Today, sexual harassment in the workplace is a very serious issue that makes going to work very stressful for many women and men all over the world. Accounting to the Anita Superson, “Sexual harassment, a form of sexism, is about domination, in particular, the domination of the group of men over the group of women. Domination involves control or power, which can be seen in the economic, political, and social spheres of society. Sexual harassment is not simply an assertion of power, for power can be used in beneficial ways. The power men have over women has been wielded in ways that oppress women. The power ex- pressed in sexual harassment is oppression, power used wrongly” (Textbook, p154). It is estimated that approximately 90% of all female employees in Canada will face some form of sexual harassment while working on the job, especially the young women and unmarried women. Sexual harassment not only creates an unhealthy work environment and negative consequences for the harassed, but it is also a violation of Human Rights and Freedoms legislation. In this essay, I will focus on the negative effect of sexual harassment and give some recommendations that can support Anita’s claim. It is important to note that women often know when they have been sexually harassed. However, I am arguing for objective justification of sexual harassment, rather than subjective, there are cases in which women are mistaken. According to Anita, the sexual harassment is the harm an action causes to woman as a group, rather than in subjective terms. If a woman reports an incident of sexual harassment, and the conduct is solely defined by her feelings or perceptions towards it, she stands the risk of being labeled as oversensitive. Here is a situation, employer saw that an opposite sex employee who got a coffee blot on her clothes, and he tried to clean the blot instead of telling her. In Wall’s categories, the employer’s motivate determined whether it is sexual harassment or not. According to organization website, this is not social touching any more. It’s sort of ‘foreplay harassment’. We can saw that its inappropriateness is still concealed, and we can know that the employer is not doing this with good motive. Sometimes we are hard to find out individual’s motive for touching. For example, if the employer touches the employee with a good intention because he feels close to the employee, but sometimes this sort of touching is inappropriateness and the employee won’t feel good about this touching. So how can we determine this touching is a sexual harassment or not. Accidental physical contact between manager and his employee is another good example to support Anita’s view. ‘Accidental’ is meant that a thing happens incidentally, involuntarily and not to be expected. That means accidental physical contact can’t be classified in sexual harassment. However, if the victim feels offences by accidental physical contact, it is kind of sexual harassment, which depends on the view of victim. However, once the sexual harassment defined, the consequences can be many and serious. In some situations, a harassed woman risks losing her job if she refuses to give in to the sexual demands of someone in authority. In other situations, the unwelcome sexual conduct of co-workers makes the working conditions hostile and unpleasant putting indirect pressure on her to leave the job. Sometimes, the employee is so traumatized by the harassment that she suffers serious emotional and physical consequences and very often, becomes unable to perform her job properly. A workplace is any area in which employers are responsible for the behavior of their employees. For example, can even include an employer’s social event such as a Christmas party. If sexual harassment occurs in the workplace, your employer has a legal responsibility to eliminate the harassment if the employer is aware or ought to be aware that the harassment is taking place. Anita states that sexual harassment is about power and domination, and not sexual attraction. More specifically, it concerns the power that the dominating sex has over the non-dominating sex in workplace. Through sexual harassment this dominance is emphasized, as the female sex is reminded of her submissive and sexual role in society. Through these observations Superson develops a broader theory of sexual harassment, which not only lies in the subjective effects pertaining to the individual, but to women as a group whole. She provides her solution to the problem: “Working with my definition will, I hope, assuage this. Recognizing Sexual Harassment as group harm will allow women to come to each other’s aid as co-complainers, thereby alleviating the problem of reticence. Even if the person the behavior is directed at does not feel bothered, other women can complain, as they suffer the group harm associated with Sexual Harassment.” In my option, the victim said that she was be sexual harassment, so that the perpetrator got under arrest. But the victim was a paranoid individual, so how can we judge if it is a sexual harassment. However, judging a sexual harassment, we should think about many criteria. Firstly, we should know the motivations that cause the perpetrators’ action and what perpetrators do to the victim. Secondly, we should know how the victim feels from the word or touching. Thirdly, if the victim thinks that she/he is being sexual harassed and how a third party’s thinks. Finally, we should notice that real gender of the perpetrator and the victim; I mean what the internal gender of the perpetrator and the victim. Totally speaking, we should also know what’s the mental state of the two individuals and what’s the psychology of them, too. These are what I think to judge a sexual harassment behavior.
Overall, I agree with Anita Superson, which subjective definitions should be replaced by objective definition of sexual harassment. In this essay, I discussed the several problems arising from the subjective definition of sexual harassment. These problems come from sexist to women’s roles in society and how they ought to react towards men’s sexual. I suggest the law can be restructured that can protect group of women in workplace and give just decision to the perpetrator.