Sexual Harassment

Workplace sexual harassment has been in the news. Complaints and lawsuits have included high-profile cases where managers, coworkers, clients, and potential employers have perpetrated or condoned sexual harassment and similar violations of professional ethical standards. 

Victims often remain silent rather than report this workplace conflict because they believe their managers will ignore their accounts. Many employers dismiss the seriousness of these charges and lack the courage to discipline or terminate a perpetrator who may be an otherwise valued employee. Victims are afraid their assailant or manager will retaliate against them and jeopardize their career, such as by moving them to a less desirable work assignment or calling for their termination. This type of workplace conflict is particularly damaging because it creates a hostile environment where employees must work despite feeling hurt, angry, frustrated, distrustful, and resentful toward their employer.

Read this comprehensive definition of sexual harassment in the workplace.

Sexual harassment is a type of harassment involving the use of explicit or implicit sexual overtones, including the unwelcome or inappropriate promise of rewards in exchange for sexual favors. Sexual harassment includes a range of actions from verbal transgressions to sexual abuse or assault. Harassment can occur in many different social settings such as the workplace, the home, school, churches, etc. Harassers or victims may be of any gender.

In most modern legal contexts, sexual harassment is illegal. Laws surrounding sexual harassment generally do not prohibit simple teasing, offhand comments, or minor isolated incidents – that is due to the fact that they do not impose a "general civility code". In the workplace, harassment may be considered illegal when it is frequent or severe thereby creating a hostile or offensive work environment or when it results in an adverse employment decision (such as the victim's demotion, firing, or quitting). The legal and social understanding of sexual harassment, however, varies by culture.

Sexual harassment by an employer is a form of illegal employment discrimination. For many businesses or organizations, preventing sexual harassment and defending employees from sexual harassment charges have become key goals of legal decision-making.

 

Key Sexual Harassment Cases

Sexual harassment first became codified in U.S. law as the result of a series of sexual harassment cases in the 1970s and 1980s. Many of the early women pursuing these cases were African American, often former civil rights activists who applied principles of civil rights to sex discrimination.

Williams v. Saxbe (1976) and Paulette L. Barnes, Appellant, v. Douglas M. Costle, Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (1977) determined it was sex discrimination to fire someone for refusing a supervisor's advances. Around the same time, Bundy v. Jackson was the first federal appeals court case to hold that workplace sexual harassment was employment discrimination. Five years later the Supreme Court agreed with this holding in Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson. Another pioneering legal case was Alexander v. Yale, which established that the sexual harassment of female students could be considered sex discrimination under Title IX, and was thus illegal.

The term was largely unknown (outside academic and legal circles) until the early 1990s when Anita Hill witnessed and testified against Supreme Court of the United States nominee Clarence Thomas. Since Hill testified in 1991, the number of sexual harassment cases reported in the United States and Canada increased 58 percent and have climbed steadily.

 

Situations

Sexual harassment may occur in a variety of circumstances and in places as varied as factories, schools, colleges, the theater, and the music business. Often, the perpetrator has or is about to have power or authority over the victim (owing to differences in social, political, educational, or employment relationships as well as in age). Harassment relationships are specified in many ways:

  • The perpetrator can be anyone, such as a client, a co-worker, a parent or legal guardian, relative, a teacher or professor, a student, a friend, or a stranger.
  • Harassment can occur in varying locations, in schools, colleges, workplaces, in public, and in other places.
  • Harassment can occur whether or not there are witnesses to it.
  • The perpetrator may be completely unaware that his or her behavior is offensive or constitutes sexual harassment. The perpetrator may be completely unaware that his or her actions could be unlawful.
  • Incidents of harassment can take place in situations in which the targeted person may not be aware of or understand what is happening.
  • An incident may be a one-time occurrence.
  • Adverse effects on harassed persons include stress, social withdrawal, sleep disorders, eating difficulties, and other impairments of health.
  • The victim and perpetrator can be any gender.
  • The perpetrator does not have to be of the opposite sex.
  • The incident may arise from misunderstanding by the perpetrator and/or the victim. These misunderstandings can be reasonable or unreasonable.

