Current Conditions

Sexual harassment refers to offensive physical and verbal behaviors of sexual nature. This includes teasing, unwelcoming comments about a woman’s sex, or offensive touching without consent. Sexual harassment is considered illegal but in the workplace, most people tend to avoid reporting these behaviors due to potential external pressure.

According to statistics, 54% to 81% of women experienced sexual harassment in the workplace. Most of them did not report their experiences. As more activities and campaigns occur to invoke awareness of workplace sexual harassment, an increasing number of women dare to say “no” to sexual harassment.

Impacts

Experiencing sexual harassment still brings permanent impacts on the victims’ life:

·Harms victims’ health conditions:

Victims who experience serious sexual harassment may have depression or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). These mental problems affect the patient’s life in all aspects. The symptoms of mental diseases include severe anxiety, intrusive thoughts, or even physical sensations.

·Promotion opportunity and personal development problems:

Sexual harassment largely affects the victims’ understanding of their own development. 38% of women decided to leave their current company due to their experiences of sexual harassment. This can be influential to their career and future development.

The behaviors of victims might change, including becoming more introverted and unwilling to attend social activities, leading to a reduction in promotion opportunities. Furthermore, since the offender is the victims’ colleague or even supervisor, the victims who refuse the offenders might lose important working opportunities.  

Suggestions to companies

·Workplace Policy

The company should make policies involving rules against sexual harassment. The human resource department should also be responsible to supervise the employees to protect the workers from sexual harassment. A complaint procedure should be set as a channel for the employees to call for help.

·Workplace Atmosphere

All the workers in the company are responsible to create a friendly atmosphere to encourage gender equality. Leaders at all levels should act as a model to avoid sexism in the workplace.

·I Hold educational activities

There should be educational programs at each time to promote gender equality. For example, the employees can watch educational tv shows or have games based on this theme.