WOMEN’S RETAIL SERVICE WORK IN CANADA
207
‘Something to Deal With’:
Customer Sexual Harassment
and Women’s Retail Service Work
in Canada
Karen D. Hughes* and Vela Tadic
While sexual harassment in the workplace has been extensively researched over the past two
decades, the majority of studies have focused on employer–employee or co-worker relationships. In contrast, the issue of ‘customer sexual harassment’ (i.e. the sexual harassment of
employees by customers) has been less explicitly explored. This paper examines customer
sexual harassment in the Canadian context, drawing on a study of 63 female retail service
workers and 20 security workers. It focuses on the nature, prevalence, and consequences of
this form of harassment for women who work in various jobs in retail sales (e.g. flower shops,
book shops). Findings from the study suggest that customer sexual harassment is a significant
problem. Not only have a majority of women been sexually harassed by customers in their
current job, but they appear to be highly constrained in dealing with such behaviour. To the
extent that the work environment privileges the customer, through its emphasis on customer
satisfaction, women are reluctant to confront harassers and may engage in behaviours (e.g.
avoiding male customers, being less friendly) which potentially impact their performance on
the job. The paper examines the dilemmas facing female workers and the policy issues raised.
Introduction
… that’s what happens in retail, in any kind
of customer service, and where you’re
dealing with the public … you get people
who want to take advantage of you having
to be nice basically because that’s your job.
(Sophie, retail worker for 15 years)
F
or many women working in the service
sector, dealing with ‘overly friendly’ or
‘difficult’ customers is ‘just a part of the job’
— in some cases, a minor irritant; in others, a
serious form of ‘workplace sexual harassment’.1. In Canada, recent findings from
Statistics Canada’s Violence Against Women
Survey suggest that nearly one out of every
seven women who have ever experienced
sexual harassment in the workplace has been
harassed by a client or customer (Johnson
1994, p. 11). This statistic suggests a not insignificant problem for working women. Yet,
within existing research the issue has received
relatively little attention.2 While there is now
a well-developed body of work documenting
the prevalence and impact of work-related
sexual harassment, and establishing it as a
legitimate ‘public’ issue, most studies have
focused on employer–employee, or co-worker,
relationships (see Weeks et al. 1986 and Sev’er
1996 for valuable overviews). In contrast,
sexual harassment of employees by customers
— or what we refer to here as ‘customer sexual
harassment’3 — remains relatively unexplored.
The issue, however, is one that merits greater
attention, given the continued growth of
service-related jobs in industrialized economies, women’s heavy reliance on such work,
and growing pressures in the service sector to
meet customer demands.
In this paper, we discuss preliminary findings on the issue of customer sexual harassment, drawing on a study of 63 female retail
workers and 20 security workers which was
carried out in 1996. Our intent is to provide
much needed empirical evidence on this type
of harassment, focusing on three key dimensions: (i) its prevalence and nature; (ii) its
effect on workers (personal, job related); and
(iii) workers’ responses to such behaviour.
The study we draw on was conducted in
Canada, a country where the service sector
now constitutes over 70% of the economy
and employs 86% of all working women (ECC
1991, p. 1; Statistics Canada 1994, p. 14). It
focuses on women working alone in small
retail stores, both in street and mall locations, in Edmonton, a mid-sized Western
© Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 1998, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and
350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
Volume 5
Address for
correspondence:
*Karen D. Hughes,
Women’s Studies
Program, University of
Alberta, Edmonton,
Canada TG6 2H4.
Authors are listed
alphabetically and have
made equal contributions
to this paper. We are
grateful to the women and
men who participated in
this study, and to the
anonymous referees for
their valuable comments.
We also thank Kerri
Calvert and Teri McIntyre
for library assistance, and
Harvey Krahn and
Graham Lowe for their
comments on an earlier
version of the paper.
Number 4
October 1998
208
GENDER, WORK AND ORGANIZATION
Canadian city with a sizeable retail service
sector.
In analysing the issue of customer sexual
harassment, we place it within the larger
social, economic and political context in
which women’s work is shaped, illustrating
how the nature of retail service work positions
women as workers. Our findings indicate
that sexual harassment by customers is a
pervasive feature of retail service work — one
to which female workers are especially vulnerable given pressures to provide ‘quality
customer service’ and to be evaluated on that
basis. Though female retail workers use
considerable creativity and skill in dealing
with harassment, their resistance to it is
nevertheless constrained in a highly competitive context which ultimately privileges
the customer. Following Weeks et al. (1986),
who illustrate how employer–employee and
co-worker sexual harassment became a
‘legitimate public issue’ in the 1980s, we
argue that customer sexual harassment must
undergo a similar ‘problematization’ within
academic research, and within public conscience, before front-line retail workers will
have the means to deal with it effectively.
In the following sections, we discuss these
findings in greater detail, First, however, we
briefly address several related issues which are
important for contextualizing the study and
the issue of customer sexual harassment itself.
Women and retail service work
Our interest in ‘retail service workers’ — a
category which includes a diverse group of
sales and service jobs within food, clothing,
department and other stores4 — stems, in part,
from its growing importance as a source of
employment for women. In Canada, as in
many other industrialized countries, there has
been a strong expansion of the service sector
in recent decades (ECC 1991, p. 59; Krahn
1992, p. 16). Retail service work has been a key
component of this overall growth. Between
1967 and 1989 in Canada, job growth in the
retail sector exceeded average growth for the
economy as a whole, with women taking
up a disproportionate share of such jobs (ECC
1991, p. 58). Presently, women make up nearly
half of all sales workers in Canada, up from
39% in 1982 (Statistics Canada 1995, p. 76).
