Bullying and sexual harassment
Over the years I’ve received a tonne of emails about workplace sexual harassment and bullying. I’ve been speaking to one Ask Kate reader in particular for more than four years now as she has tried to re-build her life following legal and health battles due to a work-based claim.
While men can also be targets, the federal sex discrimination commissioner reports 22 per cent of women are sexually harassed at work and experts believe this is a conservative figure. Wow.
Peter Wilson AM, President of the Australian Human Resources Institute says, “Until the David Jones case, the underlying deeper-seated attitudes responsible for many problems facing women at work today had been cloaked over.”
Writing in HR Monthly, Mr Wilson calls bullying and sexual harassment and the suppression of women at work “a corporate cancer” and names five reasons employers have failed to deal with the issues. These include:
- A predominant male work culture that fails to manage the same mental health problems that Tiger Woods has confessed to.
- Older male business leaders genuinely insecure in the presence of women at work due to their post war upbringing – their fathers worked and their mothers stayed home.
- An elite male group that has felt entitled to the most powerful jobs in business.
- Women failing to support one another because they are competing for the “same morsels of top jobs”.
- Women tolerating sexual harassment out of fear of losing their jobs, their workplace reputation and career futures.
Mr Wilson says internal workplace policies are not enough – employers must create a system where an independent third party investigates sexual harassment and bullying claims. Those making claims must also be protected from recriminations. Most of all, the issue of changing the workplace culture must be lead from the very top of any organisation.
I would add that workplace cultures that create ‘boys clubs’ that allow bad behaviour and suppress the career paths of women also block talented men who don’t fit the clique too.
