Sexual harassment is an unnecessary and undesirable sexual behavior that makes a person feel being offended, intimated, and humiliated, a woman in particular. It should be known that sexual harassment is not a healthy interaction, friendship, or flirtation that is mutual and consensual. Sexual harassment is sex discrimination, and it takes many different forms; it can be obvious or indirect, verbal or physical, repeated or just a curiosity and done by women and men against others of the same sex or opposite sex. Sexual harassment pollutes the environment and it has a devastating effect to the health, morale, confidence, and performance of those affected by it especially women. The stress, anxiety, and embarrassment caused by sexual harassment can lead to fatal damage such as sickness, inefficiency at work, long-term damage on behavior, mental illness, and even death. In addition, sexual harassment is a hindrance to the appropriate integration of women to the society . Prevention is the most effective weapon against sexual harassment. In fact, when the issue on sexual harassment is not addressed accordingly, this would worsen and difficult to find solution in the end. People need to understand fully the causes, effects, and solutions of sexual harassment; sexual harassment is a deep-rooted issue in the society because it is an illegal behavior as a violent crime against women, it has negative effects when women are sexually harassed verbally and physically, and women are treated unfairly.
Sexual harassment is a deep-rooted issue in the society because it is an illegal behavior as a violent crime against women. There are many causes of sexual harassment, interpersonal conflict interest, sexism, or racism discrimination among women, and women itself neglect the issues. Companies accept both women and men as their employees. However, there are instances that majority of women have a low-paying job with enough salary to provide the needs of their family. Men have different perception, they would take the advantage, and men usually compete with women to obtain a high-paying job. In this manner, women are considered as threat to men in terms of work position. In this kind of environment, it would not be a surprise that men treated women as sexual objects rather than co-workers, or as part of the strategy, some men would harass women intentionally, to force women to quit on her job. Such strategy is a very harsh action that the bad conduct could not only drive women from work, it would also ensure that women could not find a job. The harasser has a power to blackmail women anytime. According to Farley, the subsistence wages for women increased the danger, “Most female wage-earners barely eked out the necessities of life from their weekly earnings. In the face of this economic reality and the prevailing moral code, the sexual advance was disastrous” . Some men would demand for an exchange agreement with women. For example, a woman may be asked by her superior happened to be a man to perform sexual acts in order for her to receive a promotion or to keep her job. Harassment is a condition that occurs when a woman’s sexuality is an instrument that made her uncomfortable, and the working environment is poisoned totally . It only shows that sexual harassment is affected by power relation. In sexual harassment, sexism or racism discrimination with women made a clear distinction against white and black women or women in color. The simultaneous formative and dynamic interplay among racism, sexism, and class, the phrase racial sexism to signify the sexual stereotypes and hyper-sexualization that women of color often suffered. Some women employees suffer sexism and they are expected to work in a traditional feminine way. Things get worse when women of color will engage to work. They suffer sexism and racism, as well as prejudice of their class. To come to the point, both white women and women of color are discriminated in terms of their gender. In addition, women of color suffer from racism and prejudice of social class that leads to a degrading way of sexual harassment in the public. It is a transgression of the assigned role to compare white women and black women . Another cause of sexual harassment is the moment women neglect the issues. In some cases, most of women cannot substantiate whether the act is sexual harassment or not. Nurses also blamed themselves for socially skilled but not good at managing social situations . For example, there are some nurses’ experienced on sex-based harasser, disrespectful and used annoying verbal comments or teasing. However, these nurses rationalized the harassing behaviors; they believed that the harassment resulted from expected male role behaviors, mental illness, emotional immaturity, and organizational silence. Nurses have different point of view of sexual harassment, and most of them choose to keep silence. These are the very reasons that lead to the reiteration of nurse sexually harassed. In the contrary to popular mythologies that claim women in extraordinary numbers is using accusations of harassment as modern-day witch hunt, most women respond in passive, internally focused ways to harassment . They are on denial, ignoring it, disengage psychologically, or blame their own selves. The most common active strategy is avoidance, attempting to escape from situations where they might encounter the harasser . Because of women’s cowardice and self-surrender, sexual harassment resolutely exists.
