theater which brought on new professional relationship and fraternization policies. In 1998, the Secretary of Defense mandated all services must establish policies to prohibit certain relationships among ranks, eliminate the many differences in disciplinary standards and to adopt uniform, clear and readily understandable policies." 2 I believe General Ronald Fogelman, former Chief of Staff of the Air Force, said it best in 1997, when speaking to Air Force leaders on the zero tolerance of religious, sexual, and racial viii harassment, as he outlined several reasons for this policy: "One, it's the right thing to do. Two, it's the law of the land. The third is more fundamental. We cannot expect people to achieve their maximum potential in an environment where harassment or prejudice exists.