Definitions of Sexual Harassment

Sexual harassment can end a career, ruin a family beyond repair and force victims into extensive psychotherapy and

medication. It is entirely unacceptable in a nation whose public policy emphasizes equal employment opportunities for women and men. Sexual harassment in the workplaces compromises the victim's ability to function as an economic agent and so threatens (usually) his/her ability to live as an independent, autonomous member of society. When harassment is widespread in the workplace, a worker has no way to escape from its painful consequences except to drop out of the arena of paid work.

But while these damning consequences of harassment are quite clear to the victim, to someone who has not had the experience of being harassed -- and this may well include a person accused of harassment -- the concept can seem a very slippery one, the line between courtesy and harassment or teasing and harassment or sincerely and respectfully expressed admiration and harassment difficult to see.

Such differences of perspective in many cases arise from the differences in perspective of men and women and the relative positions of power their gender gives them in soci

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and applied the same standard of liability to other types of workplace harassment, including race, age, national origin, disability, participation in complaint proceedings and harassment based on opposition to discrimination. EEOC guidelines are not laws but are frequently cited by courts ruling on workplace issues, and establishing a standard by which all forms of harassment may be judged (Chemerinksy 1998, p. B11). Sexual harassment has probably always been a feature of the workplace, but it had a far lower profile until about the last decade. Complaints about harassment in the workplace have risen sharply since Congress amended the Civil Rights Act in 1991 to allow victims of job discrimination to win as much as $300,000 in damages from their employers. More than 15,600 sexual harassment charges were filed with the EEOC in fiscal 1998, a slight decline from the year before but more than double the number filed in fiscal 1991. Racial harassment charges rose to nearly 10,000 in fiscal 1998 from nearly 5,000 in fiscal 1991 (Brooks, 199, p. C5). The new EEOC guidelines note that an anti-harassment policy should clearly state that the employer will not tolerate harassment or any retaliation against anyone who complains of harass
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Approximate Word count = 1564
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)

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