While sexual harassment of women in the workplace has only been discussed publicly in the mainstream media, to any extent, for less than two decades it is a pervasive problem that women have faced for centuries.

This book looks at the history of that harassment from the 1600s to 1992, from long forgotten domestic servants in England of the 1600s to abused Japanese textile workers of 1900, to the media surrounded Anita Hill in 1991 America. Coverage is world-wide with emphasis on the United States and the period 1800 to the present.

Sexual harassment cuts across time periods, countries, cultures and classes. Harassment affects women from all walks of life; from unskilled to professional, those in traditionally female jobs, those in traditionally male jobs, and all the rest. Harassment occurs in factories, coal mines, construction sites, law offices, dental offices, government offices, Capitol Hill, and at every other work site. So bad was it in some factories that the women took to carrying knives for self-protection. So bad was it in others that women put their economic existence on the line by striking over sexual harassment.