WHAT IS SEXUAL HARASSMENT?

Sexual harassment includes unwanted sexual comments, sexual gestures, or sexual actions because of their actual or perceived gender, gender expression, or sexual orientation.

Sexual harassment may be conveyed in many ways including face-to-face interactions, via phone, text, social media, or e-mail, through the display of materials or objects, or by tampering with personal territories and belongings. Sexual harassment frequently causes pain and suffering. The affected person perceive it as annoying, offensive, upsetting, humiliating, intimidating, embarrassing, stressful and frightening. When sexual harassment diminishes, dehumanizes, and disempowers people, it may lead to emotional and physical stress, stress related mental and physical illnesses including post-traumatic stress disorders.

Sexual harassment can also deliberately or unintentionally interfere with the performance and career aspirations of employees by creating an intimidating, hostile, abusive, or offensive environment that erodes the affected individual’s confidence and makes it harder to achieve career success. In many cases, sexual harassment may lead to the person’s decision to leave a job. This could negatively affect career progression due to the loss of seniority and organization-specific work skills, difficult-to-explain gaps in employment, and trouble obtaining references from managers and co-workers. As a counterproductive work behaviour, Sexual harassment has legal and financial organizational costs and may also negatively impact company and industry reputations. Other organizational impacts include job and career dissatisfaction, reduced organizational commitment, increased absenteeism, job turnover, job burnout, requests for transfers, and decreases in work motivation and productivity.

TYPES OF SEXUAL HARASSMENT

Under the Act Sexual Harassment can be broadly classified into mainly two category which are as follows:

1.      Hostile Work environment 

2.      Quid pro quo 

It is noticed that any Sexual Harassment incident that occurs can fall under either of the categories. It may be physical form of Sexual Harassment, verbal or non-verbal form of sexual harassment - any of these will fall either under hostile work environment or may be a quid pro quo. Sexual harassment may involve crude sexual verbal and non-verbal behaviours conveying insulting, hostile, and degrading attitudes about another individual. Obscene sexual gestures, flashing, displaying sexual images or objects at work, and e-mailing or texting sexual images to a peer or co-worker are all forms of sexual harassment. It could also include making suggestive or positive and negative comments about a person’s body, leering and catcalling, spreading sexual rumors about a person, and electronically sharing sexualized images of a person. It could also include touching, such as grabbing, pinching, groping, intentionally brushing up against another in a sexual way, is also considered unwanted sexual attention. Sexual coercion which in other words called or means quid pro quo refers to requiring sexual contact or sexual favours as a condition of receiving rewards or benefits such as employment, a promotion, favourable work conditions, assistance, or a good performance evaluation.  

The Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace Prevention Act, 2013 was created to protect women at workplace. It is however recommended to have policies that protect all employees. POSH policies have to consider the company’s overall objectives for creating a safe workplace free of harassment. POSH training and compliance has to be conducted to make sure that managers and leaders, Internal Committee (IC) members as well as all employees are trained on the legal aspects and consequences of Sexual Harassment at Workplace.

STEPS TO PREVENT SEXUAL HARASSMENT AT WORKPLACE

Changing the organizational climates and contexts that allow Sexual harassment is essential for reducing Sexual harassment. Organization can adopt two paths to build a safe workplace. The two paths of cleansing the environment are :

1.      Preventive measures 

2.      Prohibitory measures 

After having these measures in place, if incidents occur, then walking the path of Redressal becomes very crucial. Adopting clear anti-sexual harassment policies and procedures is part of changing the normative contexts that support Sexual harassment. Such policies can serve as a check on those inclined to sexually harass and can empower the affected parties with avenues for rectification. Sexual harassment training can increase reporting, increase knowledge of organizational policies and sensitivity to what constitutes Sexual harassment, and reduce blaming of those who are affected, and the minimization of Sexual harassment. Effective organizational sexual harassment training includes education about Sexual harassment behaviours, procedures for reporting, the responsibilities of managers and supervisors, promoting respect for people from all groups, and prohibitions against retaliation. To be effective, however, strong support from leaders and managers must accompany policies and training 

Training programs promoting bystander intervention are also important for Sexual harassment reduction in organizations. Sexual harassment sometimes occurs in the presence of witnesses or bystanders who can potentially confront and halt harassers, report incidents, and support those who are affected. Many of the affected parties respond passively due to the perceived risks of speaking up; they may need others to act on their behalf. By communicating norms at odds with harassment, bystander intervention plays a role in changing the group, organizational, and cultural contexts that support Sexual harassment, especially when bystander intervention is a group effort.  

Training models can help encourage bystander intervention for Sexual harassment against women. Theory and research indicate that bystander intervention is often a multistage process that begins with diagnosing a situation as intervention appropriate. Because uncertainty poses a barrier to interpretation, bystander intervention may be more likely if we reduce ambiguity around people’s understandings and definitions of Sexual harassment. This type of education may be especially important for men because they are less likely than women to identify sexually harassing behaviours as Sexual harassment. To increase diagnostic accuracy, education and training should also debunk myths that minimize and deny Sexual harassment and excuse those who are responsible for sexual harassment. Potential bystanders also should learn about pluralistic ignorance and affected individual’s tendencies to underreact due to perceived costs.  

Bystanders may feel responsible and realize that they need to help but may not act if they do not know how or if they lack confidence in their ability to do it successfully. Education and training can increase bystander action by focusing on specific things bystanders can say or do to intervene effectively. The typology classifies possible bystander actions along two dimensions: immediacy and involvement. For example, high immediacy, high involvement actions require an active and identifiable bystander action such as telling the harasser to stop. In contrast, low immediacy, low involvement actions occur when bystanders later support the harassed person, for example, by privately encouraging them to avoid the harasser or report the incident.  

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