Additionally, sexual harassment has negative effects when women are harassed verbally and physically. Sexual harassment brings many effects to people lives negatively. There are two types of effects on women’s health, psychological and physiological. It is reported by the EU Commission that most people suffered sexual harassment has negative consequences in their private life and to their job. Particularly, women suffered from psychosomatic symptoms, interference with private life, and loss of self-esteem are the most common reported consequences. In addition, it appears that employees who are harassed experienced negative impacts on their career usually more than the harassers did. Sexual harassment affects physiological health of the person with the manifestations of disease, accident to pregnant women, or sleep disorder and more. In addition, sexual harassment affects women more serious on mental health. For example, after sexual harassment and painful memories, some women experienced the “once bitten, twice shy” habitual fear. Consciously, the victims of sexual harassment put themselves in a situation being closed up, not with the male association, refused to love, marriage, and became pessimistic. Sexual harassment often has a serious and negative influenced on women's physical and emotional health, the more severe the harassment, the more severe the reaction. The reactions reported by women frequently include anxiety, depression, sleep disturbance, weight loss, or gain, loss of appetite, and severe headaches. Researchers show that there is a link between sexual harassment and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder . In fact, from sexual harassment to sexual crime such as rape is only one-step away and many sexual crimes started from sexual harassments. Although, it seems that sexual harassment is not as serious as sexual crime, however, of its high daily frequency, it gives the same damage to women. Similarly, women suffered self-esteem and reputation damage. For women leaders, sexual harassment can cause leadership decline or loss of acknowledgment. Alternatively, sexual harassment has financial effects to people. It is potential that sexual harassment has financial effects especially when the employer lacks policies and complaint procedures in the workplace. Financial effects occur when the victim of sexual harassment loss wages due to sick leave or leave without pay resulting to termination or transfer of location of employment. For example, the United States government calculated approximately that the federal employees lost 4.4 million dollars in wages from 1992 to 1994 because of sexual harassments. The sexual harassment may contaminate the workplace; it is serious influence to all staffs working morale. This workplace environment is not healthy for people to work. Employees suffer the adverse consequences of the harassment itself and short- and long-term damage to their employment prospects if they are forced to change jobs frequently . Sexual harassment is destruction of the employment relationship of unfair behavior. This behavior has serious damage to the physical and mental health and dignity of female employees. The series of activity faced sexual harassment lawsuit, and contained reputation risks. Sexual harassment reduced this enterprise civilization environment. The loss of talented people and negative news influenced a series of economic loss as well.
Finally, the most vital grounds that harassment is a deep-rooted issue in the society; women are treated unfairly. Everyone’s involvement s is necessary to stop sexual harassment. First, government and legislatures should enact laws to protect the victim. When sexual harassment came to be identified as an issue, a number of legal and institutional responses are put in place. In Canada, it is regarded that sexual harassment is a human rights issue and is named in federal and provincial Human Rights Codes as a form of discrimination . In Australian, if people feel a person is sexually harassed, people can make a complaint to the Australian Human Rights Commission. Complaints are made in writing or by email; it is done by downloading a complaint form or completing the online complaint form. There is no cost involved in making a complaint. Complaints can be made in any language, in Braille, or verbally on a video or audio tape. The Commission can also help you write out your complaint if you require assistance. In Germany, they formulated the workplace sexual harassment servant protection law in 1994. In addition, China is has agencies on the protection of women’s rights in the measures to the implementation of stopping sexual harassment problems. Second, employers and employees can help solve the issue on sexual harassment in workplace. Prevention is the best solution to stop sexual harassment. Employers have the responsibility to provide their staff a good working