This article examines how sexual harassment has been conceptualized by French feminists in an increasingly global political environment, demonstrating how feminist ideas, politics and legal initiatives are transformed as they travel across space and time. I argue that feminist networks have been a central determinant of the ways in which ideas about sexual harassment have spread across the globe in the past 20 years. However, I further contend that there were basic national differences in political, legal and cultural traditions that (...) made it likely that feminist concepts and policies would be translated as they traveled. Moreover, I show how certain social actors heightened the importance of such cultural differences through `symbolic boundary work'. Finally, I discuss how feminist activists both distance themselves from negative stereotypes of American feminist approaches to sexual harassment and simultaneously draw on international networks and ideas to expand the scope of French sexual harassment law. (shrink)

This article traces the French construction and demonization of American feminism by a segment of the women's movement and by public left-wing intellectuals. The joining of anti-American and anti-feminist traditions produces a new entity, dubbed French anti-amér-féminisme. The development is traced in the writings of one women's group, Psychanalyse et Politique, and in the debates around a so-called political correctness. Defending the image of a France distinguished by harmonious gender rapport and relations of seduction, this entity is used as a (...) mechanism to encourage French women to reject feminism or to define a different, homegrown heterosocial version. Using the examples of debates in women's studies, parity democracy and sexual harassment, the author demonstrates how anti-amér-féminisme has had material repercussions on French women's lives, such as limiting the scope of sexual harassment law. (shrink)