Sexual harassment is a human rights violation, but too typically it’s framed as an interpersonal problem. (Shutterstock)
Sexual harassment continues to be an issue in Canadian workplaces, and organizations should not doing sufficient to deal with it. A 2022 report by the Canadian Labour Congress signifies practically one in two staff have skilled sexual harassment within the earlier two years.
A big a part of the issue is how the difficulty is being considered. Sexual harassment is a human rights violation, but too typically it’s framed as an interpersonal problem. As a outcome, organizations undertake options geared toward addressing particular person behaviours, like constructing out reporting mechanisms or beefing up reprimands. Solutions that ceaselessly fail. Punishing harassers is essential, however solely doing meaning we solely treatment sexual harassment one offender at a time.
Unfortunately, this “rotten apples” method does little to cut back sexual harassment. For one, it overlooks the systemic causes of harassment, akin to a company’s tradition and management.
It additionally ignores analysis exhibiting that the perfect predictors of harassment are options of the group, not the harasser. To transfer the needle on these points, we have to basically change how organizations take care of office sexual harassment.
Reframing sexual harassment
Simply put, sexual harassment is an organizational downside quite than simply an interpersonal one. Therefore, we have to begin harassment within the context of the group and the encompassing setting.
Sexual harassment is extra prone to happen in organizations dominated by males and outlined by masculinity contest cultures. These cultures have a tendency to emphasise energy and stamina, akin to carrying heavy workloads and dealing lengthy hours, placing work earlier than household, avoiding shows of weak point, taking unreasonable dangers and interesting in dog-eat-dog competitors.
Punishing harassers is essential, however organizations additionally want to deal with the office cultures that excuse or encourage harassment.
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Frequently accompanied by makes an attempt to disclaim or justify harassment, masculinity contest cultures can compel people to protect and defend their identities as “actual males” by harassing others.
For instance, policing has been described as a cult of masculinity that’s typically expressed by means of misogynistic attitudes towards ladies. The enforcement of strict masculine norms (e.g., present no weak point, energy and stamina, “being seen to be eager”) encourages officers to overemphasize their masculinity and repress feelings. Those who don’t conform are sometimes subjected to ridicule, rejection and harassment.
In a special context, tutorial tradition promotes masculinity contests by rewarding indicators of energy and stamina. Its promotion system, which penalizes college who take time without work for well being and household, rewards overly aggressive scholarship and dog-eat-dog behaviour, akin to taking credit score for the work of others.
It’s no marvel that analysis reveals academia has the very best charge of sexual harassment exterior the navy.
When leaders promote, or fail to problem, these poisonous cultures, they permit them to flourish and sexual harassment to persist.
Beyond reporting
Maintaining harassment-free workplaces isn’t solely the appropriate factor to do, however additionally it is required by Canadian human rights laws. However, consideration of harassment as human rights violations tends to happen solely when organizations are dealing with authorized jeopardy. The implication is that organizations are extra targeted on attaining compliance quite than stopping sexual harassment.
To do issues in a different way, leaders should study the social norms, practices and perception programs that underpin sexual harassment. Simply having a proper reporting course of received’t lower it.
The actuality is that many individuals are reluctant to talk up about sexual harassment. And once they do, they’re typically silenced. Formal complaints are additionally after-the-fact measures that don’t proactively forestall harassment from taking place within the first place.
Many persons are reluctant to talk up about sexual harassment. And once they do, too typically, they’re silenced.
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Periodic self-studies can provide essential insights into how organizational tradition and practices could be improved. For instance, local weather surveys usually assess worker perceptions of management, tradition and office interactions and experiences.
These assessments can present a deeper understanding of the organizational context which may allow sexual harassment. They also can function an early warning system to stop poisonous environments from growing.
Change requires daring management
Viewing harassment by means of an organizational lens means addressing the systemic elements that contribute to harassment. This might contain altering recruitment, coaching and mentoring processes to advertise higher behaviour.
These are huge adjustments, requiring daring leaders who mannequin moral values, clearly talk their expectations and maintain individuals accountable for violating moral requirements.
Encouragingly, analysis reveals that when leaders deal with staff pretty, this units an instance for a way members of the group ought to deal with each other. Fair practices even have the potential to counteract the results of masculinity contest cultures and scale back harassment.
Enhancing gender variety in organizations, particularly on the prime, may additionally assist drive down harassment charges. Hiring extra ladies and gender-diverse individuals, and integrating them all through the group may help create an setting by which energy and affect are shared.
Unfortunately, there isn’t any magic bullet to deal with sexual harassment. But we are able to scale back it by taking steps that enhance organizational cultures. We also can reinforce the message that sexual harassment is a human rights violation requiring our greatest efforts to confront it, not an interpersonal downside left to others to kind out.
Angela Workman-Stark receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and Athabasca University.
Jennifer L. Berdahl receives funding from the Social Sciences Humanities Research Council of Canada and the University of British Columbia.
Lilia M. Cortina is an Advisory Group Member of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) Action Collaborative on Preventing Sexual Harassment in Higher Education. She has beforehand acquired funding from the National Institutes of Health.