In addition to being an increasingly
important source of employment for women,
retail work is also an increasingly precarious
one — a trend evidenced in other industrialized countries as well. Studies from Britain,
the United States and Canada all indicate that
sales and service jobs within the retail sector
Volume 5 Number 4 October 1998
are often poorly paid, highly ‘flexible’ (i.e.
part-time or casual), lacking in benefits,
with low levels of protection (Berheide 1988;
Broadbridge 1991; McDermott 1994).5 In
Canada, for instance, approximately 40%
of retail workers are in some type of ‘nonstandard’ employment (i.e. part-time, temporary, own account self-employment, or
multiple jobholding) (Krahn 1995, p. 40),
and pay rates are amongst the lowest in the
service sector (Grenon 1996). Unionization
rates are also the lowest of any industrial sector, with just 10% of female workers in retail
and wholesale trade belonging to a union in
1991 (Statistics Canada 1994, p. 59). Although
the precariousness of retail service work
affects both male and female workers, there
is considerable vertical gender segregation
within such work, with men more often
holding the better paying, commissioned
jobs, selling ‘big ticket’ items (Berheide 1988,
p. 245; Broadbridge 1991, pp. 48–51; Kemp
1994, p. 231; McDermott 1994, pp. 124–6).
A second feature of retail service work
which is important in the context of this study
is its highly interactive, and often ‘sexualized’, nature (Adkins 1995; Broadbridge 1991;
Hall 1993; Stanko 1988). As Adkins (1995) has
argued, dominant notions of sexuality are
highly embedded into many service jobs, so
that the women in such jobs are seen largely
as ‘sexual commodities’. As a result, ‘the actual
work of women [becomes], in part, the work
of being and dealing with their location as
sexual objects’ (p. 134). Customers often play
a key part in this process. In her study of
the British tourist industry, Adkins found the
sexualization of women workers by male
customers to be pervasive. Male customers
commonly engaged in verbal harassment (e.g.
teasing, jokes) and physical forms of sexual
attention (e.g. deliberate touching), most
commonly ‘chatting up’ and ‘eyeing up’ —
that is, treating women as if ‘an object which
the observer has a right to gaze at for as
long as, and in whatever way, pleases [them]’
(1995, p. 129). Not only was such behaviour
common, it was also largely tolerated. Supervisors expected women to be able to cope
with the highly sexualized nature of the work,
treating it as ‘just part of the job’. Female
employees were also far more accepting of
this type of behaviour from customers than
from co-workers (1995, p. 130). This tendency
has been noted in other studies as well — for
example, Hall’s (1993) research on US restaurant workers, which found that both supervisors and workers expected female service
workers to be friendlier to male customers,
and to have to deal with various harassing
behaviours on a routine basis.
© Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 1998
WOMEN’S RETAIL SERVICE WORK IN CANADA
A final reason for our interest in retail
service work — one which we see as having
great significance to the issue of customer
sexual harassment in the current context — is
the emergence in the 1980s and 1990s of what
Du Gay and Salaman (1992) have called ‘the
cult of the customer’; a trend most evident in
the proliferation of programmes aimed at
providing ‘quality customer service’. While
management interest in customer service
and interactive service work is not a new
phenomenon (see, for example, Hochschild
1983), it has taken on heightened importance
in recent years, as intensified business competition has seen the customer–worker relationship targeted as a key site of profitability
(Fuller and Smith 1991). The interest in
customer service is well illustrated in the
writings of proponents (such as Zemke 1990),
who emphasize its particular importance for
the retail sector. As Zemke notes:
With even speciality retail stores taking
on an increasingly homogenous look and
selling similar labels, management is
beginning to see more clearly that the
differentiating factor for retailers is how they
make customers ‘feel’ in the store (1990, p. 347,
emphasis added).
The concern with how customers ‘feel’
has, according to Du Gay and Salaman (1992,
p. 621), spawned numerous ‘new technologies
of surveillance’. Illustrating this point, Zemke
points to the ‘growing number of US retailers
[who] are … implementing programs that
emphasize better service and reward employees who perform well’ (1990, p. 346). In
a critical study of such practices, Fuller and
Smith (1991) found that US firms used, on
average, five different feedback mechanisms
to gather information on customer satisfaction. These ranged from comment cards,
telephone surveys, toll-free lines and face-toface inquiries, to the use of ‘professional
shoppers’.6 Such programmes, as Fuller and
Smith point out, provide new modes of managerial control which place intense constraints
on the behaviour of employees. In this
context, customers ‘are set up as the ones who
must be pleased, whose orders must be followed, whose ideas, whims and desires appear
to dictate how work is performed. Workers
are judged on their interactions with customers by customers themselves’ (Fuller and
Smith 1991, pp. 10–11).
While issues of gender and sexuality are
largely absent from these discussions, the
increasing emphasis placed on quality customer service has clear implications for
female retail workers. Such practices place
them in potentially vulnerable situations,
© Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 1998
209
especially during times of economic insecurity, when they may be evaluated not only on
the service they provide, but also on their
ability to engage in, and manoeuvre through,
sexualized exchanges with customers. Moreover, customers do not actually have to make
use of any of these feedback mechanisms to
shape workers’ behaviour. As Fuller and
Smith contend, the simple fact that customers
can potentially evaluate the service interaction is enough to serve as a ‘continuous, invisible, check on service workers’ interactions
with the public’ (1991, p. 11). In such circumstances, workers become highly constrained
in how they are able to deal with harassing
behaviours, knowing that whether and how
they respond to such encounters may
potentially shape subsequent evaluation by
management.
Customer sexual harassment
and women’s work
Given the current context of retail service
work, it is surprising that greater attention
has not been paid to the issue of customer
sexual harassment in the extensive literature
that has developed on workplace sexual
harassment more generally (see Hartel and
Von Ville 1995; Sev’er 1996; Weeks et al. 1986
for overviews). Amongst social researchers,
Folergo and Fjelstad (1995) provide one of the
few studies that explicitly examines sexual
harassment from customers, interviewing ten
students and workers on their experiences
in the Norwegian hospitality industry. While
exploratory, their study finds that customer
sexual harassment constitutes a significant
problem for service workers, but that workers
and supervisors tend to overlook and minimize harassing behaviours because of the
norms surrounding ‘customer service’. In
their view, the pressures placed on workers to
provide ‘caring, individualized attention’ set
up a difficult dynamic which may, in fact,
‘indirectly encourage sexual harassment at the
service workplace’ (p. 309).
