Internships and sexual harassment: How the status of interns reinforces vulnerability in cases of sexual harassment at work

Abstract

While scholarship has explored the limitations of programs to address sexual harassment at work, this article highlights how these limitations have a disproportionate impact on the youngest and most precarious workers. Taking the specific case of interns in France—meaning students who must engage in temporary and underpaid work to validate their diplomas—we demonstrate how these precarious workers both disproportionately face sexual harassment and are under protected by the organizations that are legally supposed to shelter them from these forms of harassment (namely schools and workplaces). Drawing from various sources of data (testimonies, interviews, judiciary archives, surveys, etc.), we show different ways in which the organizational flaws in corporate responses to harassment are particularly detrimental to workers who are young, dependent on schools and workplaces, have precarious and temporary employment statuses, and lack professional experiences, resources, and networks in organizations. This article contributes to showing how intersectionality matters in capturing the unequal impact of organizational programs on groups at the intersection of different forms of oppression. In addition, this article contributes to refining our understanding of class-based domination in inequality regimes, highlighting the multiple reasons why precarious workers are disproportionately affected by flawed compliance structures.