Letter: Sexual harassment at workplace

This is a comment on a report titled “Police to grill Anand in sexual harassment case” (the Post, March 15).

Sexual harassment is a subject that is highly sensitive in nature and includes unwelcome sexual advances and other verbal or physical conduct (inappropriate pictures, posters, manner of dress, etc.). Sexual harassment can be tried even if the plaintiff cannot prove psychological injury so long as the intention to harass is clearly shown.

A company can be held liable for damages resulting from a hostile work environment. Training is vital, e.g. packaged workshops, assertiveness training and gender-awareness training. One can’t change a person’s attitudes and feelings immediately. However, one can change behavior, and a change in behavior is often the predecessor to attitudinal changes.

So what’s the problem? Sexual harassment and employment discrimination prevent people from expressing themselves to the best of their ability. Frustration on the job and elsewhere promotes substandard performance and adversely affects the bottom line. As a woman endures sexual harassment and struggles to maintain both her job and her sanity, she will most definitely need extraordinary support and understanding from her partner, her family and her friends.

Eventually, they will begin to feel the stress and tension originating from the workplace. Sexual harassment is therefore more than a work problem — it’s a social and community problem! Every business enterprise is accountable to its employees for the hostile or discriminatory work environment generated by its policies, procedures and practices.

Employees must be allowed to exercise their talents and realize their full potential, with fair rewards in terms of results actually achieved. Perseverance and determination should enable a woman to express her grievances without due fear of losing her job or employment and social status, even if these grievances are directed at her own boss.

It’s imperative that she find the initiative and courage to seek justice for herself and other members of the female race, both in the corporate world and in society in general. By revealing their experiences of sexual harassment and discrimination, women must effect changes on a corporate and on a social/community level. Their silence protects people who have committed an injustice and allows them to commit further injustices. Absenteeism, high turnover, difficult recruitment, negative publicity and low productivity are byproducts of harassment (and bullying) in the workplace.

Maxwell Pinto
Toronto