One area where the issue of customer
sexual harassment has gained some attention
is in business and legal writings, though this
is a relatively recent phenomenon. From a
legal standpoint, Aalberts and Siedman (1994)
review the situation in the US, identifying
customer sexual harassment as an ‘emerging
legal problem’. A handful of articles can also
be found in marketing and sales (Fine et al.
1994; Lawlor 1995) and human resource publications (Laabs 1995), as well as in popular
magazines such as Working Women (Clancy
1994). All of these indicate growing concern
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GENDER, WORK AND ORGANIZATION
over the issue of customer sexual harassment,
particularly with respect to its prevalence and
the potential for employer liability for ‘third
party harassment’. Commenting on the issue
of prevalence, Lawlor (1995) notes findings
from a recent survey by Sales and Marketing
Management of 200 sales professionals. These
suggest that customer sexual harassment is a
far more common problem than co-worker
or employee harassment for female sales
workers, and one which many women ignore
for fear of losing a sale (Lawlor 1995, pp. 92,
98). This survey, along with other anecdotal
evidence offered in these articles, suggests
a growing awareness of customer sexual
harassment, as does the legal literature which
describes it as ‘a new frontier in gender discrimination law’ (Prorok 1993, p. 4). Yet, beyond
these general discussions, such articles provide little empirical detail about the specific
nature of such harassment, or its effects on
female workers.
What we currently know about customer
sexual harassment then is fairly limited and
we are left to draw from existing research on
co-worker and employer sexual harassment
to identify important lines of inquiry. From
this extensive literature, a number of points
are clear. First, sexual harassment in the workplace remains a significant problem. While
the rate of reported incidence clearly depends
on how sexual harassment is defined
(Fitzgerald and Shullman 1993, p. 7), studies
over the past decade or more consistently
show high rates of prevalence. In the US, on
the basis of an extended review of studies,
Fitzgerald and Shullman (1993) estimate that
roughly one of every two American women
have experienced workplace sexual harassment at some point in their lives. Thomas and
Kitzinger (1994) suggest similar levels in
Britain. Studies in Canada also suggest high
rates of incidence (see Sev’er, 1996 for a review). Of these, perhaps the most conservative, but possibly most reliable, estimates
come from Statistics Canada’s (1993) Violence
Against Women Survey of 12,000 women.
Using a more limited definition of workplace
sexual harassment, which excludes behaviours commonly used in definitions of harassment (e.g. non-verbal behaviours such as
staring, leering, winking — see Cleveland
1994, p. 170), the study found that, at some
point in their working lives, over half of
Canadian women had been harassed by a
co-worker, and nearly 40% by an employer
(Johnson 1994, pp. 11–12).
Closely tied to the issue of prevalence is
the nature of sexual harassment itself, which
can include a range of behaviours and may
involve isolated incidents, or related episodes
Volume 5 Number 4 October 1998
over time. In an extensive review of US
studies, Cleveland found that the most common forms of sexual harassment included
unwanted verbal behaviours (e.g. sexual teasing, jokes, remarks, whistles, hoots) and nonverbal behaviours (e.g. sexual looks, staring,
gestures). More serious forms of harassment,
such as assault or sexual coercion, were
less common, and tended to be initiated
by superiors rather than co-workers (1994,
pp. 171–2). These findings parallel Canadian
findings from the Violence Against Women
Survey. Of the types of harassment experienced, 77% of women reported ‘inappropriate
comments about their bodies or sex lives’,
73% ‘leaning over unnecessarily, getting too
close, or cornering’, and 50% ‘repeated
requests for a date and not taking no for an
answer’. Far less common were situations
where respondents were told their ‘job
situation might suffer if they did not enter a
sexual relationship’, although this was
reported by 18% of those harassed (Johnson
1994:11).
A final issue of importance concerns the
impact of sexual harassment, both personal
and job related, on workers. At a personal
level, studies have shown that harassment
may impair women’s physical and mental health
in a number of different ways. With respect
to physical health, women may experience
headaches, sleep disturbance, nausea, weight
loss or gain, and sexual dysfunction. Common consequences for mental health include
anxiety and depression (see Fitzgerald 1993;
Sev’er 1996, p. 189). Beyond the personal impact of harassment, studies have also found
numerous job-related consequences, ranging
from decreased job satisfaction and morale, to
higher absenteeism, damaged interpersonal
relations at work, and increased job turnover
(Cleveland 1994, pp. 180–1; Fitzgerald 1993,
p. 1072; Gutek and Koss 1993, p. 30; Lowe
1989, pp. 13, 31). While the organizational
costs of sexual harassment are not well
known (see Gutek and Koss 1993, pp. 35–6),
the 1992 Canadian Human Rights Annual
Report estimates they run into the millions of
dollars, once absenteeism, employee turnover
and lost productivity are taken into account
(cited in Sev’er 1996, p. 189).
Existing studies thus tell us a great deal
about the prevalence, nature and effects of coworker and employer sexual harassment. Yet,
while customer sexual harassment may be
similar to these in many respects, it may also
differ in significant ways. For example, harassment from customers may be more frequent,
but less extreme, given that customer–worker
interactions are often more contained and
routine than exchanges between co-workers,
© Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 1998
WOMEN’S RETAIL SERVICE WORK IN CANADA
or employer and employees (see Leidner
1993). Similarly, the type of harassment, and
its impact on female workers, may also be
quite different. Whereas women facing employer or co-worker sexual harassment may
experience deteriorating workplace relationships (Gutek and Koss 1993, p. 31), this may
not be the case for those harassed by customers outside the organization. Instead, such
behaviour may create bonds of solidarity
between female workers who see mutual benefits in helping, and protecting, one another. In
short, because the relationship between
workers and customers is unique, several important questions emerge in thinking through
this form of workplace sexual harassment.