environment, and eliminate all unfair treatment to women. Employers can set up a written policy to prevent sexual harassment. The written policy warns the people and protects the victim, and the expected response contained advice and assistance to the victim how or what to do after sexual harassment complaints are made. Having an anti-harassment policy does not mean that there will be no harassment complaints, however, having an effective policies and procedures coupled with anti-harassment training to all staff, it assist on preventing harassment to happen and support the victims and ensure an immediate response effectively . If employers noticed the policy to all employees, then prompt investigation is made, and dealt with all complaints of harassment. Employees also play an active role in the prevention of sexual harassment. Employees should follow this ways to protect themselves; pay attention to the response of others in order to avoid unintentional offense, obtain and become familiar with the organization’s policy on sexual harassment, be aware of subtle forms of sexual harassment, if someone is being harassed, give him or her the support. Encourage the recipient to talk about it and to take immediate action to stop it . Women can also protect themselves away from sexual harassment. In public place, especially in a new environment, women should pay attention to some ill-disposed tracker, and if necessary women must take measures. Women should avoid and stay alert when they suffer sexual harassment. In case of emergency, if women suffer sexual harassment especially sexual violence, they should scream for help. There are many scenario of sexual harassment on women in buses or subways. When encounter this kind of situations, women should fight against it through reporting the incident to a nearby authority. When women are hurt, they should not ignore it and blame themselves instead, they should be bold to resist and ask for help. When injury happens, women should go to a hospital immediately in order to prevent serious damages physically, and promptly carry on psychological counseling, psychological treatment, and heal traumas. Medical results are also an evidence to be presented during any complains, and it is a strong evidence to put down the suspect to jail.
Indeed, people need to understand fully the causes, effects, and solutions of sexual harassment; it is a deep-rooted issue in the society. Briefly, sexual harassment is a behavior of sexual violence, violation of personality and dignity of individuals especially women in the form of verbal and physical acts. It brings many negative effects to the victims psychologically and physiologically, and even affects the working environment, enterprise, and the society as a whole. There two recommendations should be adopted to ensure positive results; the general prohibition against sexual harassment in any area of public and private life, and the positive obligation on employers to take all practical steps to avoid and stop sexual harassment in their workplace. Sexual harassment will not stop if it will not be prevented by people with great concerned. People need to understand the causes of sexual harassment to be able to know the possible ways to be aware and help stop the issue. Sexual harassment brings negative influences to people and people should know how to prevent and deal with it. Prevention on sexual harassment in the workplace requires training programs for both employers and employees, who physically address such matters as the national laws that ban sexual harassment, creating workplace steps and policies that individuals can follow. Full attention, should be given to the victims of sexual harassment; great concern should be focus on women's health. Sex inequality and violence should be eliminated against women.
Reference
AHRC. (2001, September 8). Sexual Harassment. Sydney, Austrilia. Retrieved March 2014,
Bannerji, H. (1995). In the Matter of “X”: Building Race into Sexual Harassment. In Thinking
Through: Essays on Feminism, Marxism, and Anti-Racism , 121-159.
Kelly, L. (1988). It's happened to so many women‟: Sexual Violence as a Continuum. In
Surviving Sexual Violence , 74-96.
Levan, A. (2011). Violence Against Women: Selected Readings. WOMN 2406 EL 01/10 , 1-172.
M., V. S., & V., B. (2004). Sexual harassment of nurses in the workplace. J Nurse Care Qual , 231-241.
The Advocates for Human Rights. (2010). Stop Violence Against Women. Human Rights
Library , 1-6. Retrieved from http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/svaw/ harassment/explore/5prevention.htm.
The Advocates for Human Rights. (2007, May 9). Stop Violence Against Women: Effects of
Sexual Harassment. Human Rights Library , 1-2. Retrieved from http://www.stopvaw.org/effects_of_sexual_harassment.
Valente, S. M., & Bullough, V. (2004). Sexual harassment of nurses in the workplace. J Nurse
Care Qual , 231-241.
