Types of Sexual Harassment - Case Study Example

Your full November 28, Sexual Harassment This paper intends to discuss a very important issuethat the workplaces often face- sexual harassment. Women are more likely to suffer from this calamity than men. It is a tragedy that persons are sexually harassed by their coworkers and supervisors when they join the workplace to earn their bread and butter. Despite federal laws and legislations, it has not been possible to eradicate this issue from the workplaces because the victim himself may not want to talk about it or let others know what is happening out of embarrassment or fear of losing the job. The paper will first discuss what sexual harassment actually is, and then I will give an account of my neighbor Sarah’s personal story that involves her being tried to be harassed sexually by her supervisor during a project at the company she worked with. Lastly, types of sexual harassment that are commonly known will be discussed. Equal Rights Advocates define sexual harassment as an “unwelcome verbal, visual, or physical conduct of a sexual nature that is severe or pervasive and affects working conditions or creates a hostile work environment.” Everybody knows that if the sexual conduct being shown by someone is welcome, then it cannot be regarded as sexual harassment. When the second person responses positively and accepts any sexual advances or comments and sexual jokes, then this does not become sexual harassment. Therefore, it is important to let the harasser know that his conduct is unwelcome and must be stopped before things get worse. Equal Employment Opportunities Commission (EEOC) states that sexual harassment involves “unwelcome sexual advances” and “requests for sexual favors” that affect the victim’s job severely. When these unwelcome advances are forced on the victim as a part of the rules and regulations of the job in indirect terms and when decisions about his job are based upon his responses- positive or negative, then this is called sexual harassment. Unwelcome advances may be verbal, non-verbal, physical, visual or written. After she got her professional degree, Sarah applied for a job. She told me that she did not mind if she worked in an all-men or all-female environment. She got a job as project scheduler at a good company. It is important to mention here that the project members were all men except her, although there were other females working in the company. Her project was of four month duration. At the start, she found her project manager to be very helpful and cooperative, like when she once came late at a meeting and was expecting some punishment because the meeting was crucial, but she was surprised that the manager just ignored that she was late and instead welcomed her with a smile. She told me that she hated his saying that, “oh honey! It’s okay, it happens, you are such a sweetheart”, and things like that. Then, there were other incidents which started making her feel uncomfortable because she had no intentions of being specially favored by her supervisor because she was female. What upset her most was that her team mates started gossiping about it. She found herself so helpless at that point that she felt frustrated. She felt as if giving clarifications to everybody would give air to the issue. One day, as she was leaving the workplace for home and was walking because her house was just on a walking distance from the company, she heard a car slowing down beside her. She saw her project manager lowering down the window glass and offering her a lift to her house. She heard him calling her “babe”. She said “no, thanks” but he insisted so much so that she had to nearly shout to leave her alone which he did with a cross look. She would have accepted his offer if she trusted him but because she did not want to create more stories, she refused. Next day, she found a pile of folders to be edited on her desk which her assistant told that the manager had sent to be written from scratch. She had worked so hard on the files which he wanted her to go over again. That was actually an implicit way of his telling her that she would have to go through similar tough situations if she did not respond to his sexual advances. Sarah had also refused his offer for lunch twice. After that incident, she felt a sudden change in his behavior toward her. He started ignoring her and giving her tougher tasks that other coworkers. She also saw negative comments on her performance sheet at the end of the month. That meant she had to see worse circumstances because she did not let him enjoy her. A coworker told her that manager’s previous history and she got to know that he was a regular harasser with females which is why no female wanted to work under him. She was new and she became his victim. God knows how she completed that project suffering through all the hard work and implicit and explicit punishment. Now, let’s talk about types of sexual harassment that the victims go through. We will talk about quid pro quo, reverse quid, hostile environment, sexual favoritism, and sexist environment. Quid pro quo is the situation in which the person’s employment status is decided based upon his response to the sexual advances by his employer. It can also be described as “do this and I’ll do that for you”. For example, when an employer promises his female a raise in her salary if she goes out with him for lunch every day, it is called quid pro quo. Reverse quid is the situation in which the employer behaves like “do this or I’ll do that”. This more generally involves threats and punishments, for example, firing off the person, lowering his job position, cutting down his salary, not given vacations because he or she refused to respond to sexual conduct. A male employer firing off a female employee because she refused to sleep with him is an example of quid pro quo. Hostile environment is the environment that results from offensiveness shown by the victim as a response to unwelcome sexual conduct from the harasser, and this situation starts hindering the victim’s job performance. Sexual favoritism is another kind of sexual harassment in which one person is being favored by the harasser over other individuals who are more capable of doing a certain task. And lastly, a sexist or sexualized environment is one in which sexual harassment is more likely to be done because of commonness of sexual jokes, comments and because of viewing internet pornography. All of these types of sexual harassment are illegal according to the Federal Law, California State Law (The California Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA)), and other state laws. Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act deals with the prohibition of sexual harassment by the federal law. It is also illegal to retaliate, that is, take revenge against the victim when he files a complaint in any government agency regarding sexual harassment. French law, unlike American law, talks about this issue as “interpersonal violence”, states Saguy (2). Sarah’s situation was reverse quid pro and sexual favoritism. She was punished because she refused to go out with her manager who used to show sexual favoritism with her because she was the only female in the group. In short, sexual harassment is an unwelcome thing that usually happens at most workplaces and it is okay for the victim to file against the harasser and go for a legal advice. This is the only way that harassment can be stopped because not letting others know will only encourage him to continue his sexual conduct. Works Cited Equal Employment Opportunities Commissions. What is Sexual Harrassment. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Oct 2010. . Equal Rights Advocates. “Know Your Rights: Sexual Harrasmet at Work.” Equal Rights and Economic Opportunities for Women and Girls. Equal Rights Advocates Inc., 2010. Web. 28 Oct 2010. . Saguy, Abigail Cope. What is Sexual Harassment?: From Capitol Hill to the Sorbonne. London, UK: University of California Press, 2003. Read More