How common is it? What forms does it take?
What are its consequences for female workers
and to what extent are they able to deal with
it in the current context in which the customer
is so highly prized?
Study details
It is with these questions in mind that we
undertook an exploratory study of customer
sexual harassment. The focus is on female
workers, given the well-documented trend
for women, rather than men, to be the primary targets of workplace sexual harassment
(Cleveland 1994; Fitzgerald and Shullman
1993). This is not to suggest, however, that
male retail service workers may not experience
sexual, or more general forms of, harassment
from customers. Leidner, for example, has
noted that both men and women in routine
service work are expected to ‘remain pleasant
even in the face of insult’ (1993, p. 208).
Clearly, the gendered dimensions of customer
harassment remain important topics for future
research. Our focus on women’s experiences
is intended to illuminate one form of customer
harassment (i.e. customer sexual harassment),
as well as to broaden existing understandings
of workplace sexual harassment.
The study draws on quantitative and
qualitative data. Surveys were used to gather
information on the prevalence and nature of
customer sexual harassment; in-depth interviews were conducted to illuminate the
dynamics and experience of harassment — a
dimension which Collinson and Collinson
note remains relatively unexplored (1996, pp.
30–1).7 We use three sources of data in this
analysis: (i) a survey of 60 women currently
working in retail services in street and mall
locations, which examines women’s experiences of customer sexual harassment; (ii) a
survey of 20 security personnel in these
same retail locations, which examines their
© Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 1998
211
knowledge of formal and informal complaints of customer sexual harassment made
by retail workers; and (iii) in-depth interviews
with three women, with long-term experience
in the retail sector, who have experienced
various forms of customer harassment in the
course of their work.
Participants for both surveys were chosen
in equal numbers from four different types of
retail locations in the city: (i) high traffic malls
(Kingsway Mall), (ii) high traffic streets (Old
Strathcona), (iii) remote, suburban areas
(Sherwood Park Mall) and (iv) concentrated
tourist areas (Downtown and West Edmonton
Mall). As we assumed there would be high
rates of customer sexual harassment in retail
service jobs that were explicitly ‘sexualized’
(e.g. waitressing, hostessing), we deliberately
chose other kinds of retail service work (e.g.
flower shops, gift shops, speciality shops
selling books, shirts, toys) in order to see how
common such behaviour was in these settings. While the sample is not truly ‘random’
in the statistical sense, we strove to select
a representative group by choosing from
workers in all appropriate shops in each of
the four locations. Because the surveys were
hand delivered and collected, additional information was often collected from respondents in informal conversations.
Table 1 provides information on the
respondents to the two surveys. As we can
see, the vast majority of female retail workers
were young and single, (e.g. never married,
separated, or divorced), with four out of five
under the age of 29. Security workers tended
to be slightly older, with an average age of 28,
and the vast majority (85%) were also single.
Not surprisingly, given traditional patterns of
gender segregation, men comprised the vast
majority (80%) of security workers.
While the surveys provide the main source
of data, we also draw on in-depth interviews
to supplement this material. Given the small
number of interviews, these are used to provide illustrative, rather than generalizable,
case studies that shed light on the dynamics
and experience of customer sexual harassment. Of particular interest are workers’
experiences and self-definition of harassment, customer–worker power dynamics,
and the factors shaping workers’ reactions
and responses to customer harassment. The
women, who we refer to by name, are: Sophie
(a 35-year-old, single woman who has
worked in retail for about fifteen years and,
for the past year, has been the supervisor of a
gift store in a mall); Brianna (a 22-year-old,
single women with long retail experience
who, for the past five years, has worked at a
flower shop on a high traffic street); and Tara
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GENDER, WORK AND ORGANIZATION
Table 1: Survey respondents
Female workers
Security workers
(n)
(%)
(n)
(%)
60
0
100
0
4
16
20
80
Sex:
Female
Male
Age:
,19 years old
20–29 years old
30+ years old
Marital status:
Single
Married
12
37
11
20
62
18
0
14
6
0
70
30
48
12
80
20
17
3
85
15
Total
60
100
20
100
(a 27-year-old, single woman who has
worked in retail for about ten years, holding
various positions and, for the past four years,
has worked at a bookstore in a large mall).
Research findings
(i) Prevalence and nature of customer
harassment
While baseline statistics, such as the 1993
Statistics Canada survey, suggest that 13% of
female workers have experienced sexual
harassment from customers at some point in
their working lives, this figure represents an
average for all workers — one which is likely
much higher for service workers, especially
‘front-line’ service workers who spend most
of their time dealing directly with customers
(e.g. sales clerks). Our own results suggest
fairly high rates of sexual harassment for
women who work in retail sales jobs. Workers
were asked ‘Have you ever received any
unwanted sexual remark, looks, suggestions,
or physical contact from customers that
caused you discomfort?’ As Table 2 shows,
two-thirds of the 60 female workers surveyed
reported having experienced some form of
customer sexual harassment at the retail
location where they worked. Of these women,
40% had experienced repeat incidents that
were carried out consistently by the same
individual over varying periods of time (e.g.
once a week, once a month).
For those women experiencing customer
sexual harassment, the vast majority (85%)
had been harassed by male customers, with
15% indicating harassment by both women
and men, and none reporting harassment solely
from female customers.8 Men’s predominance
Volume 5 Number 4 October 1998
Table 2: Prevalence of customer harassment
Female workers
Experiencing harassment:
Yes
No
Repeated incidents of
harassment:
Yes
No
Gender of harasser:
Men only
Women only
Men and Women
(n)
(%)
40
20
67
33
16
24
40
60
34
0
6
85
0
15
as harassers is striking given the gender
profile of customers frequenting the retail
locations involved. While the results are not
reported in Table 2, only 5% of the women
surveyed were employed in stores with a
predominantly male clientele. Most reported
having either a mixed clientele of men and
women (50%), or female customers only (45%).
