Causes of Sexual Harassment- The main reason for sexual harassment or we can say offense in corporations is the severe imbalance of power between supervisors and subordinates. The positions and the power give the supervisor the capacity to reward and coerce subordinates, also evaluate their performance, make recommendations for salary adjustments and promotions and even decide whether or not an employee retains his/ her job. On the other hand, subordinates want favorable performance reviews, salary increases, and the like.
On the contrary, supervisors control resources that most subordinates consider important and scarce. In some cases, top managers occupying high -status roles believe that sexually harassed female subordinates are merely an extension of their right to make demands on lower status individuals.” The difficulty with allegations of sexual harassment is proof. These allegations often become one person’s word against another. As a result, it is believed that most offenses go unreported to company officials or government agencies.
So, sexual harassment is the victim’s word against her boss. The harassed suffers from difficulty and suppresses it in the cost of civil rights. Most of the women do not want to litigate them. The reason for suppressing harassment is the fear of economic insecurity and social isolation. Because of the supervisor’s control over resources, the harassed are afraid of speaking out for fear of retaliation by the supervisors.
The co-workers having no position and power can also influence the sexually harassed peers. The coworkers also exercise some sort of power in order to sexually abuse female co-workers in the organization. This power is developed by providing or withholding information, cooperation, and support. Work in an organization is a team and hence performance of jobs requires interaction and support from co-workers.
Women in positions of power can be subjected to sexual harassment from males who occupy less powerful positions within the organization. This is usually achieved by the subordinates by devaluing the women through highlighting traditional gender stereotype that reflects negatively on the women in power.
Social Factors
Multiple factors are responsible for the problem. First, the foremost factor is the status of a second class human being ever treated by the male-dominated society since centuries, feeble bodily power in women is another cause, a centuries-old conception that woman is an object of enjoyment only and is created to serve the man.
Other Factors
Sexual harassment issues affect all of us at the workplace, when it occurs many individuals who experience sexual harassment suffer physically and psychologically from harassment. Many are forced to quit their jobs or take sick leave to escape from the harassment.
Reported sexual harassment greatly represents the extent of the difficulty because most individuals are afraid to report the harassment.
The cases of sexual harassment of woman at the workplace are alarmingly increasing because of several factors including:
- An increasing number of the working woman.
- Poor knowledge of human relations and values.
- Fast deterioration of social and moral standards of people.
- Poor and polluted family atmosphere.
- More talks on feminism and masculine than on humanism.
- Poor sense of wrong and right in the people.
- Poor law and order position in the society
- No adequate provisions of law to deal with the subject efficiently.
- What we eat, what we see, and what our parents do or have been doing are very important in this connection, as such things directly or indirectly affect our thinking and in turn actions.
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