Table of Contents
Introduction
Workplace harassment is defined as a threatening behavior or act which are the directed at an individual worker or a group of workers. The victims of harassment can be split into three categories, which are the based on gender, race or sexuality. Both men and women can be victim of work place harassment but the women are more than men. The most common form of workplace harassment that women have to face is of sexual harassment. Workplace harassment affects the broad range of residents. Fox (2009:121) found that some employers have go to recognize that the economically damaging consequences of tensions, clash and the victimization that can arise from harassment, together with the likely adverse effect on corporate image.
Willey (2003:264) found three principle elements in harassment:
- Harassment concerns with behavior which can be written or verbal, or can involves gestures, physical contact or looks.
- It is behavior that is unwanted and identify as unreasonable and offensive by the recipient.
- The behavior can either a single act of unacceptable conduct or persistent misconduct.
Types of Workplace Harassment
there are many types of harassment in the workplace. Harassment can arise from coworker, boss, supervisor, which cause employee to feel not comfortable.
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- Physical harassment. In the workplace harassment the most common type is the physical harassment which involves touching, kissing, grabbing, pinching, or leering.
- Personal Harassment personal harassment may also be recognized as bullying. The victims have to face the unwanted remarks, disparaging statements or insults.
- Discriminatory Harassment discriminatory harassment in the workplace is pointed at someone’s age sex or the race. This type of harassment is particularly crafty to steer.
- Psychological Harassment psychological harassment is abusive behavior which is mostly difficult to recognized remains no evidence other than victims report or it results in the negative effects on the victims health or it may disturb the victims daily routine at workplace.
- Cyber bullying it is the type of harassment which is done online and it includes social media, text messages, emails etc.
- Sexual harassment sexual harassment occur when the culprit acts or behaves in a romantic way to the victim which is the unwanted or uncomfortable for the victim. This is also known as quid pro quo sexual harassment in which the culprit insist the victim for the harassment and if she rejects then a threat can be occur for the victim such as loosing job.
- 3rd party harassment this type of harassment occur from the person who is not the part of the workplace or may not be a part of the company such as a suppliers or the customers.sexual harassment was the first documented in 1908 ( Fitzgerald, et al 1988).
According to Fitzgerald’ s g roup, organizational environment and job gender context are recognized as the antecedents to the harassament, which in turn have negative result for the organization, as well as the victim’s physical and psychological health. Organizational environment explains the tolerance of sexual harassment while job gender context refers to the organization’s gender ratio.It is accepted that there is not only single cause of sexual harassment nor is there is framework that explains it. ( Skaine, 1996).
Harassment at the workplace arises when somebody is upset, embarrass, socially excluded, emotionally hit, or her work is negatively affected continuously, and over a long period of time. Harassment is soar process during which the person tackle ends up in the lowest position, and feels her self helpless.Sexual harassment was first found in the cases when the women lost their jobs just because they rejected the sexual favors from their employers.one of the most commonly type of harassment is sexual harassment which mostly occur at the workplace and many of the women have to face it. According to EEOC sexual harassment is defined as a an unwelcome sexual favors requests for sexual favors and the other physical conduct of a sexual nature inaugurate sexual harassment. According to EECO there are the two types of sexual harassment first is quid pro quo “it is defined as a harassment in which the one person offers the office benefits like promotion or if the person rejects to do this then the warnings like loss of job is occurred” and the second is hostile environment “it is defined as a harassment in which person have to faced with hostile environment, frighten work environment”.
The main difference between these two types is that the quide pro quo harassment is occur between two people with different statuses while the hostile environment sexual harassment is consist of sexual language and is mostly occurs between the coworkers. In the environment of workplace how can someone feels that the passing comment or the way the other person is looking is a harassment of flirting (Paludi, & Baricknab 1998) gives the two ways in which we can see that it a harassment or not the first way is defined as if the person feels chase or not the relationship then the act is not harassment if the person feels that he/she has no option, then the behavior is harassment.
The second way is defined as in which someone’s behavior is attractive or feels good to the individual then it is not the harassment but if the someone’s behavior is not attractive or made the individual disturb or uncomfortable then it is the harassment. But there is a conflict in the second way because if one recipient may feel uncomfortable when the a person whistles at her while the another recipient feel not uncomfortable on that act.sexual touching , informal pass is considered as harassment in the eyes of every one. While the sexiest job, comments, staring, is not considered as harassment. The harassment is arise in which physical behavior in involved for example touching, pinching instead of verbal like comments or jokes According to the (Fitzgerald, Gelfand, & Drasgow ,1995) there are three levels of of sexual harassment the first level is “Gender harassment” which includes sexiest comments and indecent stories the second level is “unwanted sexual attention” which includes leering, informal touching and continuously request for the dates. The third level is “sexual coercion” which includes incentives and thread which includes sex negative results for rejection to have sex.
According to these three levels the first and second levels shows and similar to the hostile environment sexual harassment while the third level shows and similar to the quid pro sexual harassment. some are myth that are sexually assaulted and those are the following the first is when women who wears the attractive clothes are asking to be sexually assaulted. In this myth the fact is pointed as no one is deserves to be sexually assaulted but if women wears any attractive clothes it does not mean they wanted to be sexually assaulted may be she wears for the comfort. And the perpetrators are responsible for their own actions .The second myth is that the men can’t be sexually assaulted. The third myth is that most of the sexual assaults are carried out by the strangers. The fourth myth is men who are sexually assaults are those who are sexually frustrated or are sexually disturbed or in a situation in which they can’t control thie feelings or actions. The fifth myth is most of the women shows a positive response when they receives a sexual attention from men with whom they work.but those women who do not want any sexual attention they can stop it by simply telling to their supervisors and some women are helpless to do this all.
