Haunting the Profession: Exploring Experiences of Sexual Harassment in the Legal Profession

This qualitative study examines how early-career female lawyers and law students experience what we term ‘gendered violation’ within legal education and workplaces. Participants often began with “nothing really happened,” reflecting Kelly and Radford’s (1990) insight that women minimize harm. Yet their narratives revealed continuums of violation, encompassing subtle, cumulative, and institutionally embedded practices. Drawing on Derrida’s hauntology, we show how past, present, and witnessed harms persist, shaping professional subjectivity, emotional labour, and career trajectories. The study challenges incident-focused frameworks, advocating structural, temporal, and affective approaches to gendered harm.