Sexual Harassment: The video that I have chosen for this assignment is “Sexual Harassment in the Workplace” demonstrates us what kind of actions, behaviors or situations considered as sexual harassment. The objectives of this video is to educate women or men should be alert or cautious when your employees, supervisors or even clients are performing unwelcomed sexual behavior towards us in the company.
Harassment can be differentiate into “sexual harassment”, unwelcome or unwanted (when the victim considered as “involuntary”, “offensive”) sexual advances, requesting for sexual favors and other physical sexual actions which makes the victim feel uncomfortable, threatened, distress or embarrassed. Sexual harassment is considered as doing sexual or indecent actions towards opposite gender (mostly woman) or towards the same gender in a working environment or other profession places. What kind of actions or circumstances defined as “Sexual Harassment”? There are 3 categories of examples shown below:
VERBAL:
Refer to a person as babe, honey and more
Making sexual comments or innuendos towards a person’s body, clothing, looks, structure
Discussing sexual topics, jokes or stories
Questioning a person’s sexual life, such as history or preferences
Request a person which disagreeable repetitively
Spreading lie or rumors regarding a person’s sexual life
Making unpleasant sounds such as whistle, cat calls, kissing, sucking
NON-VERBAL:
Discomforting stares
Following or stalking a person
Displaying sexual gestures through body movements
Displaying sexual expressions such as licking lips
PHYSICAL:
Physical contact with a person’s hair, cloth, body without permission or invading the person’s personal space
Hugging, kissing, patting or stroking
Touching or rubbing oneself sexually in front of another person
Brushing up against another person
Rape, molestation are the most serious cases of sexual harassment.
Source: Preventing Sexual Harassment (BNA Communications, Inc.) SDC IP .731992 manual, n.d. As I mentioned above, sexual harassment’s victims not only concerned women but also to men as there are some cases where women sexually harass men colleagues. There are also other cases where homosexual person harass another person of the same gender (man to man, woman to woman) as there’s no gender bias in sexual harassment. Sexual harassment not only take place in working environment, it can be happen at the street, in trains, at clubs, shops, schools, restaurants, accommodations, or even during a queue. Hence, humans should take precautions as sexual harassment can be take place in anywhere even though it’s a public place or crowded place. The causes of sexual harassment in work place were mainly due to socialization, power games, lack of company policy and cultural or moral value differences. Men are bought up with strong beliefs such as “girls are mere play toys” which made them to treat their female colleagues in an improper way in the organization. Women often lack of confidence towards themselves due to the way of how they been bought up in the society - “woman are just to please men”, lack of power or consist an unsecured position in the particular organization which usually attracts sexual advances towards them. Thus, most women who are victims are more likely choose to resign from the company instead of voicing out their complaints. There are even some women who bought up with the belief of “real women look sexy” which think their sexuality is their power which probably might increases harassment towards other female colleagues. In terms of power games, as times changes, women have the same equal rights to apply for job unlike during the past centuries which create unsecured feeling towards men as they might feel threatened regarding their career pathways. For instance, limited advancements, pressure on performance, personal stress, insecurity and more which increases the cases of sexual harassment of a company so that men