Although these findings must be read
cautiously, given the small size and specific
nature of the sample, they do suggest that
customer sexual harassment is a common
feature of retail service work in these particular locations. This impression is reinforced by the results from security workers
and interview respondents. Nearly twothirds of security workers were aware of
incidents of customer sexual harassment
in the shopping malls where they were
employed. A majority learned of these either
through formal reports being filed with the
security office, or through informal reports
© Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 1998
WOMEN’S RETAIL SERVICE WORK IN CANADA
being made to themselves or co-workers (results not reported). The women interviewed
also indicated that such incidents were fairly
routine. As Tara remarked: ‘I’ve worked in
retail for a number of years so I’ve dealt with
a number of difficult customers. You always
have them.’ Brianna’s experience was similar:
‘Just another story, around here it happens
a lot’.
Because sexual harassment can take many
forms — from subtle verbal innuendoes to
inappropriate physical contact — the women
surveyed were asked about a range of potential behaviours. As indicated in Figure 1, the
most common forms of customer sexual
harassment were staring and leering, which
were experienced by 26% of women, followed
by flirting and sexual remarks (24%) and obscene
phone calls (18%). Other types of behaviour were
less common and included the presentation of
offensive materials (13%), touching and grabbing
(11%), and propositions for sex (9%). It needs
to be kept in mind that, in practice, various
harassing behaviours (e.g. touching, staring,
verbal comments, notes) may occur together.
Brianna, for instance, noted a common
problem with customers both staring and
getting unnecessarily close — in her words,
getting ‘… right up to you, close, staring at
your breasts and butt’. Moreover, these
behaviours may occur together at a single
point, or may comprise an ongoing series of
acts by the same individual.
The women interviewed illustrate how
workers’ experiences of sexual harassment
diverge. Like the survey respondents, all of
them had experienced a wide range of behaviours, from ‘minor things you can control’
(Brianna) to far more serious incidents that
required security and police involvement.
Brianna, for example, had experienced many
different forms of customer sexual harassment in her current job, including staring
Figure 1: Most common types of customer
harassment (multiple responses n=147)
© Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 1998
213
and leering, touching and grabbing, as well
as receiving offensive materials. In the latter
case, ‘… one guy gave me a piece of paper
with his phone number in it and a condom
rolled into it.’ She had also faced both minor,
and more extreme, incidents, her worst experience involving a man staring and following her around in the store, and eventually
trying to look up her skirt. In contrast, Tara’s
experiences were far less frequent and less
extreme. Yet, she too noted a common problem
with inappropriate touching and grabbing
from male customers:
… they’ll put their arms around you or
they’ll put their hands on your back and
rub it up and down. And I have no idea if
it’s specific overtures for any purpose but
it’s very uncomfortable coming into your
personal space, totally unnecessary for the
sales interaction.
Of the three women, the most serious
incident was experienced by Sophie, who was
harassed over a period of weeks by a male
customer who would regularly visit the store,
looking for her. During this time, he harassed
her in several ways, touching her ‘more and
more’ — ‘… he would put his arm around my
shoulder and he would squeeze me, or then
he started saying things like I should take you
out dancing one night, or wouldn’t we make
a wonderful couple? …’. At one point, he also
stood outside the store ‘for a very, very long
time just watching me’. He also began telling
her details about herself that he had no apparent way of knowing, such as her last name,
family situation, and place of residence, at
which point she contacted police and also
filed a formal report with security in the mall
at which she was employed.
While sexual harassment from customers
appears to be a common experience for
female retail service workers, its specific
nature is diverse. Of note, too, is the fact that
many of the women surveyed were reluctant
to identify various incidents as ‘harassment’
per se. This tendency has been noted by other
researchers in relation to employer and coworker harassment (Gutek and Koss 1993;
Thomas and Kitzinger 1994; Ring 1994).
As Gutek and Koss observe, ‘[a] woman who
is harassed may be unsure at first if what she
is experiencing really is harassment’ (1993,
p. 28). No doubt this is due to the very pervasiveness of sexualized exchanges between
women and men in everyday life which
operates to minimize and discount sexual
harassment as a ‘problem’ at all (Thomas and
Kitzinger 1994). This tendency may be
particularly marked in retail service work,
where the expectations on workers to treat
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214
GENDER, WORK AND ORGANIZATION
customers in a friendly and engaging manner
creates added layers of ambiguity.
Problematizing customer sexual harassment thus becomes difficult in this context.
As one survey respondent noted in her
written comments, the nature of service work
makes it difficult to know when harassment
is occurring. In her words: ‘You become selfconscious — maybe you’re not being harassed or maybe you are.’ Survey responses
suggest that workers come to define ‘harassment’ in a number of ways. Behaviours are
harassment when they feel ‘inappropriate’ or
‘uncomfortable’, when they begin to cross
‘one’s personal space’, or when they are
‘unnecessary for the sales interaction’. For
some, the issue of control is also central — a
point illustrated by Sophie in reflecting on
her own experience. While acknowledging
that the behaviours she faced may ‘technically [have been] harassment’, it was only
when it started ‘getting out of hand’ that she
felt she was being harassed. For her, the defining feature was: ‘That you’ve lost control,
that somebody else has power over you …’.
Given the pervasiveness of customer sexual
harassment in retail service work, it is
important to ask how it affects women
workers in their personal and working lives.
When asked about the impact of such incidents, the women surveyed noted a variety of
personal effects, as shown in Figure 2. Most
common were feelings of embarrassment
(20%), anger (16%), worry (16%), fear (14%),
illness (9%) and danger (8%). Less common
was the tendency to feel unaffected by it (3%),
or to view it as simply something to deal with
(5%), or alternatively to feel either flattered
(4%) or guilty (2%). These responses —
especially the more common ones such as
embarassment, anger, fear, and illness — suggest many parallels between the experience of
co-worker and employer sexual harassment.
