Sexual harassment, according to the equality act of 2010, is defined as unwanted conduct that is of sexual nature, with the purpose of violating the dignity of a person or creating an environment that is degrading, intimidating, humiliating, offensive, or hostile. Sexual harassment covers suggestive or indecent remarks, unwanted sex demands, and requests, dissemination of pornography, as well as unwanted touching. The law forbids harassing someone because of their sex. Sexual harassment also includes offensive remarks about a person’s sex. For instance, one should not harass a woman by making offensive comments about women in general. The law does not forbid teasing, not isolated severe incidences, or offhand comments (Alaniz, 2018). However, it is illegal when the action is frequent and creates a hostile working environment or adverse decisions concerning employment such as firing or demoting a victim. Sexual harassment against women is widespread, but many women do not report when they are harassed because they feel that they will not be heard. However, there are practical methods of reporting sexual harassment.
Sexual harassment in the workplace is very common. According to Alaniz (2018), the harasser can be a victim in another area, a supervisor, a co-worker or a client. Sexual harassment can lie in the intimidation or humiliation of a person by making them feel less of a person. Victims of sexual harassment are mostly women. For instance, the physical attributes of a woman being their primary value in the workplace. In this case, the skills, hard work, insights, and talent of the person have been undermined. By saying something like “you will succeed in this company if you have big breasts,” is sexual harassment even if you think that’s true. A person, especially a man, might not feel the pinch of saying such statements because they have missed the context. Consider how a woman would feel when their ideas are routinely ignored in several meetings until they are backed up by at least three other men. Subsequently, the woman is congratulated on her big breasts and not her skill or talent. Sexual harassment against women in the workplace cannot end.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
Research by Everyday Sexism and the TUC found that 52 percent of women have at least experienced a form of sexual harassment in the workplace: around 25 percent had been touched without their consent, 20 percent had experienced sexual advancements (Cotton, 2017). According to Ward 2016, a study that has been conducted before by the law firm Slater and Gordon reported that 60 percent of women had experienced behavior that is inappropriate and almost 50 percent had been warned about expecting inappropriate characters from an person in the office when they are first employed.
Despite the fact that women’s rights are protected by the law, most women do not report sexual harassment done to them. Only one out of five women who are sexually harassed report such cases to law enforcement acts. According to Cotton (2017), 80 percent of the women who reported sexual harassment said that nothing changed, 16 percent said that their situations worsened afterward.
The coalition government had come up with the employment tribunal fees in 2013 that made it expensive, especially for low-income workers, to report discrimination cases. Women were left with no prospect to exercise their rights. It was difficult for many people to report discrimination against them until when the employment tribunal fees were ruled illegal by the Supreme Court in 2017. Following this, Frances O'Grady, the head of the TUC said that this fee was overturned because Unison has the money and the clout to forward that initial decision to the Supreme Court (Cotton, 2017).
Another reason why many women did not report sexual harassment against them is that of the cultural context that they were stepping. Some people believe that there are tolerance and knowledge of sexual harassment that makes the journey of a woman through public space a little bit hazardous (Anuscavage et al ., 2017). The politics of humiliation that women go through is at the center of everything. However, this humiliation has been erased from the discourse. People who talk about sexual harassment like its nothing usually forget how ashamed, heartbreaking and sorrowful women feel when they go through bullying. Entry into the public by such women is always marked by that.
Some people humiliate women who come out to society when they are severely harassed. Questions like why would a woman end up alone in a hotel room often scare victims from coming out. Most women know that this question would be asked and therefore that are ashamed to report, thus build a silence wall around them (Alaniz, 2018). Practical reasons like one had been lied to, started as a group which later evaporated, or told there was a party in that room should give reasoning to such people. For instance, in the entertainment industry meetings are always held in hotel rooms, and the juniors in a business meeting do not decide where the meeting should be conducted. The perpetrator then changes the civilized meeting into a scaring behavior. Harassment cannot be compared to a date with a failure in communication.
Crude power usually operates in many workplaces. Most perpetrators of sexual harassment are people who hold positions with a higher power in the organization. The Equal Opportunities Commission reported that majority of cases of harassment that were reported to tribunal involved people who have worked in the organization for not more than a year. There is a direct association of harassment with females who are on zero-hours contracts such that they will not be given work in case they report (Birinxhikaj & Guggisberg, 2017). In this case, victims are vulnerable. In other words, if women become more robust than they are now, they won’t be discriminated in this way. In fact, there is nothing vulnerable in a young woman who cannot afford to lose the work. Masculinity cultures that sexually abuse women create a context in which a woman who is powerless is accessible, and that woman will continue being powerless in subsequent moments.