The sixth myth is some of the women are involved in sexual relationships or want to be the victim of harassment just to extort money from their employers.A meta- analysis found the result that a behavior is called as harassment only when there will be a difference in the status between the perpetrator and the target. (Paludi & Barickman,1998) found that harassment is more found in coworkers as compared to supervisors. ( Bondurant, 1996). Found that because there are more coworkers than the supervisors that is why harassment is more occur in the coworkers than the supervisors and in this way hostile environment sexual harassment is more common as compared to quid pro quo. According to the (Gutek & Done,2000) young and the unmarried female are the more victims of harassment as compared to the elder or married women. According to (Shupe et al,2002) found that 23% of those women who are low socialized Hispanic women had been sexually harassed as compared to 61% of high socialized Hispanic women.
The researchers have found that high rate of sexual harassment is occur in among in high socialized women and have to deal with greater threats as compared to low socialized women. According to the ( Bondurant & white, 1996) women who are employed in male dominant position are more likely to be harassed as compared to women employed in traditional position. The reason is because of the high position the women have a huge network or contact with males that’s why who women face more harassment .Female victims are liked to be more as compared to the male victims especially when the females are attractive. according to the (Chan et al ,2008; stockdale & Bhattacharya, 2009 ) sexual harassment at the workplace is linked negative to the job outcomes, there is an increased of psychological distress, and a poor or the low physical health and if we talk about the quality of job females who are harassed are often unhappy with their jobs, they have to face the difficulty in performing jobs and slowly they are carry out less with their jobs.
In the workplace setting the people who are the harassed may leave their jobs, be fired, or lost future opportunities. Health consequences range from the psychological distress such as depression, anxiety, loss of self-esteem, and the physical symptoms which includes headache, and gastrointestinal problems or in the eating routine or may cause disturbance in eating food. If the individual once become the victim of harassment then there is a chance of people’s ability to trust others arises. Most of the women who are harassed they cut off from the social interactions. There are more poor consequences of harassment in younger females as compared to the elder women. According to the ( collinsworth, Fitzgerald, & Drasgow, 2009.) if the the harassment is continuously or severe then the outcome will be also more severe and difficult to cope with it.According to the(Bergman et al, 2002). There is no possibility of positive results if someone reports against the harassment. The results mainly depends on the workplace organization’s response the most common response is vengeance and the response of vengeance leads to the lower job satisfaction. One study investigates the sexual harassment during the interview process, there were the two set of questions and were assigned to the young females randomly and the interviewer was the male person.
One set of questions was comprised of sexual harassment the interview wa the videotaped and rated by coders who were blind. Those women who were in the set of sexual harassment questions speak less, gave the lower quality of answer to the questions in the interview as compared to those women who were not had the sexual harassment set of questions.one study investigates that the young females who are in higher school setting about 96% female said that they have experienced a harassment behavior from their peer when they attempt the sexual experience questionnaire. One of the reason have been identified that sexual harassment is mostly occur because the harasser know that the female will not report it because of her respect. And unfortunately when the females fail to report a complaint makes the victim less credible and less successful (Gutek,2008). There are the some of reasons of victims not report the harassment the first one is that the victims may be embarrassed or may be it is hard for the individual specially for women to stay in society in a good way or may be her character will not be remain strong in society if she reports against the harassment the second reason is loss of job and it is more important when the income of the individual is very much important for her/his family so the fear of loosing job is one the main reason in which victims not report against the harassment and they face it quietly.
The third reason is the fear of nobody will be believe me if i report against the harassment or it may cause the individual more victimized. Men are the more likely to report the harassment mostly they know how to handle the situation as compared to women. Harassment may be the recognized as a result of male hormones or a part of male behavior . (Sandler & Shoop, 1997 Tangri & Hayes,1997) harassment is the configuration of the men declare their power over women and has more to do with the power than the sex. some of the environmental situations that bring up the sexual harassment the first situation in which the men with a sexiest film is linked sexual harassment (Pryor et al,20000) and in the second study, men whose masculine personality is threatened by female who is performing the same talk may arise the sexual harassment .
According to the (Pryor et al,1995) sometimes the sexual harassment is only occur where it is accepted or tolerated. According to the (Tangri & Hayes;1997). The sexual harassment is natural part of gender relationships. One of the theory which is called sex-role spillover which describes that when the man and woman are not appropriate or relevant to the workplace carry over women’s and men’s role about that expectations.(Tangri & Hayes,1997). This theory also suggest that sexual harassment is more likely to arise when men and women is silent. (Gutek & Done.2000). (Fitzgerald et al. 1988) gives some sample items from the sexual experience questionnaire and the items are as follows the first item is gender harassment, the second item is primitive sexiest remarks, the third item is seductive behavior, the fourth item is sexual bribery, the fifth item is sexual imposition, the sixth item is direct offers of benefits, the seventh item is direct threats, the last item is unwanted attemps to touch.
In our society the male is expected to be more dominant and aggressive as compared to female while the female is expected to be accepting and polite ( Gruber & Bjorn, 1986). That is why according to the feminist theory, the men thinks that any of their behavior is justified. On the other hand the women blame themselves only for being the victimized of harassment (Vaux,1993). The sexual harassment is not only between the male of female it can occur in the same gender also in the workplace. We cannot stop the harassment at the workplace until it is in the knowledge of higher authority. According to the meta- analytic review of 62 studies( Rotundo, Nguyen, & Sackett,2001). Women and men both are different in their perspective of sexual harassment. Women are more likely as compared to the men to label the same behavior as harassment. Perception of the sexual harassment can be vary from the culture to culture.