With the advent of the internet, social interactions, including sexual harassment, increasingly occur online, for example in video games or in chat rooms.

According to the 2014 PEW research statistics on online harassment, 25% of women and 13% of men between the ages of 18 and 24 have experienced sexual harassment while online.

The United States' Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) defines workplace sexual harassment as "unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature . . . when this conduct explicitly or implicitly affects an individual's employment, unreasonably interferes with an individual's work performance, or creates an intimidating, hostile, or offensive work environment" (EEOC).

 

Varied Behaviors

One of the difficulties in understanding sexual harassment is that it involves a range of behaviors. In most cases (although not in all cases) it is difficult for the victim to describe what they experienced. This can be related to difficulty classifying the situation or could be related to stress and humiliation experienced by the recipient. Moreover, behavior and motives vary between individual cases.

In her book Back Off: How to Confront and Stop Sexual Harassment and Harassers, author Martha Langelan describes four different classes of harassers.

  • A Predatory Harasser: a person who gets sexual thrills from humiliating others. This harasser may become involved in sexual extortion, and may frequently harass just to see how targets respond. Those who don't resist may even become targets for rape.

  • A Dominance Harasser: the most common type, who engages in harassing behavior as an ego boost.

  • Strategic or Territorial Harassers who seek to maintain privilege in jobs or physical locations, for example, a man's harassment of a female employee in a predominantly male occupation.

  • A Street Harasser: Another type of sexual harassment performed in public places by strangers. Street harassment includes verbal and nonverbal behavior, remarks that are frequently sexual in nature, and comments on physical appearance or a person's presence in public.

 

Impact

The impact of sexual harassment can vary. In research carried out by the EU Fundamental Rights Agency, 17,335 female victims of sexual assault were asked to name the feelings that resulted from the most serious incident of sexual assault that they had encountered since the age of 15.

Anger, annoyance, and embarrassment were the most common emotional responses, with 45% of women feeling anger, 41% annoyance, and 36% embarrassment. Furthermore, close to one in three women (29%) who has experienced sexual harassment have said that they felt fearful as a result of the most serious incident, while one in five (20%) victims say that the most serious incident made themselves feel ashamed of what had taken place.

In other situations, harassment may lead to temporary or prolonged stress or depression depending on the recipient's psychological abilities to cope and the type of harassment and the social support or lack thereof for the recipient. Harnois and Bastos (2018) show an association between women's perceptions of workplace sexual harassment and self-reported physical health. Psychologists and social workers report that severe or chronic sexual harassment can have the same psychological effects as rape or sexual assault. For example, in 1995, Judith Coflin committed suicide after chronic sexual harassment by her bosses and coworkers. (Her family was later awarded six million dollars in punitive and compensatory damages.) Victims who do not submit to harassment may also experience various forms of retaliation, including isolation and bullying.

As an overall social and economic effect every year, sexual harassment deprives women from active social and economic participation and costs hundreds of millions of dollars in lost educational and professional opportunities for mostly girls and women. However, the quantity of men implied in these conflicts is significant.

 

Common Effects on the Victims

Common psychological, academic, professional, financial, and social effects of sexual harassment and retaliation:

  • Becoming publicly sexualized (i.e. groups of people "evaluate" the victim to establish if he or she is "worth" the sexual attention or the risk to the harasser's career).
  • Being objectified and humiliated by scrutiny and gossip.
  • Decreased work or school performance as a result of stress conditions; increased absenteeism in fear of harassment repetition.
  • Defamation of character and reputation.
  • Effects on sexual life and relationships: can put extreme stress upon relationships with significant others, sometimes resulting in divorce.
  • Firing and refusal for a job opportunity can lead to loss of job or career, loss of income.
  • Having one's personal life offered up for public scrutiny – the victim becomes the "accused", and his or her dress, lifestyle, and private life will often come under attack.
  • Having to drop courses, change academic plans, or leave school (loss of tuition) in fear of harassment repetition or as a result of stress.
  • Having to relocate to another city, another job, or another school.
  • Loss of references/recommendations.
  • Loss of trust in environments similar to where the harassment occurred.
  • Loss of trust in the types of people that occupy similar positions as the harasser or his or her colleagues, especially in case they are not supportive, difficulties or stress on peer relationships, or relationships with colleagues.
  • Psychological stress and health impairment.
  • Weakening of support network, or being ostracized from professional or academic circles (friends, colleagues, or family may distance themselves from the victim, or shun him or her altogether).

Some of the psychological and health effects that can occur in someone who has been sexually harassed as a result of stress and humiliation: depression; anxiety; panic attacks; sleeplessness; nightmares; shame; guilt; difficulty concentrating; headaches; fatigue; loss of motivation; stomach problems; eating disorders (such as weight loss or gain); alcoholism; feeling betrayed, violated, angry, violent towards the perpetrator, powerless or out of control; increased blood pressure; loss of confidence or self-esteem; withdrawal; isolation; overall loss of trust in people; traumatic stress; post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD); complex post-traumatic stress disorder; suicidal thoughts or attempts, and suicide.

 

Post-Complaint Retaliation and Backlash

Retaliation and backlash against a victim are very common, particularly a complainant. Victims who speak out against sexual harassment are often labeled troublemakers who are on their own "power trips", or who are looking for attention. Similar to cases of rape or sexual assault, the victim often becomes the accused, with their appearance, private life, and character likely to fall under intrusive scrutiny and attack. They risk hostility and isolation from colleagues, supervisors, teachers, fellow students, and even friends. They may become the targets of mobbing or relational aggression.

Women are not necessarily sympathetic to female complainants who have been sexually harassed. If the harasser was male, internalized sexism (or jealousy over the sexual attention towards the victim) may encourage some women to react with as much hostility towards the complainant as some male colleagues. Fear of being targeted for harassment or retaliation themselves may also cause some women to respond with hostility. 

For example, when Lois Jenson filed her lawsuit against Eveleth Taconite Co., the women shunned her both at work and in the community – many of these women later joined her suit. Women may even project hostility onto the victim in order to bond with their male coworkers and build trust.

Retaliation has occurred when a sexual harassment victim suffers a negative action as a result of the harassment. For example, a complainant could be given poor evaluations or low grades, have their projects sabotaged, be denied work or academic opportunities, have their work hours cut back, and other actions against them which undermine their productivity, or their ability to advance at work or school, being fired after reporting sexual harassment or leading to unemployment as they may be suspended, asked to resign, or be fired from their jobs altogether. Retaliation can even involve further sexual harassment, and also stalking and cyberstalking of the victim. Moreover, a school professor or employer accused of sexual harassment, or who is the colleague of a perpetrator, can use their power to see that a victim is never hired again(blacklisting), or never accepted to another school.

Of the women who have approached her to share their own experiences of being sexually harassed by their teachers, feminist and writer Naomi Wolf wrote in her 2004 book, The Silent Treatment:

I am ashamed of what I tell them: that they should indeed worry about making an accusation because what they fear is likely to come true. Not one of the women I have heard from had an outcome that was not worse for her than silence. One, I recall, was drummed out of the school by peer pressure. Many faced bureaucratic stonewalling. Some women said they lost their academic status as golden girls overnight; grants dried up, letters of recommendation were no longer forthcoming. No one was met with a coherent process that was not weighted against them. Usually, the key decision-makers in the college or university – especially if it was a private university – joined forces to, in effect, collude with the faculty member accused; to protect not him necessarily but the reputation of the university, and to keep information from surfacing in a way that could protect other women. The goal seemed to be not to provide a balanced forum, but damage control.