Amongst the women interviewed, worry
and fear were perhaps the most predominant
feelings. All of the women stated they were
‘cautious’, ‘jumpy’, and ‘fearful’ after various
harassment episodes, and tended to be more
guarded with customers for the next while.
Sophie, who faced an extreme case of customer
sexual harassment, experienced intense worry
and fear, although these feelings affected her
primarily outside of the workplace. As she
recalls, ‘… it did start to get to me … I started
walking home when I got off work, and I’d be
watching my back all the time. I’d be quite
nervous about it.’ While the survey results do
not capture this, the interviews also illuminate the dynamics of women’s experiences,
suggesting that the personal impact of sexual
harassment may change over time. As
Brianna noted, while a more serious incident of harassment first left her feeling
‘confused, disgusted, creeped out’, she later
felt ‘degraded … like an object’. Much later,
she simply felt it had been ‘embarassing’,
noting that, in the long run, it was ‘not
mentally damaging’.
Beyond the personal impacts on workers,
are the job-related consequences of customer
sexual harassment — an issue which is of
particular concern for retail service workers,
given the strong pressures they face to
provide friendly and helpful service. While
Figure 3 indicates that the most commonly
reported job-related impact of customer sexual
harassment was ‘no effect’ (41%)9 — reported
by roughly half of the women surveyed — it
also suggests there were many important
short- and long-term consequences. Avoiding
Figure 2: Personal effects of customer
harassment (multiple responses n=152)
Figure 3: Job-related effects of customer
harassment (multiple responses n=49)
(ii) Effects on female retail workers —
personal and job related
Volume 5 Number 4 October 1998
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WOMEN’S RETAIL SERVICE WORK IN CANADA
or ignoring male customers (20%) and being
less friendly to customers (16%) were two
common work-related effects. Both of these
pose considerable dilemmas for female
workers, given their potential to negatively
influence sales levels, and customer and employer evaluations of service provision. Other
less common consequences included losing
interest in work (6%), seeing job performance
suffer (6%), dressing differently in hopes of
avoiding harassment (6%), and considering
quitting or requesting a transfer to another
store (4%).
On the surface, the fact that many women
reported no job related effect suggests that
sexual harassment from customers has little
impact on their working lives. At a deeper
level, it may reflect a tendency to normalize
harassment as ‘just a part of the job’, as other
researchers have suggested (Thomas and
Kitzinger 1994). Female workers may simply
learn to expect, and deal with, common forms
of harassment, thus minimizing their jobrelated effects. Brianna hints at this, observing
that over time ‘you toughen up and take crap’.
However, for many women, such harassment
did adversely affect job performance, particularly their ability to provide friendly, outgoing, customer service. Speaking about this
issue, the women interviewed noted the
tendency to avoid customers, to be less
friendly and ‘more cautious with people’
following harassment episodes. Tara, for example, speaking about one incident, recalled:
‘After that, for the rest of the shift, and for a
little while after, it was business only ... I was
really cautious.’ In her experience, customer
sexual harassment hampered her usual
outgoing style, and her attempts ‘to develop a
connection with the customer’, making it
difficult to perform well on the job.
(iii) Responses to customer harassment
Given the current climate of retail service work,
a key concern is whether female workers
can effectively respond to customers who
sexually harass them or whether pressures
to provide high-quality customer service
leave little choice but to engage in, and
manoeuvre through, sexualized exchanges as
a routine part of the job. We thus asked
women how they respond to harassment and
what, if any, factors shape their response (e.g.
fear of being reported, other customers in
store, etc.) From research on employer and
co-worker sexual harassment, we know that
women’s responses range from the individual
to institutional, and the direct to indirect (Gutek
and Koss 1993, p. 37). By far the most common responses are individual and indirect. As
© Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 1998
215
Gutek and Koss note, women rarely ‘tell the
harasser to stop’ but instead ‘are more likely
to ignore the harassment, joke about it, or
evade the harasser [especially] when the
harassment is mild’ (pp. 37, 41). This is the
case even though indirect, individual responses
are clearly the least effective. Several factors
may explain their use nevertheless: (i) indirect
responses may allow women to ‘manage’ the
situation, avoiding retaliation that may come
from more direct confrontation; (ii) women
may perceive these strategies as less risky or;
(iii) they may feel they are more appropriate
than a direct challenge, given the ambiguity
often surrounding sexual harassment episodes
(Gutek and Koss 1993, p. 40; Ring 1994).
In responding to sexual harassment from
customers, female retail service workers
use similar tactics, favouring individual and
indirect approaches Of the women surveyed,
the most common response was simply to
ignore such incidents (29%). Workers also
responded by discussing such incidents
outside of work with friends or family (24%).
Other individual, indirect strategies included
playing along or joking about the situation
(14%), discussing episodes with co-workers
or others in the mall (7%), or changing shifts
(3%). While there was clearly a preference
for indirect, individual responses, this does not
mean that institutional responses were absent.
In fact, the third most common response was
to report harassment to management or security (18%). Direct responses, however, were
extremely rare, as is the case in employer and
co-worker harassment, with there being only
a few cases where women directly told
harassers to stop (5%).
Listening to the women interviewed aids
our understanding of the reasons why retail
service workers respond as they do. Like the
women surveyed, they too preferred individual,
indirect responses, and attempted to minimize
conflict by joking, ignoring certain comments
or actions, and by not showing their fear or
anger. One important factor in choosing their
response was the broad context in which they
operated. As Tara notes, with ‘… the “customer is always right” policy, you’ve got to
grin and bear a lot …’. Given this, a primary
consideration in dealing with sexual harassment was a desire to avoid any direct confrontation with the customer, which might
result in a complaint against the worker.
