Crossing the line

Recession job fears could undermine decades of progress on sexual harassment says Áilín Quinlan.

A MALE colleague cracks a crude joke. Another says ‘you look delicious today’, while he slowly looks you up and down. Another squeezes past, too close, as you stand by the photocopier.

Office banter or sexual harassment? The term ‘sexual harassment’ was coined in the 1970s by Cornell University activists.

In this country, the Employment Equality Act defines sexual harassment as “any form of unwanted verbal, non-verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature, which has the purpose or effect of violating a person’s dignity and creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for the person.”

Examples include unwanted physical contact, such as touching, or brushing against another employee’s body to unwelcome sexual advances and propositions, suggestive remarks, innuendo, lewd comments or the display of pornographic or sexually suggestive pictures.

The database of the Equality Tribunal contains an array of cases — from a school where sixth-year pupils stuck a “lewd and sexually offensive note” on a teacher’s back, to a hospital worker who complained of being sexually harassed by a supervisor, and an office worker whose boss groped her and rubbed his private parts against her.

“I don’t think there’s any one sector where harassment is prevalent — but you could make a case for sectors where there are large concentrations of low-paid women,” says David Joyce, equality officer with the Irish Congress of Trade Unions.

Here, sexual harassment has been defined since the 1970s and the legislation has been enhanced.

The Code of Practice of the Equality Authority defines sexual harassment and how employers and employees should deal with it.

“There is no doubt that there are incidents of sexual harassment and that they are very severe for those exposed to them, but, on the wider stage, this would be one of the areas where significant progress has been made,” says Brian Merriman, head of communications at the Equality Authority.

Breach of the Code of Practice, or its guidelines on how employers deal with a problem, can be introduced as evidence.

“The code is very strongly protected in law and, as a result, everyone in the workplace has a good understanding of it,” he says. The level of complaints is low — in 2009, just 7% of Equality Authority queries related to sexual harassment. By 2010, this had dropped to 0.5% of the queries and last year it was 2%.

“Sexual harassment would be very low in comparison to queries relating to pregnancy and maternity rights, which form up to 40% of our query base every year,” he says.

Victims may be disinclined to report harassment, fearing a lack of support from employers — but, Merriman says, for employers there’s strong argument for compliance with the code and the provision of an internal policy on sexual harassment.

“It’s like a cancer in the workplace,” he says. “There is a huge cost to the workplace if it is dominated by harassment rather than innovation. It’s also an expensive area for employers who don’t comply with the law. In some cases, they could find themselves looking at six-figure compensation sums.”

So women have little to worry about? Not quite, says Joyce. While victims are encouraged to make a complaint to their union or workplace representative about inappropriate behaviour, he says many cases are not pursued because it requires courage, or because of a lack of job security as a result of the recession, or because of a lack of awareness — Joyce questions whether the majority of workers are aware of the protections in the Code of Practice. “I believe, if you asked most working women whether they were aware of the Equality Authority’s Code of Practice, they wouldn’t be,” he says. Studies have shown people’s awareness of their rights in the workplace, and their level of understanding of what is and is not acceptable, is “relatively low”.

Merriman says there’s no evidence that the recession has had a negative impact on complaints — in 2010, the Authority received 13 queries on sexual harassment, and in 2011 that figure rose to 38.

Joyce is not so sure. “In the current environment, people would think twice about making an issue of it,” he says.

Orla O’Connor, director of the National Women’s Council, says the recession has had an impact on victims’ willingness to speak out. “I think the recession has made it much more difficult to complain about anything, and, obviously, sexual harassment is one of those issues,” she says.

Studies in Britain and the US show that sexual harassment is prevalent in the workforce — that 90% of women have experienced it — but that only low levels have reported it.

“I don’t think it’d be any different here. I think the recession could make it more difficult for women,” she says. “Women have said to us that they will not be complaining about anything now, because they feel lucky to even have a job. There’s a culture, right now, in the recession, that you should not be complaining.”

O’Connor says many women may not be aware that there is a policy on sexual harassment. “When we had discussions, it emerged that people are very unclear about their rights,” she says. Internal workplace policies on sexual harassment should be drawn up by employers and built into employee induction days.

“The culture within the workplace, the policies and procedures need to be clear, so that people doing it should realise they’re breaking procedures and breaking the law. The Equality Authority’s code should be in the workplace and should be very visible, but I haven’t seen it displayed in many workplaces — it should be displayed for both women and men.”

It’s taken decades to establish the rights of women in the workplace. As the pioneering chairperson of the Employment Equality Agency, from 1977 to 1993, Sylvia Meehan campaigned on equal pay, maternity leave and against sexual harassment.

Sexual harassment was a major workplace issue in the ’70s and ’80s, she says: “I knew it was happening, but women didn’t want to talk about it. The idea of it was sneered at by employers, but I had women regularly ringing me up about it. Women were embarrassed and ashamed by it, but they didn’t want to do anything about it, because they feared their employer would laugh at them.

“I remember attending a conference at which the issue was up for discussion. There were several male judges at this conference and they fell around laughing at the thought that sexual harassment could be considered a crime.”

Thankfully, she says, things have changed. “Modern women have more belief in themselves, whereas, in those days, women wouldn’t always have as much third-level education or the self-confidence that can go with that.”

If anyone doubted that double standards and sexual harassment have been a hallmark of the workplace for generations, the searing 15-minute speech in which Australian prime minister, Julia Gillard, recently accused the leader of the opposition of peddling double standards and having a long history of sexism and misogyny, underlines an endemic problem. In France, ministers in the new Socialist government are taking steps to break with age-old practices by attending anti-sexism courses.

The Jimmy Savile case has produced a string of revelations from women allegedly abused by him as young teenagers — and highlighted a norm of sexual harassment that long existed in the media and continues today.

Laura Bates, a British 26-year-old freelance writer, has established the Everyday Sexism project, a Twitter collection of thousands of stories from women all over the world, a seemingly endless series of anecdotes from students to women who cannot wait for a lift in the office without being harassed.

Often, women are embarrassed to make a fuss. One student reported that when she complained about the sexual harassment, she was told to look at it as a compliment. Others fear being accused of having no sense of humour.

So, where do you draw the line between a sexual predator and a colleague’s silly sense of fun? The Code of Practice on Sexual Harassment on the Equality Authority’s website provides an un-ambiguous answer.

If you find a situation involving some form of sexual innuendo or behaviour unwelcome, offensive, humiliating or intimidating, it’s sexual harassment — plain and simple.

While many women are, initially, ‘paralysed’ by sexual harassment and may not know how to react to it, says occupational psychologist Patricia Murray, some will make sure they’re ready with a cutting remark the next time the harasser tries it on.

While it’s not advisable to sexually harass somebody in return, she says — this kind of sexual innuendo could be seen as encouragement — a clever quip can help you make a point: “It’s far better to come back with some non-sexual quip about his lack of wit or his stupidity,” she says.

“You might not think of this the first time, but possibly the second time. Something that is an affront, but is not of a sexual nature.”