Sexual harassment

Sexual harassment is a form of sexual discrimination. It is defined as “unwelcome verbal, visual, or physical conduct of a sexual nature that is severe or pervasive and affects working conditions or creates a hostile work environment.”Sexual harassment happen in most company all over the world, even though many precautions have taken place, it is still ongoing. There are two types of sexual harassment, namely sexual coercion (quid pro quell sexual harassment) and sexual annoyance. Sexual coercion is under a condition of employment, where an openly or implicitly offer in keeping a job or getting a promotion is made by a supervisor to an employee in exchange for sexual favors where promotion and favorable job benefits will follow but if it is denied, so does the job benefits. On the other hand, sexual annoyance is a demeaning and unwelcome sexually related behavior that is offensive, hostile or intimidating to the victim, but has no direct connection to any job benefits. However, the annoying behavior creates an offensive working environment which affects the victim's working performance or creates a hostile work environment, behavioral & mentally depression.

These are few ways to handle sexual harassment. Upon facing this problem, victim must say “No” clearly tell the person that his or her behavior offends victim. Next, start writing it down and include dates, places, times, and possible witnesses to what happened. Then, tell supervisor, human resources department or some other department or person within your organization who has the power to stop the harassment. After that, start paper trails, when you report the sexual harassment to your employer, do it in writing. Describe the problem and how you want it fixed. This creates a written record of when you complained and what happened in response to it. Keep copies of everything you send and receive from your employer. Lastly, file a discrimination complaint with a government agency. Safety precautions at workplace such as evaluating work environment(whether it is save or not), following work ethics (such as dress code) and also control own behavior at workplace (such as proper body gesture while communicating with co-workers) is needed to avoid other complication happen at workplace.

Prepared by Mohd Nur Ariff. B. Mohd Arshad(13b)