Beyond this, a second consideration was to
avoid disruptions in the store, which might
disturb other customers who were there. As
Sophie explained:
… you try to play along with them for a bit
as long as it keeps it on a friendly level …
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GENDER, WORK AND ORGANIZATION
you don’t want to make it more than it is
and when other customers are in the store,
you want to make them feel all right about
being in the store, even though there’s that
person there.
Echoing this view, Tara also emphasized how
considerations of ‘customer service’ deterred
a direct response: ‘… if you start getting angry
towards them, they start to feed off those feelings, and then they just have more ammunition to go and complain about you’. In her
view, an indirect response was always
preferable: ‘Better to get them out of the store,
rather than other customers seeing them get
upset.’
An additional factor which may shape
worker’s responses is the presence, or
absence, of workplace policies designed to
protect them from customer sexual harassment, as well as other forms of harassment
from customers. Such policies, while existing
alongside policies and programmes emphasizing customer service, may temper customer privilege by setting limits on the types
of behaviour workers are expected to tolerate
in the course of their work. While our information is less detailed on this issue, just
over half (60%) of the women surveyed
indicated they had been informed by their
supervisor about options for dealing with
customer sexual harassment. Within that
category, however, many respondents noted
they were not clear about their options, or
that the supervisor did not explicitly outline
what their options were. Moreover, from
the written comments provided by those
women surveyed it is clear that tensions exist
between policies promoting customer service
and those protecting workers. As one woman
remarked: ‘In this economy the amount
that you make during your shift is a direct
reflection upon your ability to sell and assist
customers.’ Other comments suggest that
customer considerations outweigh all others:
‘the customer is always right’, ‘[we] cannot
offend or be rude to them’, ‘they are the customer and we cater to them’ and ‘customers
come first’. Tara also underlined these tensions with respect to her previous job, noting
that while there had been an official policy
intended to protect workers, it nevertheless
had been routinely ignored. Thus, even where
explicit policies exist, there is no assurance
that workers will be protected. This is not
to say, however, that workers are always
without recourse. One factor that may assist
them, regardless of formal policy, is supervisory support. Brianna emphasizes this
about her current job, noting we ‘don’t really
have a store policy, whatever feels com-
Volume 5 Number 4 October 1998
fortable ... [my] boss is very OK. We can go
ahead and react whenever we feel uncomfortable ...’. Store policy and supervisory
support are thus important, an issue we
return to in the following discussion.
Discussion and conclusion
On the basis of this study, it appears that
customer sexual harassment is a significant
problem for women in retail service jobs,
even when they are located in what are not
explicitly ‘sexualized’ areas of work (e.g.
flower shops, book shops). Of the 60 women
we surveyed, two thirds had been sexually
harassed by customers at some point in their
current job and, of these, 40% had experienced repeat incidents carried out by the
same person. While these findings should be
interpreted cautiously, given the relatively
small and specialized nature of the sample,
they do suggest that sexual harassment by
customers is an important issue for working
women — one which deserves a more explicit, and prominent place, in future research
agendas on workplace harassment, and on
gender and employment more generally. As
a starting point, there is a need for larger,
representative, studies which can establish the
prevalence, and nature, of customer sexual
harassment, not only in retail service work
but in other areas of work that involve frontline service providers. Of equal importance
to such baseline statistics are studies with an
interpretive dimension which can further
illuminate the dynamics and experience of
customer sexual harassment as a specific
form of workplace harassment. Beyond the
issue of customer sexual harassment, there is
also a need to document other forms of customer harassment to which retail service
workers may be increasingly vulnerable (e.g.
difficult and abusive customers).
With respect to customer sexual harassment, which is our focus here, a critical issue
that emerges is understanding how the underlying power relations between customers and
workers parallel, or diverge from, those
underlying other types of sexual harassment
(e.g. co-worker, employer–employee). While
this study suggests important parallels, it also
makes clear that female service workers face
a unique situation in dealing with unwanted
sexual attention from customers in a context
which ultimately privileges these same individuals. To a large extent, female retail service
workers face a ‘Catch-22’ in dealing with the
customer sexual harassment, either minimizing or tolerating it, or dealing with it in ways
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WOMEN’S RETAIL SERVICE WORK IN CANADA
that may undermine job performance. The
fact that roughly half of the women in the
study, for example, reported that customer
sexual harassment had not affected their
work suggests that to a large extent it is
regarded as ‘just a part of the job’. While this
tendency has been noted in studies of female
service workers in sexualized settings, such
as bars, restaurants, and other areas of hospitality (Adkins 1995; Folgero and Fjelstad
1995; Hall 1993), it is striking to see in other
services jobs that appear to be less explicitly
‘sexualized’. Other women in the study, who
felt their work had been affected, tended to
avoid or ignore male customers, and to be
less friendly towards them. Such behaviours,
while understandable, are potentially damaging for women’s work performance, hindering their relationships with both harassing
and non-harassing customers, their provision
of customer service, and their ability to meet
sales quotas.
Yet, in responding to customer sexual
harassment, female service retail workers are
highly constrained. Overwhelmingly, the
women in the study dealt with harassers in
individual, indirect ways. While some women
chose to report sexual harassment to supervisors, or security, only a handful of women
directly confronted the harasser and told him
to stop. Women’s responses are understandable in that their primary concern in handling
customer harassment is to minimize the impact of such episodes on their own interaction
with the customer, as well as on other customers who may be in the store. Even where
explicit policies exist to protect workers, there
may be tensions between these and considerations of customer service. It is important
to note that women may also deal with
customer sexual harassment in ways that this
study did not capture. Moving out of retail
work may be a strategy women use to ‘minimize their confrontation’ (Stanko 1988, p. 98;
Folgero and Fjelstad 1995, p. 301). Moreover,
there are many macro and micro socioeconomic factors shaping women’s responses
that our study was unable to explore. General
economic conditions, the nature (e.g. pay,
hours) and importance of the job to the
worker, and the presence or absence of
supportive work groups are all critical factors
in understanding women’s resistance, and
clearly deserve greater attention in future
research.
