UW-Stout
This paper was prepared for ESLI 61
Taught by Ms. Blessing
Sexual harassment refers to undesirable sexual advances, sexual favors requests, as well as other physical conduct that are suggestive for sexual requests. Sexual harassment may happen in different ways. At some points, it happens when a person seeks to extend favor to another person in exchange for sexual advances. This has been a major problem in many workplaces, where women have been the main victims with minimal cases of men as victims. Sexual harassment may extend massive effects to the persons exposed to it as well as the other members of the society within which the individual lives. These issues would be important to discuss in order to help people understand the various negative effects such as psychological trauma, physical injuries, and social illnesses that the behavior of sexual harassment may have in the society.
The first effect is to the immediate victims of sexual harassment. Most victims of the behavior get exposed to psychological effects. In most cases, sexual harassment exposes victims to the extensive embarrassment such that they would not wish to face the society (Havelin, 2000). Also, the victim is exposed to debilitating stress reaction. This is because they are not sure of the health status of the person who harassed them. The individual is likely to develop high levels of stress that may build up to the level of suicide. Some of the reactions that come along with this form of stress are; depression, headaches, weight loss or gain, anxiety, nausea, low self-esteem, and sexual dysfunction. There have been extremely many cases in the world about the effects of sexual harassments where victims have been forced to suicide(Havelin, 2000). These reactions are alarming, and they are costly to the individuals who experience sexual harassment. Most of them make the victim inactive on various occasions as they do not have the needed capability. This will lead to massive loss for the economy, and specific companies as the victims have to take seek leaves, which may not be compensated by the victims.
The other effect of sexual harassment is among the immediate relatives of the victim. The families of the victims get exposed to equal stress following their inability to accept the dangers that the family member experienced. It may take massive time of the family members as they try to console their member and make him or her heal from the dangers that he or she had been exposed to in the society. This may cost the family a lot of money. If, the victim is a mother, the effects would be extremely dangerous or wide since the members of the family mainly relies on the mother for support on various activities. The husband would be extremely stressed up with the wife had an intercourse with another man. This is because he would not be sure of the proper health status of the wife and he cannot tell what may follow the wife, after the awful experience (Boland, 2005).To children; they would be stressed up as their mother cannot execute some of the tasks that she is supposed to extend to her children.
The third effect that comes with sexual harassment is the development of a demoralizing effect that discourages women from asserting them within a given workplace. This is based on the fact that the individual will not be willing to exchange sexual favors for jobs. There has been the reinforcement of stereotypes in the society of women employees being seen as sexual objects. The common severe and pervasive sexual harassment in different types of business creates intimadating, and hostile environment that may make women leave their jobs and look for work elsewhere (NorthWestern University, 2014).Therefore, highly skilled individuals will be locked out of job opportunities as they may not be willing to exchange their bodies with jobs.
Fear being one of the resultant factors of sexual harassment, creates the inability to continue on a given activity. It is through this that it may be argued that sexual harassment is an enemy to career growth. When womenexperience sexual abuse at their places of work, they are likely to give up on their occupations to avoid the agony that goes with sexual harassment. Some of them might be what the job requires for a revolution to occur in a given field. This is mainly referred to as talent (Bates, 2014). If a person is not assured of her safety, in the long run the society will have lost massive talent to the ill element of sexual harassment. People would fear to get into certain professions where there have been rampant cases of sexual harassment (Itaru, 2003). This will automatically be expensive for the economy as it will be extremely difficult to make improvements on given fields.
Among students, sexual harassment would have exclusive effects. One of them is poor performance. This is following the extensive mental torture that one may be exposed to following his or her involvement in the ill activity. This makes it hard for the student to concentrate on certain duties that he or she is supposed to undertake depending on the course that he or she is undertaking. This will automatically lead to poor performance in class. To other students, the extensive stress that they may experience would make them drop out of school. To some people coping with the stress would seem difficult, and they would choose to quit the academic life (Bates, 2014). This would be a big loss to the society. Such cases would continue if there were no necessary measures undertaken to deal with the situation.
Harassers risk ruining their reputation and character. If it is proved that they were involved in certain forms of a sexual harassment punishment would befall them. This would be the beginning of their mystery (NorthWestern University, 2014).
Sexual harassment is a major social problem that needs to be addressed as soon as possible. Sexual harassment leads to psychological, physical, and social problems. Sexual harassment would be betrayal to success or development in the society. Stress among victims would be costly as it would lead to poor performance, and it may make some people hate their occupations thus leading to loss in careers. Among students, sexual harassment would lead to poor performance in class and at some point students may drop out of schools. Women should be respected at work places as they may hold the success of the company in their hands. View on them as sexual objects would be the beginning of a company. The government and social institutions should be at the forefront to fight sexual harassment.
References
Avina, C., &O'donohue, W. (2002). Sexual harassment and PTSD: Is sexual harassment diagnosable trauma?. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 15(1), 69-75.
Bates, L. (2014, February 21). The blatant sexual harassment scarring our university students. theguardian.com. Retrieved March 9, 2014, from http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/womens-blog/2014/feb/21/sexual-harassment-university-lad-culture
Boland, M. L. (2005). Chapter 4: The impact of social harassment. Sexual harassment in the workplace (pp. 43-52). Naperville, Ill.: Sphinx Pub..
Havelin, K. (2000). Sexual harassment: "this doesn't feel right!". Mankato, Minn.: LifeMatters.
Itaru, I. (2003). Contextual effects of personal network on individuals’ tendency to blame the victims of sexual harassment. Asian Journal of Social Psychology, 6(3), 201-214.
NorthWestern University. (n.d.). Effects of Sexual Harassment. : Women's Center. Retrieved March 9, 2014, from http://www.northwestern.edu/womenscenter/issues-information/sexual-harassment/effects-sexual-harassment.html
