SEXUAL HARASSMENT - (Article)

      “You can tell all the condition of a nation by looking at the status of its women”

                                                                                                                   -Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru

Introduction

Sexual harassment is the type of harassment involving the use of explicit or implicit sexual overtones, including the unwelcome or inappropriate promise of rewards in exchange for sexual favors. Sexual harassment includes a range of actions from verbal transgressions to sexual abuse or assault. Harassment can occur in many different social settings such as the workplace, the home, school, churches, etc. 

What is sexual harassment? What sexual harassment include? When it become sexual assault? So answering to this question is a tough task but let’s try to do it so sexual harassment is unwelcome sexual behavior that’s offensive, humiliating. It can be written, oral, and can in person or online. In sexual harassment the men and women both can be offender. And when it took place at work, school and uni, it takes the shape of sex discrimination.

Sexual harassment include touching, grabbing or making other physical contact with you without your permission, committing a criminal offence against you, such as making an obscene phone call, indecently exposing themselves etc, cracking sexual jokes and comments around, questioning about your sexual life etc.

Although legal activist Caltharine Mackinnon is sometimes credited with creating the laws surrounding sexual harassment in United States with her 1979 book entitled sexual harassment of working women but she did not coined this word. In 1972 this phrase appeared in the print issue of the globe and mail newspaper published in Toronto. Raw says that harassment of women in the workplace was being discussed in women’s groups in Massachusetts in early 1970’s.

In ancient Rome, according to Bruce w. Frier and Thomas A.J. Mcginn, what is now called sexual harassment was then called as accosting, stalking and abducing.  

Situation of sexual harassment

 Sexual harassment may occur in a variety of circumstances and in places as varied as factories, schools, colleges, the theater, and the music business. Often, the perpetrator has or is about to have power or authority over the victim. Harassment relationships are specified in many ways:

1.      The victim and perpetrator can be of any gender.

2.      It not compulsory to the perpetrator to be of opposite sex.

3.      Harassment can occur whether or not there is witness to it.

4.      The perpetrator can be anyone like worker, teacher, student, friend etc.

5.      It can occur in various places like schools, colleges, theaters, office, etc.

6.      The perpetrator may be completely unaware that his or her behavior is offensive or constitutes sexual harassment.

7.      An incident can be one time occurrence.

8.      The incident can also arise from the misunderstanding by the perpetrator or the victim. 

With the advent of internet, social interactions, including sexual harassment, increasingly occur online. According to the 2014 PEW research statistics on online harassment 25% of women and 13% of men between the ages of 18 and 24 have experienced sexual harassment while online. The online games also have the chat boxes that may create or be used for the verbal or written sexual harassment.

Criticism

 Though the phrase sexual harassment is generally acknowledged to include clearly damaging and morally deplorable behavior, its boundaries can be broad and controversial. Accordingly, misunderstandings can occur. In the US, sexual harassment law has been criticized by persons such as the criminal defense lawyer Alan Dershowitz and the legal writer and libertarian Eugene Volokh, for imposing limits on the right to free speech.

 Jana Rave, professor in organizational studies at the Queen's School of Business, criticized sexual harassment policy in the Ottawa Business Journal as helping maintain archaic stereotypes of women as "delicate, asexual creatures" who require special protection when at the same time complaints are lowering company profits. Camille Paglia says that young girls can end up acting in such ways as to make sexual harassment easier, such that for example, by acting "nice" they can become a target. Paglia commented in an interview with Playboy, "Realize the degree to which your niceness may invoke people to say lewd and pornographic things to you--sometimes to violate your niceness. The more you blush, the more people want to do it."

Other critics assert that sexual harassment is a very serious problem, but current views focus too heavily on sexuality rather than on the type of conduct that undermines the ability of women or men to work together effectively. Viki Shultz, a law professor at Yale University comments, "Many of the most prevalent forms of harassment are designed to maintain work—particularly the more highly rewarded lines of work—as bastions of male competence and authority.” Feminist Jane Gallop sees this evolution of the definition of sexual harassment as coming from a "split" between what she calls "power feminists" who are pro-sex (like herself) and what she calls "victim feminists", who are not. She argues that the split has helped lead to a perversion of the definition of sexual harassment, which used to be about sexism but has come to be about anything that's sexual.

There is also concern over abuses of sexual harassment policy by individuals as well as by employers and administrators using false or frivolous accusations as a way of expelling employees they want to eliminate for other reasons. These employees often have virtually no recourse thanks to the at-will law in most US states.

O'Donohue and Bowers outlined 14 possible pathways to false allegations of sexual harassment: prejudice, substance abuse, dementia, false memories, false interpretations, biased interviews, sociopathy, personality disorders not otherwise specified.”

There is also discussion of whether some recent trends towards more revealing clothing and permissive habits have created a more sexualized general environment, in which some forms of communication are unfairly labeled harassment, but are simply a reaction to greater sexualization in everyday environments.

There are many debates about how organizations should deal with sexual harassment. Some observers feel strongly that organizations should be held to a zero tolerance standard of "Must report—must investigate—must punish."

Others write that those who feel harassed should in most circumstances have a choice of options.

Sexual harassment laws may also be used unfairly applied in effect. Unsolicited sexual advances were considered more disturbing and more discomforting when perpetrated by an unattractive opposite sex colleague than when perpetrated by an attractive opposite sex colleague

Conclusion

The sexual harassment is the things that make our more that 50% population to stay in homes and try not to come in contact or come in less contact with the people and the resources are being not fully and efficiently used. The sexual harassment is the insect which are making a whole in the society without telling anyone and that is very harmful for the society and its growth.  The sexual harassment is the evil to the society. When it happens to one whole society get afraid and threaten to make or fell them free and safe. As provided in the constitution every person has right to live with their own choice in article 21 but if some ware with someone it happens the life of others have been controlled by the others.  

 

-Sonal Garg

Law College Dehradun.