Customer sexual harassment thus raises
important questions not only about women’s
experiences of it but about the consequences
for, and responsibilities of, employers and their
organizations. Indeed, as several researchers
have noted, organizational responses and
© Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 1998
217
interventions remain an area in ‘urgent need
of future research’ (Cleveland 1994, p. 186;
Fitzgerald and Shullman 1993). In the U.S.
context, employers appear to be increasingly
concerned about the growing prevalence of
customer sexual harassment, particularly in
relation to the potential for employer liability.
As Prorok comments:
Third-party harassment represents a new
frontier in gender discrimination law.
Many employers, however, still are not
aware of their responsibilities in this area.
The federal governments and the courts,
although just beginning to address the
problems associated with these claims,
nonetheless have made one point very clear:
an employer is not merely an observer in a
dispute between one of its employees and a
third party (1993, p. 4).
Given employers’ legal responsibilities,
practitioners in this area have urged employers to broaden existing policies and to
take a strong stand against sexual harassment
from customers and clients in the workplace
(Laabs 1995; Fine et al. 1994; Aalberts and
Seidman 1994). Emphasizing policy formation
and enforcement, Fine et al. stress that ‘meaningful policies must be created, disseminated,
discussed and enforced’ (1994, p. 26). In their
view, a key component of change involves
shifting the power balance between customers and workers by decreasing the
dependence of sales workers on customers.
Such suggestions, however well intended,
run strongly against the current emphasis
on customer service which has been so
enthusiastically embraced in retail, and other
forms of service work, in many industrialized
economies. Simply urging employers to set
policies, therefore, is unlikely to be enough.
Equally, if not more, important is a critical
perspective on customer service programmes
which takes account of how they operate,
alongside the gendering of work, to position
female workers in specific ways. Following
Weeks et al. (1986), who have traced the emergence of employer–employee and co-worker
sexual harassment as a pressing public issue
in the 1980s, we argue on the basis of this
study that customer sexual harassment must
undergo a similar problematization within
academic research, and within public conscience, before workers will have the means
to deal with it effectively. Future research
which documents the prevalence, and nature
of, customer sexual harassment, and the
impact of policies in mediating such behaviour, will be invaluable for bringing such
change about.
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GENDER, WORK AND ORGANIZATION
Notes
1. The Canadian Labour Code defines workplace
sexual harassment as conduct likely to cause
offense or humiliation to any employee and/or
which can be perceived to place a condition of a
sexual nature on employment or opportunities
for training and promotion. Specific behaviours
include inappropriate verbal comments and
physical contact (i.e. making comments about a
worker’s body or sex life; repeatedly asking for
a date; getting too close or cornering a worker;
suggesting that the worker’s employment situation might suffer if they do not have a sexual
relationship with harasser) (see Johnson 1994,
pp. 9–10).
2. A small number of studies have addressed
customer–employee relationships with respect
to ‘sexual harassment’ or the ‘sexualization’ of
women’s work (see for example Adkins 1995
and Folgero and Fjelstad 1995). However, a recent
and extensive review of the sexual harassment
literature, aimed at identifying ‘glaring omissions’ and putting forward a research agenda
for the 1990s, fails to mention the issue of
customer–employee harassment at all (Fitzgerald
and Shullman, 1993).
3. Drawing on established definitions of sexual
harassment, we define ‘customer sexual harassment’ to include a range of similar behaviours
that are initiated by actual, or potential, customers who come into, or by, the store of the
worker. The customer may be purchasing
something, may have purchased something in
the past, or may be perceived as a potential
customer. Sexually harassing behaviours include inappropriate verbal comments and/or
physical actions that are not necessary for
the sales interaction, and/or are specific to the
worker’s physical and/or personal self. Customer sexual harassment may be an isolated
incident, a series of incidents over a period of
time, or infrequent incidents by one or more
individuals.
4. We define ‘retail service workers’ as those
holding ‘sales’ or ‘service’ jobs within the retail
trade sector. Our analysis draws on the Economic Council of Canada’s (1991, p. 9) typology
of services which distinguishes between: (i)
traditional services (retail trade, accommodation/
food/beverage, amusement, recreation, personal
services); (ii) dynamic services (transportation,
wholesale trade, finance/insurance/real estate,
business services); and (iii) nonmarket services
(education, health, social services, public
administration).
5. In the United States, women make up 67% of
sales workers in retail and personal sales,
earning on average 68% of male wages (Kemp
1994, p. 232). In Britain, women continue to be
highly over-represented in sales jobs, though
this declined slightly from 1979 to 1990 (Hakim
1996, p.154).
6. Professional shoppers are employed by management to pose as customers and to monitor
worker performance. Fuller and Smith (1991)
note the extreme use of this technique by two
Volume 5 Number 4 October 1998
firms in their study, where shoppers were wired
‘so that all interactions were picked up by
microphone’ (p. 6).
7. As they note, ‘in-depth interviews can be more
sensitive to women’s experiences of sexual
harassment and their embarrassment, anger,
and frustration with men’s unwanted attentions. These methods also facilitate greater
attention to complex workplace relations and
interactions’ (Collinson and Collinson 1996,
p. 53).
8. Of the 15% reporting harassment from men and
women, it is not clear that all of these involved
direct sexual harassment from women. While
this is certainly one possibility, women may
also have been included if they accompanied
men who engaged in harassing behaviours (e.g.
staring, flirting). Moreover, while our survey
explicitly asked about sexual harassment, a
very small number of workers did note more
general forms of harassment (e.g. difficult customers), and women may have been involved
in these.
9. It is possible that respondents reporting ‘no
effect’ may have interpreted this question as
referring to permanent, long-term effects on
themselves as workers.
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