Skip to main content

How To Identify And Prevent Sexual Harassment In The Workplace

Workplace Sexual Harassment 
     One major issue that occurs within any company, whether it is a small local one or a major corporation is sexual harassment. This kind of issue can happen for any company and one such company it had occurred at was Mitsubishi Motors Manufacturing. "In 1998, Mitsubishi agreed to pay $34 million to female workers at the Normal, Illinois plant where the work environment was anything but normal. In fact, the company was charged with allowing a hostile setting for women since at least 1990." (Kaminsky, 2024). The author of this site had wrote about the major issues that were happening within this Mitsubishi plant where the environment went unchanged for approximately 8 years. The author then later talks about what these women were experiencing within the company such as, "The women were routinely fondled, verbally abused, and subjected to obscene jokes, behavior, and graffiti. One male worker even fired an air gun between a female's legs."  (Kaminsky, 2024). All these issues had lead to many women stuck in a dead end and being denied promotions as they did not allow the advances of their male coworkers. Many women even quit their jobs due to the hostile and volatile work environment. Being able to identify any issues relating to sexual harassment and having proper methods to prevent them can lead to a safer and more productive workplace.

    As stated before, any company should be able to identify any signs of sexual harassment that can potentially occur. However, just being able to identify these signs, any company must be able to also put measures in place to prevent sexual harassment from happening. Sexual harassment can come in a variety of different forms, both physical and verbal. To start off, verbal and nonverbal sexual harassment are some of the most common that can occur. Things such as jokes, lewd comments, comments on someone's appearance and even making gestures towards someone can all qualify as sexual harassment. Additionally, any form of touching someone without their consent can be interpreted as sexual harassment to the one that is being touched. Finally, looking at one very harmful form of sexual harassment is called a quid pro quo.This can occur when you are denied a promotion or at risk of being fired unless performing certain acts with a higher up. All these different forms can drastically impact the working environment causing high stress and unease with all the workers.

    Knowing what to look for, know it is vital to know how to prevent it and the measures that a workplace can take to prevent sexual harassment from occurring. There are many different approaches to preventing sexual harassment in the workplace and several that will be covered. The first thing that any company should do is make sure that everyone, both employees and management fully understand what sexual harassment is and what it can look like. Every company should have training on sexual harassment as well, however it should focus on being more positive. Training sessions tend to leave a negative taste with the employees of what not to do and painting people they cannot be trusted. So promoting it in a positive way will increase employee morale and will make employees want to be part of the solution instead. Moving on, by enlisting employees to help monitor the workplace, this can help to ensure sexual harassment is not happening. Since managers are not able to always keep their eye open, this will help for more people to be on the lookout and prevent from an issue to arise. Finally, companies will need to always be able to swiftly and effortlessly take care of any issues regarding sexual harassment. Pushing for an investigation and proper punishment for the harasser will prove that there is no room for anyone to even attempt sexually harassing anyone.

    With some methods of preventing sexual harassment, there are people making claims as to why companies should not incorporate these methods or any other. One claim that people have is that companies may start to become over-regulated and bureaucracy may start to form within the company. While it may be true in the start, in the long run the benefits will heavily outweigh the risks ensuring the environment is much safer for everyone and the risks the company will face are minimal. Another point that has been made is that there may be a lot of false accusations regarding sexual harassment and issues with due process. However, it will always be important to protect due process, it is also just as important that every investigation is clear and retaliation is not an option for anyone who informs of a possible sexual harassment case. Additionally, a study conducted by the National Library of Medicine has stated, "Of the 136 cases of sexual assault reported over the 10-year period, 8 (5.9%) are coded as false allegations. These results, taken in the context of an examination of previous research, indicate that the prevalence of false allegations is between 2% and 10%." (Lisak, 2024).

    Learning how to properly identify and prevent sexual harassment with a company can improve the environment and workers productivity immensely. Understanding what sexual harassment is and what to look for is vital for everyone at every level. Being able to then introduce different forms of prevention will significantly lower the chance of sexual harassment happening to anyone. Additionally, understanding the opposition and refuting any claims that they may have will help many people to accept. This will also allow the change necessary so the workplace can be safer and happier for everyone.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why Parents Need to Shut the H*ll Up and Let Schools Teach LGBT Sex Education

Africa Studio / Shutterstock Across the country recently, there has been an increasing pushback on having LGBTQ+ topics in schools.    Famously, Florida’s Parental Rights in Education Act has caused a lot of controversy, with critics calling it the “Don’t Say Gay” law. It prohibits “classroom instruction” about “sexual orientation or gender identity” for kindergarten through grade 3 and instruction that is “not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate.”    Laws like this one are incredibly vague and may be twisted by people who don’t like the LGBTQ+ community. This kind of legislation is pushing the country in the wrong direction.   According to the American Psychological Association , c urriculum laws that are against the LGBTQ+ community are based on stereotypes and outdated information and they limit access to helpful public health information.   We should be trying to make schools inclusive of the queer community. While I know this idea applies t...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Only Way Is Right : Fixing America by Fixing the Children and Their "Loneliness"

  I still remember the first and only time I was summoned to the principal’s office. The weather was sunny, yet cold, much like the dread flowing through my patriotic heart .  It’s a wonder I wasn’t being convicted for any actual crimes, considering the liberal witch who was my ‘teacher’ at the time. I exited the room, ignoring her empty-hearted attempts to soothe my nerves. The woke hoodwinker was just trying to get me to trust her, so she could induct me into her cult of radical   lunatics .    The witch was wrong, of course. Because this was the first day I had ever seen my mother cry, as she had broken down in tears over finding the notes I wrote in middle school detailing my first suicide attempt.    As much as the woke CDC’s research can be trusted, they say suicide was the leading cause of death for stupid little 10–14-year-olds in 2020. These weak, selfish brats will be refer red to as tweenagers, since they do not deserve the re...
Post a Comment
Read more

The role media plays in racism (Revised)

Growing up there was this ongoing joke in my family that the reason I liked Dora so much as a kid was because I looked like her. Even though this was just a silly little joke to comment on the way that I looked as a kid, it does hold some truth. Growing up, the reason I did enjoy watching Dora was because she was a character that I could relate to; she spoke Spanish, had short black hair, and had darker skin color than most of the cartoons that were on at the time. But, as I got older and grew out of my Dora phase I found that it was very hard to find characters in media that looked like me. When I was finally able to find some sort of media that had a character that I could relate to, the character was poorly written and was just a bunch of stereotypes. We see in society today that racial biases have not gone away, media outlets perpetuating racial stereotypes are not helping the case of removing racial biases. I recently finished watching Modern Family. I loved the show but as I was ...
Post a Comment
Read more