Sexual Haraasement
54% (272) had experienced some form of workplace sexual harassment.
27% of the 272 respondents experienced harassment by their colleague, while 17% were harassed by their superior.
79% of the victims are women; 21% were men.
12% had received threats of termination if they did no comply with the requests of the sexual harassers.
Sexual Harassment occurs across the board.
Both women and men are more likely to have been harassed by the opposite sex, although some have also experienced h
arassment from the same sex. In AWARE’s survey, 79% of the respondents who reported having experienced workplace sexual harassment were female; 21% were male.
Sexual harassment is a violation of women's human rights and a prohibited form of violence against women in many countries. Sexually harassing conduct causes devastating physical and psychological injuries to a large percentage of women in workplaces around the world. Harassment directed against women in the workplace by their supervisors, fellow employees, or third parties interferes with the integration of women in the workforce, reinforces the subordination of women to men in society, violates women's dignity and creates a health and safety hazard at work.
Women's advocates around the world work to further women’s right to be free from sexual harassment. Critical to these efforts to combat sexual harassment has been the growing recognition of sexual harassment as a form of violence against women which violates women's human rights. States are obligated under international law to take effective steps to protect women from violence and to hold harassers and/or their employers accountable for sexual harassment in the workplace.
Sexual harassment is a powerful way for men to undermine and control us. Attitudes of race and class superiority can result in a feeling by white men that they are entitled to sexually harass women of color or employees from a "lower" class or different background. There is an implicit (and sometimes explicit) message that our refusal to comply with the harasser's demands will lead to work-related reprisals. These can include escalation of harassment; poor work assignments; sabotaging of projects; denial of raises, benefits, or promotion; and sometimes the loss of the job with only a poor reference to show for it. Harassment can drive women out of a particular job or out of the workplace altogether.
There is such a taboo in many workplaces and schools against identifying sexual harassment for what it is that many of us who experience it are at first aware only of feeling stressed. We may experience headaches, anxieties, or resistance to going to work in the morning. It may take us a while to realize that these symptoms come from our being sexually harassed. We often respond by feeling isolated and powerless, afraid to say no or to speak out because we fear either that we somehow are responsible or that we won't receive help in facing possible retaliation. But when we take the risk and talk with other women, we often find that they are being harassed, too (or have been), and have similar responses to ours.
Women are now still living in Rape Culture. Just because Rape is excused under influence by the media does not mean that it is acceptable. Women are afraid to come out to talk about this problem as it is not acceptable. The fault would always be on the Women. But Rape was never about the sexual pleasure you get from it, it is about the domination of another person. Women did not ask to be RAPE.