Birinxhikaj & Guggisberg (2017) points out that most people often misunderstand the totalitarian system with patriarchy. In this system, people think women feel powerless at all times, and men feel powerful always. But this is not the case; this imbalance does not manifest in every interaction. Most women feel powerful, and many men do not. A large structural inequality connects with a person's interpersonal moment. Culturally, women are often evaluated using their appearances. Therefore, when one woman is harassed, this feeds into a wider awareness that women's voices will not be heard and their views do not count, hence cannot be understood.
The role of the management of companies in dealing with sexual harassment cases is sometimes neglected. Victims should note that their managers have the power of preventing further sexual harassment on them. Sexual harassment cases are not like sexual assault cases which are dealt with in a criminal court. Harassment cases are under the Equality Act (Anuscavage et al ., 2017). Unfortunately, with harassment, it’s always a person’s word against another person’s because if you are targeting to intimidate somebody, you will do that when nobody else is around. Therefore, the case will be looked at using corroborating evidence such as have you ever raised a grievance or contacted the Human Resource manager. Companies have many procedures in reporting such cases that nobody usually follows. For instance, a company might have a big equality training push, but nobody has ever gone for training in many years. Many cases of this nature are usually solved, maybe through paying a compensation fee to the victim or other measure put in place, before they reach the court. Through this, a person is taken to behavior for their inappropriate behavior. There might never be a victory to secure, but there's remarkable gain in solving a case as soon as possible (Anuscavage et al ., 2017).
However, it is difficult for an employee to forward a case of this nature while they are still working for that organization. In other situation, a person might report to the HR an unfair case that should be dismissed. The victim then pulls out a series of incidences where they felt harassed yet they would not have gone to the lawyer with these incidences. Maybe the victim was treated inappropriately, but they don't have a way of reasonable bringing a claim (Ward, 2016). There are times when the HR department becomes inadequate, as the perpetrator is so senior in the organization that he can operate in isolation. For a smaller employee, the HR department might not be on her side. Therefore reporting to the organization might not be efficient in dealing with such cases.
Unions are also an efficient route that victims of sexual harassment should follow. Unions would deal with these cases because of the definition of a union; this would be an opportunity to work individuals with individuals to band them together and rebalance the dynamic of power in the workplace. Agencies that deal with sexual harassment have done their best to come up with policies on the matter, guiding and giving equality training to people, and employed workplace representatives to train them on how they should deal with harassment in the workplace. However, this should come down to employers, the government, and employers (Birinxhikaj & Guggisberg, 2017). Institutions should be responsible for dealing one on one with these cases. Women should report these cases to their employers. In the case this doesn’t work, they should forward the case to unions. The last option would be the government. By providing these avenues for reporting sexual harassment, women should therefore not keep silent and suffer within themselves. Let their voices be heard too.
In conclusion, sexual harassment against women in the workplace is very common in society. Most victims are women of low positions in their workplace. Therefore, they chose to keep quiet to keep their jobs. But they should recognize that there are efficient places where they should report certain cases. Keeping quiet only hurts them from within and makes them feel ashamed all their lives. Reporting will benefit them in that the perpetrator will pay for his mistake. Also, when women speak out men will be afraid of sexually harassing them because they fear the consequences. Therefore, women should report to the unions, their employers, or the government when they experience sexual harassment.
References
Alaniz, R. (2018). Sexual Harassment: What's Happening?. Adhesives & Sealants Industry , 25 (2), 12-17.
Anuscavage, K., Kaufman, K., Nahodil, G., & Williams, C. (2017). Responding to Sexual Harassment. Central Penn Business Journal , 33 (47), 14.
Birinxhikaj, M., & Guggisberg, M. (2017). The Wide-Ranging Impact of Sexual Harassment in the Workplace: An Australian Pilot Study. International Journal of Employment Studies , 25 (1), 6-26.
Cotton, L. (2017). Halting harassment: Sexual harassment can take many forms, and employers must take steps to prevent it and have measures to protect employees. Commercial Motor , 228(5768), 26-27.
Ward, L. M. (2016). Media and Sexualization: State of Empirical Research, 1995–2015. Journal of Sex Research , 53 (4/5), 560-577. doi:10.1080/00224499.2016.1142496