Another woman who was interviewed by sociologist Helen Watson said, "Facing up to the crime and having to deal with it in public is probably worse than suffering in silence. I found it to be a lot worse than the harassment itself" (from her chapter "Red Herrings and Mystifications: Conflicting Perceptions of Sexual Harassment", in the book Rethinking Sexual Harassment).

 

Organizational Policies and Procedures

Most companies have policies against sexual harassment; however, these policies are not designed and should not attempt to "regulate romance" which goes against human urges.

Act upon a report of harassment inside the organization should be:

"The investigation should be designed to obtain a prompt and thorough collection of the facts, an appropriate responsive action, and an expeditious report to the complainant that the investigation has been concluded, and, to the full extent appropriate, the action taken". – Mark I. Schickman, Sexual Harassment. The employer's role in prevention. American Bar Association

When organizations do not take the respective satisfactory measures for properly investigating, stress and psychological counseling and guidance, and just deciding of the problem this could lead to:

  • Decreased productivity and increased team conflict.
  • Decreased study or job satisfaction.
  • Loss of students and staff. Loss of students who leave school and staff resignations to avoid harassment. Resignations and firings of alleged harassers.
  • Decreased productivity and increased absenteeism by staff or students experiencing harassment.
  • Decrease in success at meeting academic and financial goals.
  • Increased health-care and sick-pay costs because of the health consequences of harassment or retaliation.
  • The knowledge that harassment is permitted can undermine ethical standards and discipline in the organization in general, as staff or students lose respect for, and trust in, their seniors who indulge in, or turn a blind eye to, or treat improperly sexual harassment.
  • If the problem is ignored or not treated properly, a company's or school's image can suffer.
  • High jury awards for the employee, attorney fees and litigation costs if the problem is ignored or not treated properly (in case of firing the victim) when the complainants are advised to and take the issue to court.

Studies show that organizational climate (an organization's tolerance, policy, procedure, etc.) and workplace environment are essential for understanding the conditions in which sexual harassment is likely to occur, and the way its victims will be affected (yet, research on specific policy and procedure, and awareness strategies is lacking). Another element that increases the risk for sexual harassment is the job's gender context (having few women in the close working environment or practicing in a field that is perceived as atypical for women).

According to Dr. Orit Kamir, the most effective way to avoid sexual harassment in the workplace, and also influence the public's state of mind, is for the employer to adopt a clear policy prohibiting sexual harassment and to make it very clear to their employees. Many women prefer to make a complaint and to have the matter resolved within the workplace rather than to "air out the dirty laundry" with a public complaint and be seen as a traitor by colleagues, superiors, and employers, adds Kamir.

Most prefer a pragmatic solution that would stop the harassment and prevent future contact with the harasser rather than turning to the police. More about the difficulty in turning an offense into a legal act can be found in Felstiner & Sarat's (1981) study, which describes three steps a victim (of any dispute) must go through before turning to the justice system: naming – giving the assault a definition, blaming – understanding who is responsible for the violation of rights and facing them, and finally, claiming – turning to the authorities.

 

Varied Legal Guidelines and Definitions

The United Nations General Recommendation 19 to the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women defines sexual harassment of women to include:

"such unwelcome sexually determined behavior as physical contact and advances, sexually colored remarks, showing pornography and sexual demands, whether by words or actions. Such conduct can be humiliating and may constitute a health and safety problem; it is discriminatory when the woman has reasonable ground to believe that her objection would disadvantage her in connection with her employment, including recruitment or promotion, or when it creates a hostile working environment".

While such conduct can be harassment of women by men, many laws around the world that prohibit sexual harassment recognize that both men and women may be harassers or victims of sexual harassment. However, most claims of sexual harassment are made by women.

There are many similarities, and also important differences in laws and definitions used around the world.

Source: Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_harassment
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Last modified: Friday, November 20, 2020, 7:12 PM